Unlocking the Black Box of School-Industry Partnerships: A Comparative Case Study
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| Title: | Unlocking the Black Box of School-Industry Partnerships: A Comparative Case Study |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Anthony M. Perry (ORCID |
| Source: | International Journal of Training and Development. 2026 30(1):24-38. |
| Availability: | Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 15 |
| Publication Date: | 2026 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | School Business Relationship, Partnerships in Education, Industry, Learning Experience, Systems Approach, Trust (Psychology), Alignment (Education), Educational Change, Program Design |
| DOI: | 10.1111/ijtd.70003 |
| ISSN: | 1360-3736 1468-2419 |
| Abstract: | Many schools are creating and expanding their work-based learning (WBL) offerings to provide students access to meaningful adult-youth interactions during high school in response to increased policy focus on career readiness. Strong WBL systems depend on the success of school-industry partnerships, which, historically, have been difficult to create and sustain. This study investigates three telling cases (urban, rural and suburban) that transformed student learning experiences through industry partnerships. The analytic framework of systems dynamics makes visible the complex cross-sector interactions that enable each case. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and publicly available data (e.g., news reports and sociodemographic data). The interviews were coded to (1) identify the elements and connections in each system and (2) distil common design features between the three systems. The systems have four common design features: explicit trust-building, signalling institutional credibility, (striving for) robust systems and aligning instructional systems with industry needs. The findings demonstrate how very different schools enacted principles from the educational change literature to overcome documented barriers to collaboration. Retaining the complexity of educational contexts was essential to better understand the essential elements in each case. Furthermore, the common design principles can be useful to school and community leaders to design and refine local systems. Future research can build on this exploratory work to investigate the complexity of school-industry partnership designs and how they impact student outcomes over time. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2026 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1496234 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwGF5wXEHdTm2M2Q-n1tXNb-AAAA4zCB4AYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHSMIHPAgEAMIHJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDCIX-vf-gbMK_yePEQIBEICBm4wVUn2iHukqMgBnlMPJnUdTkYrEL66MYCi2yEGl00hKHmRat6oJSHrQqVIwhXTAnhwLLX5rjPiV5hmcFiIKk5CQ6sRwd7xHAxXGFMVJS2QPPcQhG16hH-IZtCdRK9ATZOXLJN_1UcgYGKGlnVunyyRDUI5gbhaTbkQB11IZheFd049Ad3sTbS2nMAeOffqREztiAoC4_2tR-na4 Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0191428811;bpu01mar.26;2026Feb10.05:03;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0191428811-1">Unlocking the Black Box of School–Industry Partnerships: A Comparative Case Study </title> <p>Many schools are creating and expanding their work‐based learning (WBL) offerings to provide students access to meaningful adult–youth interactions during high school in response to increased policy focus on career readiness. Strong WBL systems depend on the success of school–industry partnerships, which, historically, have been difficult to create and sustain. This study investigates three telling cases (urban, rural and suburban) that transformed student learning experiences through industry partnerships. The analytic framework of systems dynamics makes visible the complex cross‐sector interactions that enable each case. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and publicly available data (e.g., news reports and sociodemographic data). The interviews were coded to (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref1">1</reflink>) identify the elements and connections in each system and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref2">2</reflink>) distil common design features between the three systems. The systems have four common design features: explicit trust‐building, signalling institutional credibility, (striving for) robust systems and aligning instructional systems with industry needs. The findings demonstrate how very different schools enacted principles from the educational change literature to overcome documented barriers to collaboration. Retaining the complexity of educational contexts was essential to better understand the essential elements in each case. Furthermore, the common design principles can be useful to school and community leaders to design and refine local systems. Future research can build on this exploratory work to investigate the complexity of school–industry partnership designs and how they impact student outcomes over time.</p> <p>Keywords: complex systems; school partnerships; work‐based learning</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-2">Introduction</hd> <p>Adults outside of the school system have unique assets that enhance student learning. For example, they have situational knowledge about issues in the community youth are interested in, technical skills derived from work or hobbies associated with classroom learning goals, or social capital to access resources that can be organised to enhance student learning experiences (Perry [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref3">26</reflink>]). External collaborators complement the skills of school‐based personnel who are trained in curriculum design, instruction, and positive youth development. Integrating community connections to improve learning conditions is not a new idea. Documented examples demonstrate the power of youth–adult relationships to transform schools and improve student outcomes (e.g., Mitra [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref4">21</reflink>]). Yet, the practice remains uncommon, and many schools operate as if disconnected from their communities.</p> <p>Local businesses are one promising source of caring adults in every community. In an educational climate where workforce readiness is increasingly a focus of secondary education, employers should be called upon to support the positive work already happening in local schools. Employees are caring adults in the community who can apply their time and talents to support student development. Schools and businesses have a long history of collaboration with varying forms and degrees of success (Webber et al. [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref5">39</reflink>]). Unlocking the potential of school–industry partnerships could be a key strategy that improves the quality of student learning in school. However, creating and sustaining cross‐sector partnerships remains a challenge.</p> <p>The most common strategy businesses use to allocate their unique assets to support student learning is Work‐Based Learning (WBL). WBL is synonymous with intense, industry‐based internships at the end of a vocational or technical education programme. Recent studies suggest that access to WBL during high school achieves many goals prioritised by the education system: improving student earnings after graduation (Plasman and Thompson [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref6">29</reflink>]), increasing odds of postsecondary attainment (Rosen et al. [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref7">32</reflink>]), and improving school engagement and hope for the future (Fletcher et al. [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref8">9</reflink>]; Gallup [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref9">11</reflink>]). However, few students in the United States have access to these intensive experiences. More accessible, less intensive strategies are needed to ensure all youth benefit from school–industry partnerships. Student learning experiences with short‐time commitments from industry partners also achieve similarly positive student outcomes (e.g., Bempechat et al. [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref10">1</reflink>]; Bowen and Shume [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref11">2</reflink>]). Student impact and evaluation studies generate critical evidence supporting the kinds of learning created through school–industry partnerships, though more evidence is needed to overcome the operational challenges of complex, cross‐sector partnerships.</p> <p>While WBL is the gold standard activity requiring collaboration between school and industry partners, it does not require a mutually beneficial partnership embedded into the fabric of both institutions (Perry [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref12">27</reflink>]). In fact, fewer than 25% of documented school–industry partnerships in one study demonstrated evidence of such strong partnerships (Strobel and Sun [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref13">37</reflink>]). Such a result is not surprising given that many studies focus on barriers to partnership (e.g., Rios et al. [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref14">31</reflink>]) rather than strategies to build and sustain mutually beneficial partnerships. Despite the documented challenges, some communities have developed sustainable school–industry partnerships that result in an accessible continuum of impactful student experiences. These "existence proofs" provide sites of enquiry to improve understanding of the local conditions needed for mutually beneficial school–industry partnerships to flourish. In that spirit, this study was designed to open the "black box" of three, exemplary school–industry partnerships and compare design features guided by the following research question:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. What design elements are common between exemplary school–STEM industry partnerships in suburban, urban, and rural communities?