Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships: Building Connections Across Diverse Educational Systems 9819988373, 9789819988372

Table of contents :
Foreword
Contents
Contributors
Part I Introducing School-University Partnerships
1 Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships: An Introduction
Introduction
Part 1: Introducing School-University Partnerships
Part 2: Value and Benefits of School-University Partnerships
Part 3: Dynamic Partnerships that Change Over Time
Part 4: Learning Lessons and Navigating Challenges
Part 5: Relationships, Compassion, and Leaders
Part 6: Enduring Possibilities
Conclusion
References
2 The Nature of School-University Partnerships
Background
Methodology
Case Selection
Participants
Data Analysis
Nature of the Partnerships
Depth, Breadth, and Multiplicity
Initiators and Drivers of the Partnerships
Relationships
Voluntary Participation
Funding
Conclusion
References
Part II Value and Benefits of School-University Partnerships
3 Invitations, Impact, and Involvement: Tales from Successful School-University Partnerships in STEM and STEAM in Australian Schools
Introduction
Setting the Scene Through Invitations, Impact, and Involvement
Research Focus
Study Design
Tale 1: A School-University Partnership in Five Non-English Speaking Background Schools
Context
Developing Professional Capacity and Confidence
Cycles of Action Learning
Sometimes School-University Partnerships Are Frustrating
Principals Like School-University Partnerships
Tale 2: A School-University Partnership in Three High-Poverty Schools
Context
Developing Professional Capacity and Confidence
Shaping Teacher and Student Confidence in STEM
A Few Teachers Found STEM Difficult
Changing Usual Teaching and Learning Practices
Tale 3: A School-University Partnership for Middle Leadership in Six Urban Schools
Context
Professional Apprehensions
TPL Assists Greater Reflexivity
Learning from These Tales of School-University Partnerships
Outsider to Insider
Final Remarks
References
4 A New Model for School-University Collaborations: Mobilising Academic Knowledge and Building Cross Sectoral Synergies Around Inquiry Learning
Introduction
A New Approach to School-University Partnerships
Focus on Inquiry-Based Learning
How Collaboration Works
Rationale
Reciprocity of Needs and Assets
What Counts as Expertise
The Value of Systems-Level Approach to Knowledge Mobilisation
References
5 Creating Shared Spaces: A Collaborative Partnership Model that Prepares Initial Teacher Education Students for Effective Practice
Introduction
The Hub Model
Literature Review
Context
Method
Results and Discussion
Nature of the Partnership
The Effectiveness of the Model for Teacher Training
Conclusion
References
6 The Co-design of an Embedded School-University Partnership: An Application of Dewey’s Laboratory Style Approach to PST Experiences in Schools
Introduction
Initial Teacher Education
Dewey’s Laboratory Style Placement
The Ballarat Embedded Settings Teacher Education Partnership (BESTEP) Model
Tasks in Educational Settings
Practicum Placements
The Role of Teacher Educators
Methodology
Recruitment
Data Collection
Data Analysis
Results
Participant Cohort Synopsis
Theme 1: Expectations/Feelings/Motivation Prior to Implementation
Theme 2: Positives Experienced
Theme 3: Challenges Experienced
Theme 4: Recommendations for Program Improvement
Theme 5: Desire for Program Continuation
Discussion
Limitations
Conclusion
References
7 Professional Partners in Practice: Enhancing Institutional Partnership Connections in Early Childhood Through an Embedded University Mentorship Program
The Significance of Early Childhood
Early Childhood Education Services: The Australian Context
Early Childhood Teachers: Quality and Preparedness
The Bachelor of Education: The Early Years, University of Wollongong, Australia
Work Integrated Learning
Professional Partners in Practice: A Model of Embedded Mentoring
Mentoring
Development of PPP Partnerships
Bi-directional Teaching and Learning Opportunities
An Individualised, Situated Experience
The PPP Experience: Mentors and Pre-service Teachers
An Ongoing Process of Reflection and Evaluation
Conclusion
References
8 The ‘Butterfly Effect’ of Mentoring Practices in School-University Partnerships
