TEMPLATE FOR POSITION PAPERS
What is a ‘position paper’?
The Partnership Brokers Association is dedicated to LEARNING * TRAINING * TRANSFORMING. The ‘learning’ part of our focus is to encourage enquiry and practice-based / action research into partnership brokering. We seek to encourage and support each other in the process of becoming more ‘enquiring’ into our own partnership brokering practice and to share our findings with the wider network.
A position paper is designed to offer individual or groups of alumni an opportunity to share an idea or a hypothesis about partnership brokering – inviting debate, critical comment and further enquiry.
Position papers can be shorter (a 1-2 page articulation of an initial idea) or longer (a 10-20 page paper exploring a key issue in some detail). Whether your position paper is long or short, we encourage you to use the template below as a guide.
Title
The title should summarise as concisely as possible the focus of the paper
Overview
A summary of the paper or a working hypothesis or the underlying rationale for the paper
Paper
The body of the work with whatever sub-headings / structure is appropriate
Tool(s)
Where tools are included (eg for undertaking further enquiry into partnership brokering or to evaluate a partnership broker’s performance) these should also be placed as ‘stand alone’ tools in the tools section of the website – making them accessible to Level 1 alumni to use, test and give feedback.
Next Steps
Your proposed plans to take this work further (eg a more formal research study; the development of a community of practice; publication) and how you would like to engage with peers.
How to contact
All position papers will need to include contact details for the author(s). What may start as a simple email exchange could grow into a ‘linked in’ group or a community of practice that the author commits to moderating – at least in the initial stages.
References
The Association has a strong commitment to referencing sources of information or prompts for ideas. Each position paper should include a list of formal (eg publications) and informal (eg conversations) references.
Biography
A brief biography outlining your background, partnership brokering work and the context from which you are writing your position paper.