</item> </ulist> <p>This exploratory, comparative case study (Yin [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref15">41</reflink>]) analyses how three distinct communities enact exemplary school–industry partnerships. The cases were drawn from different locales in the United States (urban, suburban and rural) to explore the common features underlying successful systems designs independent from local assets. Interviews with adult stakeholders and publicly available data were analysed to uncover the successful systems. While each case relies heavily on unique community attributes to create and sustain local systems, the data and analysis suggest four common design features exist between each case: explicit trust‐building, signalling institutional credibility, (striving for) robust systems and aligning instructional systems with industry needs. The common features are offered as design heuristics that could be applicable in practical contexts and frame future research on the systems needed to create and sustain school–industry partnerships.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-3">Literature Review</hd> <p>Prior literature indicates that school–industry partnerships rarely include the kinds of meaningful student–adult interactions associated with improved student outcomes. More is known about the student impact of partnerships and the barriers to implementation than how successful partnerships are created and sustained. However, the educational change literature provides some insight from other types of external partnerships that may apply to school–industry partnerships. This study contributes to the scholarly literature by illuminating common design features of three exemplary school–industry partnerships.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-4">Positive Student Impacts from Industry Partnership</hd> <p>The school–industry partnership literature focuses primarily on the positive student impact resulting from partnerships. Research is essential to argue for future partnerships but does not address the challenges presented to create and sustain partnerships over time. Previous studies have focused on positive outcomes such as postsecondary outcomes like earnings and educational attainment (Plasman and Thompson [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref16">29</reflink>]; Rosen et al. [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref17">32</reflink>]), proximal outcomes associated with increased engagement such as increased interest in career pathways (Plasman [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref18">30</reflink>]; Smit et al. [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref19">35</reflink>]; Zhang et al. [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref20">42</reflink>]), or teacher‐centric outcomes such as changing the way educators teach to reflect real‐world STEM contexts (Bowen and Shume [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref21">2</reflink>]). These studies, however, do not fully describe the local resources needed to recreate these student experiences. As a result, it is unclear how these impactful programmes can be created and sustained in other communities with different resources. More evidence is needed to describe the arrangement of resources leveraged to create and sustain school–industry partnerships.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-5">Barriers to School–Industry Partnerships</hd> <p>Prior research has investigated the challenge of creating meaningful school–industry partnerships that positively impact students. For example, one case study describes how changing social and political conditions in the community presented sustainability challenges for a nascent career academy (Hernandez‐Gantes et al. [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref22">14</reflink>]). Strobel and Sun ([<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref23">37</reflink>]) identified instances of school–industry partnerships reported in the press and found that nearly all cases were one‐sided, meaning that either the school‐ or industry‐based partners did the bulk of the work rather than leveraging complementary assets to support student learning. While such efforts from industry partners (e.g., financial donations or hosting summer camps) are helpful, they (alone) do not contribute to building coherent systems that meaningfully engage students in learning.</p> <p>Rios et al. ([<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref24">31</reflink>]) conducted a study with education and industry professionals across Europe characterising the barriers to collaboration in a population of school officials and industry professionals. They describe four types of barriers: structural (e.g., lack of resources), motivational (e.g., mismatched goals between industry and schools), procedural (e.g., regulations) and cultural (e.g., different ways of knowing, being and working across institutions). The results acknowledge the challenges any impactful partnership must confront.</p> <p>Schools and businesses do not typically allocate resources to facilitate cross‐sector partnerships. Schools and businesses prioritise different outcomes, which makes collaboration challenging (Carroll [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref25">4</reflink>]; Webber et al. [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref26">39</reflink>]). Additionally, secondary teachers are with students during business hours and largely unavailable for day‐time collaboration, while industry professionals are often engaged in deadline‐driven, project‐based work that may not accommodate time to travel and visit with teachers and students. Furthermore, education and business have distinct cultural ways of communicating and working (Scott [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref27">34</reflink>]) that are often incompatible. Developing and sustaining school–industry partnership in these conditions is challenging.</p> <p>The pitfalls of school–industry partnerships are well documented. Despite the real challenges, the cases in this study found ways to overcome them in support of student learning. Each design presents possible forms and common design elements of sustainable school–industry partnerships that allow more students access to impactful learning experiences.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-6">Suggestions to Overcome Partnership Barriers</hd> <p>The extant literature suggests strategies to overcome the documented barriers to school–industry partnerships without empirical evidence. For example, a common recommendation is to leverage local intermediary organisations (IOs) that are skilled in convening community partners to achieve collective goals (Darche et al. [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref28">6</reflink>]; Strobel and Sun [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref29">37</reflink>]). In other contexts, IOs have played the roles of cross‐sector convener, knowledge broker, and stabiliser for educational programme sustainability (Mitra [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref30">22</reflink>]). Other suggestions include small school sizes that facilitate a coherent instructional vision in alignment with industry partners (Hernandez‐Gantes et al. [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref31">14</reflink>]) or large‐scale government interventions that facilitate partnerships (Committee on STEM Education [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref32">5</reflink>]). Some specific partnership models are well documented like the P‐TECH model championed by IBM, but their model is prescriptive and relies on large, local industry partners to function (Litow and Kelley [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref33">18</reflink>]). Schools in suburban or rural communities may face unique challenges and resources meaning successful urban partnership models may not translate (Diamond et al. [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref34">7</reflink>]; Paradise et al. [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref35">24</reflink>]). More empirical data are needed to test these promising ideas and better understand how they can be used to create strong school–industry partnerships in diverse settings.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-7">Collective Change in K‐12 Education</hd> <p>School–industry partnerships can be conceptualised as educational change initiatives. Through sustained partnership, the complementary assets of school‐ and industry‐based employees are deployed to improve student learning experiences. The previous sections provided examples of the ways partnerships can improve student engagement and described the operational challenges of creating meaningful partnerships. The American school system is not structured to support cross‐sector partnerships that scale or sustain over time. The system is often characterised as "loosely coupled" meaning that actors are isolated from changes elsewhere in the system (Orton and Weick [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref36">23</reflink>]). Even when positive innovations happen in the classroom or school next door, the loosely coupled structure ensures there are few opportunities to scale successful practices.</p> <p>Loose coupling can also enable external partnerships in education. For example, enterprising classroom teachers have the autonomy to create impactful student experiences, including those derived from industry partnerships (Pillay et al. [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref37">28</reflink>]). However, coordinating external partnerships falls outside a teacher's official duties (Epstein [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref38">8</reflink>]). Any changes to the extraordinary teacher's working conditions in such a model would result in partnership collapse. Ideal partnerships are robust to personnel changes to ensure continuity in the student learning experience.