Developed collaboratively with partners in the UK and South Africa, the project aimed to understand how a model of best practice for community engagement – operating within a complex environment – could be created to benefit the poorest and most disadvantaged schools and societies.
We took an innovative approach, drawing on multiple perspectives from the various partners – who already work in isolated pockets – to address the challenge of improving a state education system in crisis. The project was underpinned by actor-network theory (Law and Hassard, 1999; Latour, 2005; Fenwick and Richards, 2010; Michael, 2017) and the notion of structural holes (Burt, 1992).