Volunteer Researcher in Educational Sciences to Help Cross Sector Collaborations between Researchers and Practitioners with Ashoka - Romania

This is an opportunity to work with an Ashoka Fellow

Ashoka Fellows are leading social entrepreneurs that have been taken through a rigorous selection process, testing the quality of their ideas and character, to become part of the Ashoka Fellowship and Network. Ashoka Fellows take on the challenges of building innovative system change ideas to make and spread social impact in a world wrought with challenges. They refuse to let the ‘impossible’ stand in their way to creating a better world.

This is an unpaid, volunteer opportunity

About The Affiliated Organization

tetraEDU was founded because collaboration between formal education and the wider learning ecosystem can greatly enrich learning, yet remains difficult to establish and sustain. Its purpose is to build reliable pathways through which non-formal education organisations, cultural institutions, researchers, professionals and community actors can contribute their knowledge and methods without weakening public responsibility, professional authority, continuity, equity or curricular coherence. tetraEDU primarily supports non-formal education organisations and external resource persons seeking to work meaningfully with schools and education systems. It also helps teachers, school leaders, researchers, public authorities, professional bodies and funders find trustworthy partners and develop effective forms of collaboration. The ultimate beneficiaries are children and young people, who gain access to richer and more relevant learning opportunities. tetraEDU connects actors across countries and sectors, translates knowledge between research, policy and practice, maps expertise and collaboration models, strengthens partnership readiness and professional learning, and identifies viable institutional and funding pathways. Its first thematic field is Built Environment Education, with the longer-term aim of adapting this model to other educational domains. Valuable knowledge and educational capacity already exist outside schools, but access to them remains fragmented, unequal and often dependent on short-term projects. tetraEDU seeks to turn isolated initiatives into durable relationships and shared European infrastructure for collaboration.

For more information, please visit www.tetraedu.net

Job Description

tetraEDU is developing the research foundation for an award that will recognise and make visible high-quality collaboration in education. The award will focus on collaborations connecting formal education with the wider learning ecosystem: non-formal education organisations, researchers, cultural institutions, professionals, civil-society organisations and community actors able to contribute relevant knowledge, methods and experience. The immediate project is to establish a robust, evidence-informed understanding of what “good collaboration” means in this context and how it can be recognised. We do not want the award criteria to rely only on our own experience, even though this experience includes many years of developing and observing collaborations between schools, universities, professionals and non-formal education organisations. Nor do we want to adopt an abstract theoretical model that does not reflect the realities of educational practice. The project must bring these two bodies of knowledge together.

We therefore propose an **action-oriented research project** combining:

knowledge generated through educational sciences and related research fields; evidence from existing studies of school–community, formal–non-formal and cross-sector educational collaboration; the practical knowledge accumulated by organisations and professionals involved in such collaborations; lessons emerging from existing experiences and case studies.

The action-oriented research project will examine how the quality of collaboration can be assessed through evidence-informed criteria, independently of an initiative’s visibility or the polish of its presentation. A well-presented initiative does not necessarily reflect strong collaborative practice, while a modestly presented one may embody highly valuable forms of collaboration that deserve recognition and wider attention. Possible dimensions to be investigated include shared purpose, complementarity of expertise, clarity of roles, co-design, trust, reciprocity, learner participation, equitable decision-making, institutional support, professional learning, inclusion, continuity and the capacity to collect and reflect on evidence. These are starting points for investigation, not criteria that tetraEDU has already decided to adopt.