</p> <p>Other scholars have pointed to specific elements of the American school day that stand out as difficult to change. Tyack and Tobin describe a "grammar of school" that persists over time, including age‐based classrooms separated by academic discipline (Tyack and Tobin [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref39">38</reflink>]). Creating learning experiences in partnership with industry partners requires a change to these elements. The nature of authentic learning experiences requires interdisciplinary, youth interest (not age)‐driven designs (Hong and Perry [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref40">15</reflink>]) that does not align with the existing grammar of schooling. Partnerships facilitate curricular change that alters key assumptions about the system and structure of schools.</p> <p>One promising approach to engaging cross‐sector stakeholders in change initiatives is to focus on collective impact (CI). The phrasing suggests that complex problems, such as student engagement in education, can only be addressed through an ecological approach with all stakeholders committed to a single cause (Kania and Kramer [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref41">17</reflink>]). The types of school–industry partnerships described herein are examples of CI. Creating change in this manner relies on the development and growth of <emph>relational trust</emph> (Bryk and Schneider [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref42">3</reflink>]). Bryk and Schneider define relational trust as the alignment of expectations and obligations between two actors in the system. For example, what teachers expect from industry mentors should match what mentors feel obliged to provide when working with teachers (and vice versa). Subsequent studies found that adult–youth interactions are a successful strategy that facilitates relational trust between all actors across an education system (Mitra [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref43">21</reflink>]). While the school–industry partnership literature contains examples of student–industry mentor interactions, these are typically event‐based studies focused on student outcomes rather than indicators of partnership health, such as relational trust. Relational trust built through adult–youth interactions may be a key element of successful school–industry partnerships, though empirical data are needed to test this claim.</p> <p>The extant literature describes how impactful school–industry partnerships can improve student learning outcomes. However, impactful school–industry partnerships are challenging for both organisations and little is known about how to create successful and enduring relationships. Successful change work in other educational contexts suggests possible structures to overcome the documented cross‐sector collaboration barriers. This study extends the current literature by describing and analysing the underlying systems of three successful school–industry partnerships in diverse settings.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-8">Conceptual Framework</hd> <p>The prior literature suggests that students benefit from strong school–industry partnerships, but creating and sustaining these efforts presents a litany of challenges for policymakers and practitioners. A complex systems view of school–industry partnerships affords researchers the opportunity to investigate the way local implementations are embedded in sociocultural contexts extending beyond the four walls of a school building (Garner and Harris [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref44">12</reflink>]). The present study applies the principles of complex systems in a comparative, case study to better understand the nature of successful school–industry partnerships.</p> <p>Systems are comprised of interconnected elements that work in concert to serve a primary function. One advantage of thinking in systems is that it allows for useful models of change over time. Complex systems do not offer such tidy functionality that allows for simple input–output studies. Complexity arises from embeddedness in nested layers of systems, interconnectedness with other dynamic systems like the local economy, and having multiple feedback loops that create a resistance to change (Sterman [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref45">36</reflink>]). The education system has the attributes of a complex system (Ghaffarzadegan et al. [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref46">13</reflink>]). Retaining the complexity of school–industry partnerships affords the opportunity to better investigate the necessary resources and connections present in successful designs.</p> <p>Complex systems studies in education typically rely on quantitative data to test a hypothesis about the relationship between system structure and outcome variables (Jacobson et al. [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref47">16</reflink>]). In the case of school–industry partnerships, evidence suggests that mutually beneficial school–industry partnerships create more equitable and engaging student learning experiences, but more research is needed to investigate how the partnerships are facilitated or what stock is flowing through the system to create and sustain partnerships (Figure 1).</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/BPU/01mar26/ijtd70003-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="ijtd70003-fig-0001.jpg" title="1 The black box of school–industry partnerships." /> </p> <p></p> <p>The present study responds to this need through exploratory, qualitative methods to create a visual representation of the complex system structures in each case and define critical variables indicating system success that can be tracked over time.</p> <p>While the exact structures and elements in each case presented are not transferable between communities, comparing three positive deviant systems suggests common design features and provides evidence for future studies employing a complex systems approach to external partnerships.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-10">Methodology and Data</hd> <p>This study compares the complex systems behind three successful school–industry partnerships. The data collection and analysis plan was designed as a cross‐case, exploratory study (Yin [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref48">41</reflink>]) to investigate the similarities in system design. Prior literature establishes challenges to creating mutually beneficial school–industry partnerships, but does not demonstrate the ways such collaborations can occur. Furthermore, this study is motivated by the need to establish potential partnership design principles that are testable in future research and useful in policy and practice. The cases were selected based on the following criteria:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. Maximum geographic variation (i.e., one urban, rural and suburban school).</item> <p></p> <item> 2. Evidence of improved student outcomes attributed to the partnership by community members.</item> <p></p> <item> 3. The partnership has existed for at least 5 years.</item> </ulist> <p>The between‐case geographic variance is critical to exploring partnerships where different assets (e.g., personnel, policy, and potential business partners) are present. Criteria two and three establish validity that each case represents a sustainable, impactful school–industry partnership. I identified the three cases through searches of public news stories and an initial vetting phone call with a key informant at the site to confirm that the three criteria were met. In the next section, I will briefly describe the setting for each case and evidence that they meet the inclusion criteria. The school names are pseudonyms to maintain participant anonymity.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-11">1 Case</hd> <p>Mid‐America STEM High School.[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref49">1</reflink>]</p> <p>Mid‐America is an open‐enrolment STEM‐focused career academy located in a mid‐sized, urban Midwest school district. The school has less than 500 students: approximately 40% Black, 40% White, 10% Asian and 10% two or more races. Approximately two‐thirds of the students are male and over 90% qualify for free or reduced lunch. The demographics of the school, other than gender, are like the overall district.</p> <p>The school partners with a multinational STEM corporation (headquartered in town) to facilitate increasingly involved learning experiences influenced by industry professionals. The high‐school curriculum was backwards designed for student success in a year‐long, interest‐driven problem‐solving course under the mentorship of a STEM professional. Examples of partnership activities that positively impact student engagement include:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> an industry professional building interactive student learning experiences in partnership with classroom teachers,</item> <p></p> <item> interdisciplinary problem‐based learning sparked by authentic industry needs, and</item> <p></p> <item> community members attend project showcase nights to provide feedback to students.</item> </ulist> <p>Students in this programme are graduating with an official career readiness designation on their diploma at significantly higher rates than schools within the school district.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-12">2 Case</hd> <p>Northeast Rural Academy.</p> <p>Northeast Rural Academy is a small (~60 students) public school of choice in a rural, Northeast community. Depending on the year, 30%–50% of the students live on the tribal land intersecting school district boundaries. In 2022, about 50% of the students were male, over 40% qualified for free or reduced‐price meals, and about 60% of the students received special education services.