This blog was written by Rajat Chaudhary, Manager, Research and Partnerships and Srinidhi Lakshmanan, Director, Research and Learning at Simple Education Foundation, India. For the 2025 UKFIET conference, a record 37 individuals from 15 countries, including Srinidhi, were provided with bursaries to assist them to participate and present at the conference. The researchers were asked to write a short piece about their research or experience of attending the conference.
Research has become an integral part of how education systems reflect, learn and plan for improvement. In India, District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) are envisioned as local, district-level hubs for teacher education, research and training. However, many DIETs often struggle to meet the research mandate due to limited infrastructure, staff capacity and institutional support. Nationally and internationally, collaborative research partnerships between state and non-state actors are identified as a potential solution to this challenge.
Research carried out by either the state or non-state actors alone has its limits. State-led studies, while aligned with system priorities, may lack the time and technical capacity to go deep into classrooms. Research led by non-state actors, while closer to practice, may not have access, legitimacy or policy influence. Research partnerships bring these strengths together as it allows systems to study their own work with technical support and reflection from partners, leading to evidence that is both grounded and usable.
At Simple Education Foundation, our work sits at the intersection of implementation and research on teacher professional development. This positioning offers us a unique vantage point to understand how research partnerships unfold in practice. This blog explores the nature of research partnerships between state and non-state actors, the complexities and tensions that surface, and the enablers and principles that can make them more equitable.
Tensions and complexities in research partnerships
Tensions and complexities are an inherent part of these partnerships and significantly shape how the partnership operates and how research studies are carried out. Both sets of actors encounter various tensions during a partnership and have to navigate them on an ongoing basis, as shared below.
Initiation of research partnerships with state actors, and the form they take, are shaped by the scale, credibility and influence of the non-state actor. Larger non-state actors are often engaged through formal and institutionalised channels, while smaller non-state actors may have to leverage personal relationships and other informal approaches to initiate and formalise partnerships.
Aligning research priorities and interests poses a challenge. For state actors, the priorities are often influenced by departmental mandates, changes in governments and immediate policy needs. For non-state actors, they are shaped by program learnings, evidence from the field and donor requirements.
Differences in approach and capacity to contribute can also impede meaningful collaboration. State actors’ approaches are often guided by official norms; and for non-state actors, while it might be possible to have more flexibility in approach, they are often adapting to dynamic organisational priorities. Additionally, both actors operate under significant workload and face constraints of infrastructure, time and resources. This can lead to blurred boundaries of ownership, lack of accountability and undefined division of responsibilities in a partnership.
Enablers of equitable research partnerships
We argue that it is only by engaging with these tensions that equity in partnerships can be negotiated. Existing literature on partnerships also indicates that collaboration becomes meaningful when actors recognise and work through their differences rather than avoid them, and when power, purpose and learning are negotiated collectively.
Our engagement in research partnerships has shown that several tensions can be navigated through deliberate effort, reflection and adaptation:
- Leverage complementary strengths
Non-state actors often contribute technical expertise and current insights from the field. State actors bring legitimacy, scale and a deep understanding of local contexts, along with a strong institutional memory. Recognising and building on the complementary strengths of both actors is essential. For example, our work in Multi-Grade Multi-Level (MGML) schools in rural areas of one state, which are often inaccessible for state actors, prompted a need to better understand their functioning. State actors shared learnings from previous reforms in such schools so that the study could provide new insights.
- Co-creation across all phases of research
When research questions, methods and dissemination are co-created by the actors, it ensures that the research is relevant and builds ownership towards evidence usage to inform programme and policy-related decision-making. Findings from the study stated above are now being used to integrate MGML-specific teacher training across one district in the state.
- Flexibility in roles and responsibilities
Meaningful research partnerships also require clear communication of roles and responsibilities with scope for flexibility to respond to shifting timelines, capacities and evolving priorities.
- Understanding state processes and finding flexibility within them
A crucial enabler is the ability to work within existing government systems without being constrained by them. Understanding the intent of state norms and how they influence processes allows non-state actors to refine their own approaches, identify flexibility within the norms, and navigate systems with clarity and confidence.
- Continuity and embeddedness
Sustaining partnerships requires both the actors to approach the partnerships from the lens of continuity and embeddedness to deepen collaboration and strengthen research processes. This allows non-state actors to navigate bureaucratic cycles and be seen as a part of the state ecosystem. For state actors, long-term collaborations build confidence in the quality and intent of non-state actors’ work.
At the core of all these enablers is trust. Systems and processes provide structure, but it is trust that keeps the partnerships intact even in tough phases. Trust building is a slow and deliberate process and is enabled by showing up consistently, delivering on commitments, transparent communication, and ensuring rigour and quality in work.
Emerging principles for equitable research partnerships
Research partnerships between state and non-state actors are shaped by people, priorities and processes that differ across contexts. While strategies vary, the emerging principles from our practice offer ways to make such partnerships more collaborative, equitable and meaningful. These evolving principles draw from our own experience in these collaborations.
- Cultivate a shared purpose of research so that it is meaningful and relevant across partners
- Recognise power asymmetry openly between partners to operate constructively
- Co-construct research topics to reflect both top-down and bottom-up priorities
- Non-state actors should be enablers of state systems, and not substitute as implementers
- Broaden access to and usage of evidence to strengthen system learning and policy influence