The Principal Result Of The Project Will Be An Evidence-informed Framework That Can Guide The Design Of The Award, Including Its Eligibility And Evaluation Criteria, The Questions Asked Of Applicants Or Nominees, And The Information Required By An Independent Assessment Process. Initially, This Work Will Be Connected To TetraEDU’s Development In Built Environment Education, While Seeking Principles That May Also Be Relevant To Collaboration In Other Educational Fields. The Immediate Goal Is To Create a Credible And Usable Research Foundation For An Award Dedicated To Educational Collaboration. The Award Should Become a Mechanism Through Which Valuable Collaborations Are Identified, Understood And Made Visible. It Should Recognise Not Only What a Partnership Has Produced, But Also How The Participating Actors Worked Together, What Each Contributed, How Responsibilities And Decisions Were Shared, What They Learned From One Another And What Made The Collaboration Possible Or Sustainable. The Longer-term Goal Is To Use The Award As One Of The Instruments Through Which TetraEDU Can Help Build a European Community Of People And Organisations Committed To Stronger Collaboration Between Formal Education And The Wider Learning Ecosystem. By Identifying And Connecting Collaborations That Demonstrate Relevant Qualities, The Award Can:

give greater visibility to strong but insufficiently recognised practices; provide a shared language for discussing the quality of educational collaboration; help practitioners reflect on and improve their own partnerships; connect people and organisations working toward similar aims in different contexts; bring practical experience into closer dialogue with educational research; identify recurring barriers and enabling conditions; generate questions for further research, professional learning, policy and funding; create the basis for future exchanges and collective action among award participants and the wider tetraEDU network.

The project is therefore concerned with more than selecting “best practices.” Its ambition is to support a learning process around collaboration itself. Rather than presenting successful initiatives as finished models to be copied, tetraEDU wants to understand the relationships, choices, institutional conditions and forms of work that made them possible—and also the difficulties, compromises and failures from which others can learn.

The Volunteer’s Central Task Will Be To Conduct a Focused Literature Review From The Perspective Of Educational Sciences. We Are Particularly Interested In Working With Someone Who Understands How Educational Research Defines, Investigates And Evaluates Collaboration And Who Can Help Us Distinguish Between Well-established Findings, Promising Conceptual Approaches And Claims For Which The Evidence Remains Limited. In Collaboration With The TetraEDU Team, The Volunteer Will:

help refine the questions, scope and terminology of the review; identify the most relevant research fields and search terms; conduct a structured search of academic literature and carefully selected research reports;identify relevant theoretical and analytical frameworks; review studies concerning collaboration between schools, non-formal education organisations, professionals, researchers, cultural or civil-society actors and communities;examine how the quality, process and results of collaboration have been defined and assessed; identify factors associated with effective, equitable and sustainable collaboration;distinguish between criteria concerning the **collaborative process** and evidence concerning the **educational results** of an initiative; identify tensions, risks and warning signs, including token participation, unclear or unequal roles, dependence on individual champions, unrecognised workloads, short-term funding, weak institutional support or collaborations that reproduce inequalities; record the types and strength of evidence supporting the main findings; identify significant gaps, disagreements and limitations in the available research; organise the findings in an accessible evidence matrix or equivalent working format; prepare a concise synthesis presenting the main findings and their implications for the award; propose a preliminary set of research-informed dimensions, criteria and possible indicators for discussion with the tetraEDU team; contribute to one or more working conversations in which the research findings are compared with practical experience and existing case material; support the translation of the final framework into questions that could be used in an award application, nomination or evaluation process.

The Volunteer Will Not Be Expected To Design The Award Alone Or To Treat The Literature As Providing a Ready-made Checklist. The Criteria Will Be Developed Through Dialogue Between Research And Practice. The Volunteer’s Distinctive Contribution Will Be To Ensure That This Dialogue Is Informed By Educational Sciences And By a Transparent Understanding Of What The Available Evidence Can—and Cannot—support. The Final Outputs Should Provide TetraEDU With:

a documented literature search and selected bibliography; a structured overview of the principal concepts, findings and relevant frameworks; a draft set of dimensions and indicators for assessing collaboration; an account of evidence limitations and questions requiring further investigation;recommendations for translating the findings into an award framework.

The exact scope and format of these outputs can be agreed with the volunteer according to their expertise and the time available.