</p> <p>Students have externships 2 days each week starting in ninth grade. Most students are placed off‐site, and the school provides transportation to ensure equitable access. Occasionally, a student's interests do not match local business availability or a student needs developmental support to be successful in industry‐based learning environments. In these cases, teachers collaborate with local partners to create internships at the high school. For example, the school partnered with a local 2‐year college to build a sugar house and operate a maple syrup business. Through operation, students learn about natural resources management, educational and cultural outreach, and business operations to sell the syrup. The school board and community members attribute the district's improving graduation rate (70% at the programme's inception and 95% at the time of data collection) to the success of Northeast Rural's work with youth deemed "at risk".</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-13">3 Case</hd> <p>Innovative STEM Academy.</p> <p>The academy operates as a school‐within‐a‐school model in a suburban, New England town, with proximity to many high‐technology businesses. About 15% of the students are underrepresented in STEM by race/ethnicity and 15% qualify for free or reduced‐price meals (similar to the school's demographics). The programme serves 120 students each year. While participant demographics vary each year, emerging bilingual students are overrepresented in the programme compared to the school population.</p> <p>Students in this pathway complete two computing‐related college‐level academic courses and two career and technical education courses in preparation for a senior capstone project. Each student is mentored by a local industry professional over the year using a "flipped" model where the students collaborate asynchronously and remotely. Graduates from this programme are graduating high school with transferable college credits and emerging bilingual students are doing so at a rate higher than their peers not in the programme.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-14">Application of the Systems Framework</hd> <p>Previous studies apply the systems framework and qualitative data collection methods to track a single case over time, documenting educational change (e.g., White and Levin [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref50">40</reflink>]). This study compares three mature, successful systems at one moment in time. Such an approach has limitations, but it aligns with the aims of this study. It is typical to apply rigorous qualitative methods in the early stages of systems modelling (Luna‐Reyes and Andersen [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref51">19</reflink>]). The results of this study can be useful, then, in subsequent school–industry partnership system modelling and quantitative analysis.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-15">Data Sources</hd> <p>Most of the data comes from semistructured interviews conducted in 2021 and 2022. I developed an interview protocol to identify the elements and connections in each system (Supporting information S1: Appendix). The first interview in each case was conducted with a school‐based employee responsible for overseeing the partnership. Other adult interview participants were identified using a snowball method (Parking et al. [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref52">25</reflink>]) to capture additional perspectives from adults in the system across spanning institutions. The number of interviews in each case ranged from 12 (Mid‐America STEM) to five (Northeast Rural). I constructed and edited a system diagram (Meadows and Wright [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref53">20</reflink>]) for each case to represent the elements and connections present in the system.</p> <p>Data saturation for each case was reached when no new system elements or connections were described in the final interview (Francis et al. [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref54">10</reflink>]). Additional data from public news reports, school websites, and sociodemographic data were used to improve validity through triangulation (see Table 1). The final systems diagrams were member‐checked with the original interviewee to improve credibility.</p> <p>1 Table Data sources for each case.</p> <p> <ephtml> &lt;table&gt;&lt;thead valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;tr valign="bottom"&gt;&lt;th /&gt;&lt;th&gt;Mid&amp;#8208;America STEM&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Northeast rural academy&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Innovative STEM academy&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/thead&gt;&lt;tbody valign="top"&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;School demographics&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td align="center"&gt;All school and district demographics were found using National Center for Education Statistics data (&lt;ext-link href="https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/" /&gt;). The reporting is rounded in the text to retain the anonymity of study participants&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Interviews&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;12 total (4 school/district staff, 4 business partners, 1 higher ed partner and 1 alumni). A follow&amp;#8208;up interview with one district staff member and one business partner&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;5 total (3 school/district staff and 2 business partners)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;8 total (5 school/district staff and 3 business partners)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Additional data for triangulation&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;School website, business partner website, local news stories, intermediary organisation website and state department of education website&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;School website and weekly stakeholder newsletters, intermediary organisation website&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;School website, business partner website, press release from the state department of education, social media accounts of the school and the industry partner&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Member&amp;#8208;checking process&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Email communication with the founding school district member and the industry partner. Two additional interviews to clarify diagram revisions&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Email communication with the founding school staff member&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Email communication with the school programme director&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt; </ephtml> </p> <p>In vivo coding was then used to identify system design elements that participants attribute to their system's success (Saldaña [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref55">33</reflink>]). The codes were grouped into four themes that are discussed in the results section. The themes were applied in a round of deductive coding to identify evidence for each of the four themes across the cases.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-16">Results</hd> <p>The elements and connections are represented pictorially in the form of systems diagrams for each case (Figures 2–4). The diagrams showcase the range of actors and the complexity of actors and connections needed to implement each partnership. Students were placed at the centre of each system to (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref56">1</reflink>) demonstrate their critical role in system functions and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref57">2</reflink>) communicate that their experiences were central to the actions in each case. Each system includes partners at multiple levels (e.g., school, district, and state) and contains at least one IO. The purpose of this study is to investigate commonalities across cases rather than fully describe the individual cases. Rather than fully describe the specifics of each system, the most important elements are described, in brief, below. Additional elements and connections are described as they relate to the four major themes discovered in the cross‐case analysis in subsequent sections.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/BPU/01mar26/ijtd70003-fig-0002.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="ijtd70003-fig-0002.jpg" title="2 Mid‐America STEM high‐school system diagram. System of Mid‐America STEM High School (Adapted from Perry [27]). [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]" /> </p> <p></p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/BPU/01mar26/ijtd70003-fig-0003.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="ijtd70003-fig-0003.jpg" title="3 Northeast rural academy system diagram. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]" /> </p> <p></p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/BPU/01mar26/ijtd70003-fig-0004.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="ijtd70003-fig-0004.jpg" title="4 Innovative STEM Academy system diagram. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]" /> </p> <p></p> <p>Mid‐America High School is centred on one deeply embedded partnership with a large manufacturing corporation. The school district has several themed career academy high schools (Mid‐America being one) with personnel to facilitate the formal partnership. Furthermore, the industry partner's corporate citizenship office directs volunteerism efforts in coordination with the district's liaison. Internally, they created a system to vet and distribute opportunities for their staff to connect with students and teachers. Similar partnerships have emerged "organically" with other local organisations and are managed in an ad hoc way by school and district personnel to maximise student impact. The school district pays a membership fee to participate in a national school design organisation that provides recognition of the exemplary student work.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-20">System of Northeast Rural Academy</hd> <p>Northeast Rural Academy is a very small school often thought of as an alternative to the larger traditional high school in the district. The founding principal and a lead educator remain at the school. Given the school size, adults in the school district are cross‐trained and can be very responsive to their needs in the system's day‐to‐day operations, including academics, transportation, brokering WBL placements or community outreach. As needed, the school will draw from the local postsecondary institution to support students' personal and professional progress.