Collaborative Approaches to 14-19 Provision - Communities and ...

14-19 PATHFINDERS: THE SECOND YEARabove it was important to retain a sense of the ‘big picture’ and a vision of how disparateinitiatives and funding streams could be integrated.73. In the absence of such leadership pathfinders could make some progress on the basisof broad, general commitment to collaboration based on collective goodwill, but this tendedto break down in the absence of full-time coordination and leadership. Leadership andfacilitation resources were also required for the development of specific facets of pathfinderdevelopment. For example, in Nottingham the four full-time Enterprise Partnershipmanagers played a crucial role in promoting and facilitating change. As one coordinator putit having “bodies on the ground who could move things forward” was important, a contentionwhich is confirmed by studies of collaboration in action (Powell & Exworthy, 2002). Ofcourse, pathfinder funding could be used to generate leadership and support but this onlyoccurred when institutions, such as an LEA, had the capacity and will to seize theopportunity.Dimensions of Collaboration74. Having described quite briefly the policies and practices driving collaboration and thecontextual features which influence the forms which that collaboration might take we turnnow to describe in greater detail the sorts of collaboration which was taking place under theauspices of pathfinder. As implied above in our account of contextual features this variedconsiderably across the pathfinders, not only because the local contexts were different butbecause national policies were mediated in different ways by local agencies and individualinstitutions and were filtered through the educational aims and values of the participants. Toput it rather more baldly, forms of collaboration were not only different because the localitieswere different but because different pathfinders aimed to do different things.75. Collaboration can be understood in terms of four main dimensions:1. Inclusivity: the extent to which to which the collaboration involves a wide range ofpartners and participants2. Levels: levels at which collaboration takes place and which reflects the intensity withdifferent partners engage with collaborative activities25