ABSTRACT
This chapter explores partnership work and its role in authentic learning. We look at the different purposes that partnerships can serve and provide a set of ideas to help you interrogate the conditions that can contribute to effective partnerships. We focus predominantly on partnerships between universities and external partners, though many of the points we raise will still apply to authentic learning that is done through internal partnerships (e.g. working with other departments in the university). We explore the benefits that you might expect from partnership work and how you might justify to others the investment of time and resource needed for building mutually beneficial partnerships. The chapter aims to provide insight into some of the very practical questions that you might face. We explore how you identify potential partners and the creation of alignment with those partners around your teaching or research priorities and consider how you build relationship capital and work in ways that foster mutual benefit. We draw on literature that we have found useful and provide an introduction to some of the issues that typically surface in work of this nature. Our overall aim is to provide food for thought and to highlight in a reflective and useful way some of the grit and heavy lifting involved in making authentic learning work.