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-21">System of Innovative STEM Academy</hd> <p>Innovative STEM Academy was created in response to a state grant to create more opportunities for students to experience career‐connected learning. The grant partially funds the computer science teacher, freeing up one‐third of her day to coordinate industry partnerships. This teacher cultivates personal relationships and recruits industry professionals to participate in "flipped" internships where students are physically located in the high school, supervised by a classroom teacher, but are mentored on industry projects through email and teleconferencing. A regional IO is meant to support the external partnerships, but the teacher does not receive much tangible support. She created a student learning experience that "fits into the cracks" of a traditional school day and while seeking additional resources to fully resource a more robust programme.</p> <p>The cross‐case coding process, which resulted in four themes, was generated from the interview data: explicit trust‐building, signals of institutional credibility, (striving for) robust systems and aligning instructional subsystems with industry practices. Each theme is expanded upon in the following paragraphs, including examples from each case.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-22">Explicit Trust‐Building</hd> <p>The participants across each case described relational trust as the most important factor to track and build over time. As one industry mentor puts it, "... the human relationship is the most important piece [of the system] because there is somebody who cares about [the student] that doesn't have to". They ascribe the system's success to the mentor's commitment to care about youth matching the expectation of students seeking care and validation from adults in the community. Similar evidence existed in each case.</p> <p>Furthermore, each case created subsystems to explicitly build relational trust. While the approaches vary, study participants described carefully designed moments that facilitated trust. A district official at Mid‐America STEM described these initial, short interactions as part of an "organic growth strategy". The small moments functioned as a positive feedback loop, growing relational trust and growing into larger commitments between organisations over time. The following section describes an example of explicit trust‐building strategies from each case.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-23">Mid‐America STEM High School</hd> <p>At Mid‐America, one teacher described how public showcases of student work are designed to build relational trust amongst students, teachers, and industry mentors. The capstone class facilitator, trained as an English teacher, described her feelings before the first time industry professionals were invited to view her students' work: "... if something goes horribly wrong, you know, I ... had the responsibility for that. And I didn't want to make us look bad". She still needed to develop trust in her students and the community members. Over time, her fear diminished after seeing the positive impact of adult interactions on the quality of student work.</p> <p>The same teacher also attributes these interactions to increases in relational trust between students and mentors. She describes the students as feeling "validated" when they are "treated like a valued professional" during interactions with caring adults from outside the school. The mentors, too, are changed. One regular industry mentor observed that their colleagues are typically surprised by students' creativity and passion during their first interaction with students at the school. The "aha!" moment deepens their commitment to continue volunteering within the school–industry partnerships.</p> <p>Public showcases are one of many processes used to generate relational trust between school‐based actors, students, and industry professionals. The events are critical to generating the trust needed for teachers to try new ways of working within the partnership, for students to find value in working with industry mentors, and for the mentors to be comfortable working, as peers, with youth.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-24">Northeast Rural Academy</hd> <p>Adults across the Northeast Rural Academy system develop and maintain ties with small businesses in the region. Lacking the infrastructure of a large school district or multinational corporate partner, school staff conduct face‐to‐face visits that create new student externship opportunities. The principal relayed one telling example of how this strategy was applied to develop relational trust with a hesitant business partner in the community.</p> <p>[The owner] did not want to hear from us, was not interested in students ... they steal, they're not dependable all of these things. So we took the no, but then we took [our student] shopping at the store and struck up a conversation. And [the owner] agreed to let him come spend a day in the shop, but there was no way he was going to hire him ... he was going to tolerate us basically to get us out of his hair. They had a great day. He said [the student] could come back. And he ended up hiring him over the summer. And he continued to intern there for four years.</p> <p>In this case, the school already had expectations about what their student could provide to the business, but the business owner did not reciprocate. Over time, the business owner developed the belief that the student could be successful as an extern because the school facilitated short, intentional interactions demonstrating a more positive view of youth. Relational trust‐building was essential to create and ensure one student had a positive learning experience in a setting they were interested in.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-25">Innovative STEM Academy</hd> <p>While the school is located near many potential industry mentors from large, high‐tech businesses, there are no formal ties between the Innovative STEM Academy and businesses to leverage for mentor recruitment. A mentor at one major employer headquartered in an adjacent suburb described an ad hoc approach to working with local schools. The company supports time for youth mentorship, but the employees must find their own opportunities to connect with youth. He longed for school‐based volunteer opportunities to "plug into" because creating his own connections with schools was a barrier to participation.</p> <p>The industry liaison at Innovative STEM acknowledges this challenge and advertises the opportunities within her programme to external partners in a way that meets the needs of business professionals. For example, she hosts a training preparing business professionals to work with youth that includes a between‐mentor networking component. One mentor acknowledged, "I found it is a benefit ... to build community within the mentoring group". There are rarely more than three mentors from each participating business. The professionals find community building an "unexpected benefit" to working with Innovative STEM and pitch this feature in word‐of‐mouth mentor recruitment within their employer. Another example of a positive feedback loop is growing the pool of potential mentors. The liaison relied on her past experiences in industry to identify a key component of volunteerism that industry mentors would value and built it into her programme as a relational trust‐building strategy.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-26">Signals of Institutional Credibility</hd> <p>Organisational leaders (e.g., chief executive officers and district superintendents) do not spend an extraordinary amount of time working on behalf of school–industry partnerships. Instead, they use their voice and authority at key moments to recognise and uplift the positive work of the day‐to‐day actors running each system. The following sections outline specific examples of credibility‐building in each case.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-27">Mid‐America STEM High School</hd> <p>Mid‐America STEM and their major corporate partner formalised a partnership outlining specific commitments of time, talent, and financial support to the school in exchange for being a named partner. As a mature partnership, many new systems have been created to support and strengthen the work over the last 20 years. One example is the STEM Council: the business's internal committee is designed to vet school‐based volunteerism opportunities, streamline external communications, and decide how funding will be allocated.</p> <p>District officials and employees at the business describe the council as an essential structure to the programme's success. Teachers have a streamlined method to solicit technical expertise or donations needed in their classrooms. Individual employees are not burdened with requests because the council operates as a switchboard recruiting and matching opportunities with the right volunteers. Dedicating time, energy, and funding to such an arrangement requires significant buy‐in from an employer. The staff member who started the council described C Suite support for the council as "critically important" to the programme's sustainability. Today, all corporate social resposiblity (CSR) efforts at this company utilise the "council" model as a testament to the success of the systems approach to impactful partnerships.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-28">Northeast Rural Academy</hd> <p>Without a large corporate partner in their community, the system relies on the superintendent, school board, state leaders, and national organisations to provide credibility. The founding principal of Northeast Rural Academy acknowledges that the school model requires taking risks and building new systems that are not found in typical high schools. For example, the school relies on a state policy that relaxes the seat‐hours requirement typically associated with granting credit hours towards graduation. The policy was not created solely for Northeast Rural Academy, but the learning model could not exist without exemption from rigid laws that equate time spent in a classroom with student learning.