Transfer Workshops

Participants at the Transfer Broker level bring their own school partnerships into the programme. These partnerships form the Transfer Workshops, which Transfer Fellows accompany as observers and advisers. All Transfer Workshops focus on student diversity in the classroom and/or across the school. The school partnerships may involve working with individual teachers and contribute to developing classroom practice, or they may operate at the level of the whole school or larger parts of it and help shape school development. The aim is always to contribute to improving teaching or the school as a whole, and to develop a transfer product that can represent a scalable innovation.

The school partnerships are accompanied, advised and supported as they develop into Research-Practice Partnerships. Transfer Workshops with similar themes are grouped into smaller Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) of four to five workshops, which give each other ongoing feedback. Each NIC is also assigned at least one permanent member of the Mentoring Board. The way the NICs work is also intended to serve as a blueprint for the long-term, nationwide community of practice, which will continue beyond the programme.

TransferForce is based on the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model, and the advice and support provided to the Transfer Workshops also follow its development stages. The input provided at the in-person events and online sessions offers the foundational knowledge needed to develop the partnerships further. Between the in-person events, the workshops continue their work using materials and shared work steps. Regular written and virtual feedback loops ensure that each partnership makes continuous progress. The in-person events also provide an opportunity to present development steps and advise one another.

At the end of the programme, the development of the Transfer Workshops will be documented in a joint publication, and the transfer products from the workshops will be showcased on the project website.