Many people already know from experience that collaboration can enrich education. Teachers gain access to knowledge, methods and perspectives that schools cannot always provide internally. Non-formal educators and external professionals can connect learning with places, communities, social challenges and forms of expertise. Researchers can help make practices more explicit and examine their effects. Children and young people can encounter more relevant, interdisciplinary and participatory forms of learning. However, the people who produce this knowledge are often insufficiently connected. Practitioners may accumulate substantial experience without having the time or research capacity to document it systematically. Researchers may investigate collaboration without their findings reaching the organisations that could use them. Promising initiatives remain isolated, while new partnerships repeatedly confront the same difficulties as if no prior knowledge existed. The volunteer’s work will help build a bridge between these worlds. It will prevent the award from being based primarily on intuition, reputation, attractive presentation or the preferences of its organisers. It will help tetraEDU formulate criteria that are transparent, defensible and attentive to both educational quality and the actual process of collaboration. It will also help ensure that the award does not recognise only the best-resourced or most visible organisations, but can identify valuable collaborative work developed in different institutional, geographic and financial contexts. This research foundation is especially important because the award is intended to contribute to something larger: a network bringing together people who understand the value of collaboration from different but complementary positions. Some know it through direct practice; others study it theoretically or empirically; others create the institutional, policy or funding conditions that allow it to continue. At present, these energies do not meet often or systematically enough. By grounding the initiative in educational research while keeping it closely connected to practice, the volunteer will help tetraEDU create more than an award. Their contribution will support a shared language, a credible selection framework and an initial body of knowledge around which a wider research-and-practice community can begin to form. This is an essential step toward transforming isolated experiments into stronger relationships, transferable learning and more durable educational infrastructure.

Volunteer Logistics

Estimated hours required per week: 10

The estimated duration of the project is: 3-6 months

This position is Virtual (Remote)

Language Requirements

English; French; German

Desired Skills And Experience

We are looking for a researcher in education who wants to use research to improve real educational practice. The ideal volunteer will have:

a background in educational sciences, education research or a related field; some experience in finding, reviewing and summarising academic literature; the ability to judge which sources and findings are reliable and relevant; an interest in collaboration between schools and non-formal education organisations, professionals, researchers, cultural organisations or communities; an understanding of action-oriented research: research developed with practitioners and intended to support practical decisions and change; the ability to listen to practitioners and connect their experience with existing research; the ability to turn research findings into clear and practical criteria, indicators and questions for the award; sensitivity to issues such as unequal roles, participation, inclusion, trust, workload and the long-term sustainability of collaboration; the ability to explain complex ideas clearly to people who are not researchers; good written and spoken English. The volunteer should also be confident in using powerful AI research tools. AI may be used to improve searches, identify relevant terminology, screen and organise sources, compare ideas and support the synthesis of findings. However, the volunteer must check all important information against the original sources and keep the research process transparent. AI should make the work faster and broader, but it should not replace the researcher’s critical judgement.Experience with reference-management or literature-review tools such as Zotero, Mendeley, Rayyan, ResearchRabbit or similar platforms would be useful, but is not essential.

We do not expect one person to meet every requirement. The most important qualities are curiosity, critical thinking, research skills and a genuine interest in bringing educational research and practice together.

tetraEDU is a young organisation, established in January 2026, and is still at the beginning of building its work, partnerships and team. The volunteer will therefore contribute not only to a specific research project, but also to the development of an organisation with an ambitious European purpose.

If the collaboration works well for both sides, it could become the beginning of a longer-term involvement. As tetraEDU grows and secures funding, the volunteer may have the opportunity to join its core team. Because our work and ambitions are European, location is not a barrier: much of the collaboration can take place online and across countries.

We also want tetraEDU to respond to a wider problem. Universities train many PhD researchers who later find few stable opportunities in academia, although they have strong research skills and want to use them on questions that matter. Outside academia, however, there are still too few places where they can conduct rigorous research while working closely with practitioners and contributing to practical change. Our ambition is to make tetraEDU such a place: a non-profit organisation where researchers and practitioners can work together, and where research does not remain on a shelf but helps organisations improve what they do. Over time, we want to build the partnerships and find the funding needed to create a durable home for useful, action-oriented research.