</p> <p>Strategic support also comes from the district's superintendent. Northeast Rural enrolls approximately 20% of high‐school‐aged students who live in the district. The school was once characterised by community members as a diversion of resources away from the "traditional" district high school. The founding principal describes this as, "our torches and pitchforks phase". She heavily relied on support from the school superintendent to calm the elected school board members and community. A national, school transformation network inspired the principal's work reaffirmed her beliefs about the importance of making structural changes to facilitate youth–industry mentor interactions. Nearly 15 years later, the superintendent sees Northeast Rural Academy's model as something, "the community itself has bought into" and defending against attacks is unnecessary. They still participate in the national school network, but no longer need the associated credibility to persist.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-29">Innovative STEM Academy</hd> <p>Many large technology corporations offer staff billable hours they can allocate to community service projects. As a CSR strategy, volunteerism is meant to improve employee well‐being and to generate good stories that can be shared through public relations efforts. Tacit support for school–industry partnerships through CSR is a key lever to recruit potential mentors. The school's industry liaison explicitly pitches the opportunity to volunteer with her programme as a way to align a mentor's skills and interests with volunteerism through CSR. One mentor frames his motivation to work with local youth noting "there could be future employees among the students". Nearly identical language is used on the company's website touting their impact through CSR. Successful student projects and mentoring relationships at Innovative STEM are highlighted on corporate blogs. This example of high‐level support from an industry partner is a critical element to motivate volunteerism with local schools.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-30">(Striving for) Robust Systems</hd> <p>Robust systems are resistant to change. For example, personnel turnover would not have a deleterious effect on the overall function and student experience of a robust system. Both Mid‐America STEM and Northeast Rural are robust. Visual inspection of the system diagrams (Figures 2 and 3) indicates that no element is overly central to the function and flow of trust in the system. However, the many connections with the computer science teacher/industry liaison indicate that her role is overly central. The system would be at risk of collapse if she left or there were changes to her role. In the following sections, I highlight examples of robustness in the Mid‐America and Northeast Rural systems and the ways participants in the Innovative STEM system aim to build a more robust system.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-31">Mid‐America STEM High School</hd> <p>Mid‐America STEM leverages a density of local assets to create robust systems. For example, the major industry partner has over 2500 employees working at the international headquarters in town. The business organises and maintains a STEM council to manage the flow of information to and from the school system. The council is responsible for knowing the passions and availability of staff. When teachers request support, the council can efficiently allocate resources. The manufacturing plant manager who started the council refers to herself as, "a switchboard" knowing who to call on for each opportunity without overwhelming individual employees. The collaboration is managed at the district level rather than by individual educators. As a result, educators have time to seek out additional community partners that align with student needs that may not be met by their primary industry partner. The council is an embedded system which supports the partnership's robustness.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-32">Northeast Rural Academy</hd> <p>Northeast Rural Academy achieves robustness through building strong relationships in a small, close‐knit community. The principal said, "as a leader of a small school, I'm involved in everybody's business". Without the bureaucratic infrastructure afforded in larger schools, she is more involved with the day‐to‐day operations of the school, including industry partnerships, than a typical principal would not be.</p> <p>A common refrain amongst district‐based personnel is that, at Northeast Rural Academy, "everybody's a student of everybody". Teachers are certified in multiple subjects to be the instructor of record for at least two classes minimising the quantity and maximising the quality of adult–student relationships. District staff and long‐time industry mentors provide a backstop for colleagues who need to respond to matters arising, such as issues with transportation, changes to a work schedule, or student social work needs. One long‐time industry mentor, a sole proprietor who works out of a home office, hosts student internships at the school. She created a transition experience for youth who may not be ready for a 2‐day/week externship and to work closely with school‐based staff ensuring students have the necessary support to grow and be successful in future off‐site placements.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-33">Innovative STEM Academy</hd> <p>Innovative STEM Academy's industry partnerships are overreliant on the computer science teacher/industry liaison (see Figure 4). The school received a state grant to support the development and maintenance of a school‐within‐a‐school model. Some of those monies fund one‐third of the CS teacher's time to function as an industry liaison. The teacher is expected to create and maintain industry partnerships, develop the internal workings of the curriculum with department chairs and guidance counsellors, and participate in collaborations with other grantees statewide. The teacher/industry liaison is doing extraordinary work with limited resources, but the system is not robust.</p> <p>The computer science teacher and school principal acknowledge that the current arrangement is not sustainable. The teacher would like to work entirely on school–industry partnerships at the school or regional level. The principal acknowledges that her suggestion is ideal but does not feel empowered to make this change. He says, "bigger districts, when they lack resources, have full‐time grant writers and people who specifically need to go find money to offset a full‐time position like that. Small suburban districts like ourselves, we'd have a difficult time justifying a position like that". As a result, the position remains split.</p> <p>An IO exists in the region meant to support the industry liaison role through the conditions of the state grant, but the educator has little practical support from this group. Her perception is that the IO serves a small number of cities in the region and allocates most of its resources towards the lowest‐income communities. She says, "a lot of opportunities are targeted towards the kids who desperately do need the help, but then the regular kids desperately need the extra help [from industry partners] too". In her district of self‐described "regular" kids, she outlined a series of troubling youth development‐related trends (including lack of postsecondary aspirations) in the community and how her students, too, would benefit from positive interactions with caring adult mentors. She continues to advocate for a full‐time, district‐funded, industry liaison position to fill in a gap in services not met by the regional IO.</p> <p>Despite the aforementioned challenges, district employees have a shared vision to create a robust system through which school–industry partnerships promote student engagement at school. Figure 5 is a robust reconceptualization of the existing structure based on the suggestions provided during data collection by the district technology coordinator, school principal, and computer science teacher/industry liaison.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/BPU/01mar26/ijtd70003-fig-0005.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="ijtd70003-fig-0005.jpg" title="5 Idealised innovative STEM Academy system diagram. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]" /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0191428811-35">Aligning Instructional Subsystems with Industry Practices</hd> <p>Each case faces the challenge of learning to work across two settings, public schools and private industry, that have different work hours and ways of collaborating. In a traditional high school, students switch topics in roughly 1‐h increments and teachers are engaged with their students during contract hours with little time for cross‐sector collaboration. Industry professionals, especially technical staff, engage in project‐oriented, deadline‐driven work. School–industry partnerships require efforts from both sides to address these operational and cultural challenges. The following sections describe the ways in which schools adopted their instructional practices to better align with industry needs.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-36">Mid‐America STEM</hd> <p>The biggest change at Mid‐America STEM is the implementation of Flexible Fridays. The school's bell schedule and academic calendar were engineered to ensure that academic requirements are completed Monday–Thursday. Flexible Fridays allow students to get off‐site into the community without disrupting coursework. Furthermore, industry partners can visit periodically and work with students for extended periods of time rather than being constrained by hourly bells.