Stakeholders' Engagement towards Local Development and Social Innovation through Open Schooling. A stakeholder analysis of the H2020 Open Science Hub Network: the case of Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, Portugal

Artur Bernardo dos Santos Isidoro da Costa Peixoto

Key information

Authors:

Artur Bernardo dos Santos Isidoro da Costa Peixoto (Artur Bernardo dos Santos Isidoro da Costa Peixoto)

Supervisors:

Pedro Rodrigues Dos Santos Russo; António Miguel Areias Dias Amaral (António Miguel Areias Dias Amaral); Ana Isabel Cerqueira de Sousa Gouveia Carvalho (Ana Isabel Cerqueira de Sousa Gouveia Carvalho)

Published in

November 28, 2019

Abstract

The education system has been changing in order to prepare the new generations for the upcoming social environment. Open Schooling (OS) is an approach to face new challenges in Education, through collaborative processes, engaging and empowering communities to tackle local challenges, towards school-led community development. Through Open Schooling, schools cooperate with families, professionals and wider society to address local challenges and opportunities. The Open Science Hub Network (OSHub.Net) arose as a way to bring life to OS, aiming to empower citizens through STEAM Education with Open Schooling, towards local development and social innovation. Bringing life to OS requires the involvement and management of different stakeholders, which led to the problem of investigating Stakeholders' Engagement towards Local Development and Social Innovation through Open Schooling. This dissertation, which has project managers and decision-makers who want to build OS communities as a target, brings strategic management tools existing in the literature into the school context, developing a methodology for stakeholder analysis, which was tested in the OSHub.Net and that can be conducted in other environments. The application of this methodology provided new insights concerning the motivations, attitudes and perceptions of schools’ stakeholders and outside school agents, explaining how they can interact with each other, promoting Open Schooling. The main results are the development of a methodology (including a survey that can be considered a deliverable) and a list of recommendations derived from the principal factors that account for stakeholders’ engagement in Open Schooling, highlighting the attributes interest, power, urgency, legitimacy and support.