Capacity Building Through Knowledge Alliances and Collaborative Creativity

Abstract

Across the social work and social pedagogy educational programmes in Sweden, the nature and process of curriculum designs require engagement with multiple stakeholders within a highly complex context. A number of studies have identified diverse models of academic collaborations derived from various theoretical positions and environmental influences. This article explores collaborative creativity embedded in Swedish national and international Erasmus networking. Research participants consisted of teaching staff, fieldworkers, experts and researchers. This study goes on to propose knowledge alliances as action models for capacity building in social pedagogy and social work professional practice. It is concluded that sharing information and perspectives on, for example, contextual aspects and theoretical viewpoints in which scholars and practitioners operate, provides inspiration for capacity building in social pedagogical educational settings. This article has been prepared within the framework of the project 'Social Professions for Youth Education in the Context of European Solidarity' (2019-1-PL 01-KA203-065091).

Collaborative Creativity in International Social Pedagogy Educational Settings

“…It was of interest to exchange experiences and, in an international joint collaboration project, develop new forms of education adopted for the social professions working with youth. The creative forces focused on collaborative logics, occurring pedagogical factors, and capacity building when dealing with professional issues arising from work with vulnerable young populations [6]. This also creates cooperation between individuals as bearers of competence and/or function.…”

“…Operations in social field practices include, among others, empowering people, helping, communicating, assessing, providing social service, collaborating, and leading change process-but also making use of a large measure of creativity [2,6,22,27]. These types of professional positions, actions, and roles have been described in Michael Lipsky's concept as front-line bureaucrats or street-level bureaucrats [28].…”

“…In relation to professional life, the literature has shown some recurring and overlapping broad forms of creativity [1,6,22,32]. Freedman [15] proposes that creativity, as a process in context and a learning process involving critical reflection, which is functional and provides a form of leadership.…”

“…The outcomes of various project-related activities may be very different, but the logics of project work are build on development of new growth models and sources of inspiration, and create inputs for changes [12,16,31,36]. Based on the previous development work and the discussion of creativity needed for the development of social, cultural, and support systems for the well-being of young populations in European countries in general [6,12], a project was conducted called Social Professions for supporting Youth in a European Solidarity Context [37]. The goal of this work was the development of the art of education for students aiming to enter social professions.…”

“…Creativity could take the form of both a group process and an individual, intuitive, and mental process [3]. The collaborative context is built on joint experimentation and on experiences from resources obtained in partners' contexts [6]. During such processes (e.g., exchange teaching practices course layout and contents exchange) the creative dimensions of both physical and distance meetings between team members were crucial.…”