</p> <p>The major industry partner cohosts teacher professional development in its corporate training spaces. Teachers feel welcomed as part of the partnership and are introduced to industry tools they can apply in the classroom. For example, one teacher recalled a user‐centred design workshop hosted by an engineer. They learned specific tools and strategies to support problem‐solving and analysis that can be applied to problem‐based learning in the classroom. The teacher invited the workshop facilitator to visit her classroom and support problem‐based learning using the workshop's methods. Over time the engineer, "was constantly in my [class]room, working with the students, one on one with their specific projects and working with me on how to make this better". Even though the engineer has changed employers, the two stay in touch to continue refining classroom practices in support of problem‐based learning.</p> <p>The user‐centred design practices taught in that workshop reflect the authentic ways to structuring problem‐identification and ‐solving processes. After the training, industry mentors, teachers and students shared a common language to support each other in project work. In prior years, the industry partner made a large investment to align instructional practices in the school with processes in their authentic workplace. The business embedded an "engineer in residence" for 2 years to support students and teachers at the school. This level of commitment positions the school‐based and industry professionals as partners in supporting student learning during the school day.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-37">Northeast Rural Academy</hd> <p>Northeast Rural's instructional model includes sweeping structural changes to the traditional school day. Following the success of other schools in their national school redesign network, the students have full‐day externships at local businesses each Tuesday and Thursday. The large time commitment allows the businesses to invest in student relationships and provides students time and space to engage in deep, meaningful work and learning experiences without hourly interruptions from a school bell.</p> <p>The superintendent thinks the large investment in transportation is, "the biggest thing the district does to make sure [the partnerships are] successful". Each student can use free bus service between their home and the externship site. The state also has a policy allowing schools to relax the number of instructional hours students need per credit which Northeast Rural Academy could not exist without. When the students and educators are both present at school Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, they reflect on their internship experience and make visible how the experience meets the state‐required learning standards. Teachers fill in the gaps with additional instruction to ensure students meet academic graduation requirements.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-38">Innovative STEM Academy</hd> <p>Mentors in the community felt constrained to work in the same time and space as students. For example, one business is unable to open their workplace to people under 18 and another mentor noted that consistent travel to meet students at the school was untenable given their work demands. Inspired by the flipped classroom concept, a small group of mentors worked with the school's industry liaison to create an internship model where students work asynchronously most of the week and collaborate with mentors over Zoom during lunch. Nearly all of the student–mentor interactions take place in this format. Students learn to be well‐prepared with updates and issues before the meeting to make the most of their time with a mentor. The industry liaison refers to the flipped model as one way to "fit [mentoring] between the cracks" of constraints imposed by school and industry structures.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-39">Discussion and Significance</hd> <p>The three cases prove that impactful and sustainable school–industry partnerships are possible in a variety of locales. Each school leveraged local assets to create engaging and meaningful learning opportunities for all students in their school or programme. While the designs differ, each case shares common features. The cases are not presented as structures to replicate elsewhere, they are a North Star for other communities engaged in school–industry partnerships. Furthermore, the findings provoke future complex systems‐oriented research to examine external school partnerships.</p> <p>The systems enabling mutually beneficial school–industry partnerships in each case were described in Figures 2–4. Through visual inspection, each system relies on a range of actors inside and outside formal school systems. The elements and connections were highly dependent on the local sociocultural context, as expected in complex systems research (Garner and Harris [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref58">12</reflink>]). Curiously, the school that has the most employer‐based community assets in physical proximity (Innovative STEM Academy) struggled to create a robust system and was overreliant on one individual.</p> <p>While previous studies showcase student outcomes associated with school–industry partnerships, little empirical research demonstrated how to create the necessary conditions for thriving partnerships. The complex system framework (Jacobson et al. [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref59">16</reflink>]) proved useful to investigate this issue across three successful cases in different locales. The following sections will describe how the four common design principles (explicit trust‐building, signals of institutional credibility, (striving for) robust systems and aligning instructional subsystems with industry practices) are all strategies that can overcome the barriers documented by Rios et al. ([<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref60">31</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-40">Structural Barriers</hd> <p>The lack of resources to facilitate partnership is the most commonly discussed structural barrier (Rios et al. [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref61">31</reflink>]). The most typical resource exchanged in school–industry partnerships is money gifted to schools (Strobel and Sun [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref62">37</reflink>]). Study participants rarely spoke of funding—either as a system support or inhibitor. Instead, relational trust‐building was identified as the most important resource for success. Adults in each case spent many hours together and utilised their complementary talents to create authentic and engaging learning experiences for students. These actions build trust which snowballed into deeper relationships, enhanced trust, and more engaging student learning experiences over time.</p> <p>The role of adequate funding as a resource should not be discounted. Innovative STEM Academy study participants acknowledge they need more funding to create a full‐time industry liaison role; the perceived missing link in their robust system. Mid‐America, in a large urban district, amortised financial resources at the district level to fund a coordinator. Rural Northeast leveraged community assets to support their efforts—a recognised strategy in other rural contexts (Paradise et al. [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref63">24</reflink>]), but is likely small enough (60 students in grades 9–12) that they make do without a standalone industry coordinator.</p> <p>The antidote to lack of funding at Innovative STEM Academy may be increased relational trust. The industry liaison expects support in the form of adequate time to create and sustain partnerships. As quoted in the previous section, the principal does not feel obliged to provide that type of support. As a result, expectations are mismatched and relational trust could stand to be improved. Innovative STEM Academy, while more than 5 years old, may not have reached a steady state. Instead, the system can become adequately resourced after relational trust grows. Labelling Innovative STEM Academy as "suburban" may not sufficiently communicate the challenges and complexities local education systems face as is true in many contemporary suburban schools (Diamond et al. [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref64">7</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-41">Cultural and Motivational Barriers</hd> <p>Cultural and motivational barriers describe the perceived mismatch between the aims of for‐profit businesses and educational institutions (Rios et al. [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref65">31</reflink>]). The study participants in each case did not identify this barrier in day‐to‐day operations. Actors in each case developed deep trust in one another and are jointly focused on improving the quality of the student learning experience.</p> <p>However, actors in each system acknowledge that their institutions and partners have different, perhaps misaligned goals. At large businesses, the goals of CSR have little to do with what is happening in local high‐school classrooms and more to do with projecting an image of "doing good" in the community. Study participants in the Mid‐America STEM and Innovative STEM Academy acknowledge this and are willing to provide positive stories relating to the partnership that companies can promote broadly. This positive media promotion is important to the system because it signals institutional credibility—that the work is meaningful to the company's bottom line. The same is true for a school's goals and motivations. The Northeast Rural Academy was established, in part, because it promised to address low graduation rates in the district. Industry partners are willing to go above and beyond to support positive youth development and ensure their interns have the wrap‐around services needed to complete high school. Partnering to meet student‐centric goals is an example of relational trust‐building (Bryk and Schneider [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref66">3</reflink>]) that supercede cultural and motivational barriers to collaboration.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-42">Procedural Barriers</hd> <p>Procedural barriers are typified by the logistical constraints of cross‐sector partnerships. In this case, the rigid structure of the typical American school day does not align with the time demands of industry professionals. By aligning instructional systems with industry practices, the schools created time and space for industry partnerships to flourish. For example, Mid‐America STEM and Innovative STEM adopted industry practices for problem‐solving and project management in the classroom. In turn, mentors were better able to support student development because they worked from a common framework. Each school also made significant changes to the usage of time ensuring a more accommodating schedule that maximises student–mentor interactions. Instructional time is typically one of the most rigid elements in a school system (Tyack and Tobin [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref67">38</reflink>]). Mid‐America STEM's flexible Fridays and Northeast Rurals 2‐day/week off‐site internships represent radical changes to the bell schedule ensuring youth have regular access to interdisciplinary experiences with caring adult mentors. Innovative STEM Academy, without making such large changes, was savvy to identify "cracks" in the school system to provide similar experiences to their students in their "flipped" approach.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-43">Study Limitations</hd> <p>Systems studies typically benefit from their ability to track changes over time (e.g., White and Levin [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref68">40</reflink>]). However, this study was designed to investigate established rather than emerging partnerships. Key decisions and relationships that are essential in the beginning stages of this study were mostly absent in the participant interview data and may obscure essential work happening at that stage. For example, prior research suggests that IOs are critical elements for implementation (Darche et al. [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref69">6</reflink>]; Strobel and Sun [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref70">37</reflink>]). The evidence from these cases suggests that IOs are present, but play a peripheral role in each system. IOs may be critical in the formation stages but not in the steady state of school–industry partnerships.</p> <p>As case study research, the findings are not presented as generalisable knowledge. The systems themselves should not to be thought of as blueprints to replicate, but as possible designs that transform student learning experiences through school–industry partnerships. Finding common design elements across three distinct cases should provoke future research about the nature of school–industry partnerships and the value of the complex systems framework.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-44">Future Research</hd> <p>The common design heuristics observed in these cases can be used to investigate other models of external school partnerships, especially in the earliest stages. Embedding research in nascent systems may reveal different elements and systems than were present in these cases. Longitudinal and quantitative modelling studies would also be useful to track changes in relational trust over time while testing theories about the relationship between system structure and function.</p> <p>Creating and sustaining school–industry partnerships is one promising strategy to address intractable problems in the school system. The cases in this study demonstrate possible partnership arrangements and share common design features despite uncommon locales. Furthermore, the cases illuminate how local actors self‐organise to create meaningful partnerships with little support from policymakers. Continuing this study can provide practical guidance to support education systems' work and deepen scholarly understanding in the relationship between system structure and student outcomes while facilitating change through industry partnerships.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-45">Acknowledgements</hd> <p>This project was supported by the US Open Education Resources Foundation, as part of a multiperson project, "Equitable, Inclusive, Effective STEM Learning for All, Via Open Learning, Available to High Schools, Urban, Rural and Suburban". I am grateful to Dr. Larson for his mentorship.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-46">Ethics Statement</hd> <p>All participants signed informed consent forms before participating in the approved, exempt research project.</p> <hd id="AN0191428811-47">Conflicts of Interest</hd> <p>The author declares no conflicts of interest.</p> <p>GRAPH: Supporting information S1</p> <ref id="AN0191428811-48"> <title> Footnotes </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref1" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> This case was previously described in a chapter for education practitioners (Perry [27]).</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref2" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> [Correction added on 8 November 2025, after first online publication: The manuscript received date was incorrectly published as "12 May 2025" due to a metadata error and has been corrected to "13 October 2024".]</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <ref id="AN0191428811-49"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibtext> Bempechat, J., M. E. Kenny, D. 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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Unlocking the Black Box of School-Industry Partnerships: A Comparative Case Study – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Anthony+M%2E+Perry%22">Anthony M. Perry</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6497-8345">0000-0002-6497-8345</externalLink>) – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22International+Journal+of+Training+and+Development%22"><i>International Journal of Training and Development</i></searchLink>. 2026 30(1):24-38. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 15 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2026 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22School+Business+Relationship%22">School Business Relationship</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Partnerships+in+Education%22">Partnerships in Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Industry%22">Industry</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Learning+Experience%22">Learning Experience</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Systems+Approach%22">Systems Approach</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Trust+%28Psychology%29%22">Trust (Psychology)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Alignment+%28Education%29%22">Alignment (Education)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Change%22">Educational Change</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Program+Design%22">Program Design</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1111/ijtd.70003 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 1360-3736<br />1468-2419 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: Many schools are creating and expanding their work-based learning (WBL) offerings to provide students access to meaningful adult-youth interactions during high school in response to increased policy focus on career readiness. Strong WBL systems depend on the success of school-industry partnerships, which, historically, have been difficult to create and sustain. This study investigates three telling cases (urban, rural and suburban) that transformed student learning experiences through industry partnerships. The analytic framework of systems dynamics makes visible the complex cross-sector interactions that enable each case. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and publicly available data (e.g., news reports and sociodemographic data). The interviews were coded to (1) identify the elements and connections in each system and (2) distil common design features between the three systems. The systems have four common design features: explicit trust-building, signalling institutional credibility, (striving for) robust systems and aligning instructional systems with industry needs. The findings demonstrate how very different schools enacted principles from the educational change literature to overcome documented barriers to collaboration. Retaining the complexity of educational contexts was essential to better understand the essential elements in each case. Furthermore, the common design principles can be useful to school and community leaders to design and refine local systems. Future research can build on this exploratory work to investigate the complexity of school-industry partnership designs and how they impact student outcomes over time. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2026 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1496234 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1111/ijtd.70003 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 15 StartPage: 24 Subjects: – SubjectFull: School Business Relationship Type: general – SubjectFull: Partnerships in Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Industry Type: general – SubjectFull: Learning Experience Type: general – SubjectFull: Systems Approach Type: general – SubjectFull: Trust (Psychology) Type: general – SubjectFull: Alignment (Education) Type: general – SubjectFull: Educational Change Type: general – SubjectFull: Program Design Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Unlocking the Black Box of School-Industry Partnerships: A Comparative Case Study Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Anthony M. Perry IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 03 Type: published Y: 2026 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 1360-3736 – Type: issn-electronic Value: 1468-2419 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 30 – Type: issue Value: 1 Titles: – TitleFull: International Journal of Training and Development Type: main |
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