Introduction
Mentoring in School-University Partnerships
Approaches to Learning About Mentoring
Partnership Architectures: Theoretical Underpinnings
Methods
An Alliance Model for School-University Partnerships
Mentoring Professional Learning as a Formative Intervention
What Can a Butterfly Affect? The Influence of School Leaders in Shaping Mentoring Practice/s
Cultural-Discursive Arrangements: Sayings
Material-Economic Arrangements: Doings
Social-Political Arrangements: Relatings
The Butterfly Effect of Enabling Mentoring Cultures: Implications and Conclusions
References
9 Using a Networked Professional Learning Community to Prepare Pre-service Teachers
Introduction
Inspiration of the Project
Integrated Teaching
Immersive Practicum Experience for Pre-service Teachers
Networked Professional Learning Communities
Research Questions
Methodology
Sample
Timeline
Data Sources and Data Analysis
Findings
Research Question One
Research Question Two
Discussion
Implications
University Faculty/Staff
Cooperating Teachers from the Networked Professional Learning Community
Pre-service Teachers
Future Research
References
Part III Dynamic Partnerships that Change Over Time
10 School-University Partnerships on the Edge of Possibility: Expansive Learning and Practice Transformation Across Australia, Nepal, and Bhutan
Introduction
Collaboration Context
Educational Context: Nepal and Bhutan
Theoretical Framework and Change Laboratory
Vignette 1 Beginnings: Collective Reflective Distance
Vignette 2 Expanding the Object
Vignette 3 MicroProjects in K-12 Education in Nepal
Vignette 4 Changing Pedagogies in Primary Mathematics Education in Bhutan
Conclusion
References
11 Dialectic Realities and Loose Coupling in Secondary Teacher Professional Learning in Ireland: The Case of TL21
Introduction: TL21 in Context
Iterative Phases: The TL21 Programme
Phase 1: 2003–2007
Phase 2: 2007–2011
Phase 3: 2011–2017
Phase 4: 2017–2023
Dialectical Tensions: Evaluating Programme Impact
Salient Findings
Teachers/Schools Taking Ownership of Professional Learning
The Necessity of an Engaged and Involved Senior Leadership Team
Sustained and Authentic Partnership with the Education Support Centres
Flexibility of Programme to Respond to Emerging National Policy Developments
Conclusion
References
12 Rooted in Relationships, Building University-School District Partnerships
Why a Commitment to Black and Mi’kmaw Learners
A Culture of Partnership: St. Francis Xavier University, Faculty of Education
Relationality
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
How This Partnership Began
Situating Ourselves and the Work
Pushing Back Against Deficit Thinking
Deep Level Learning for Deep Level Change
Cohort Learning
University-School District Partnerships
Beyond the Cohort
A Shared Vision for Mathematics
Conclusion
References
13 The Role of Adaptive Expertise in Sustaining School-University Partnerships in Increasingly Complex Times
Introduction
Adaptive Expertise
School-University Partnerships in Our Context
Experiences of Disruption
Narrative Vignette One: Orienting PSTs on Day One (Amanda)
Narrative Vignette Two: Conducting a Narrative Inquiry with No Access to Classrooms (Amy)
Narrative Vignette Three: Shifting Partner Relationships (Amanda)
Narrative Vignette Four: Gap Filling with Content (Amy)
Discussion
Losing Our Third Space
Adaptive Expertise in Increasingly Complex Times
Conclusion
References
14 Leveraging a School–University Partnership Model Through the Process of Co-design: A Case Study of One Australian School–University Partnership and Its Developmental Stages
Introduction
Literature Review
Professional Learning Communities
Collaborative Design
Relational Agency
Coaching
Context of the Research
Research Design and Participants
Emergent Partnership Process Model
Establish Community
Enhance Community
Expand Community
Evolve Community
Case Study: 4 Different Perspectives
Perspective 1: Nerinda—School Based Coach
Perspective 2: Allison—Course Coordinator
Perspective 3: Melanie—Academic Director, Professional Experience
Perspective 4: Emilio—Partnership Broker
Discussion
References
15 Sustainable School-University Partnerships: Motivators for Engagement, Enablers, and Constraints
Initiation of the School-University Partnership
Phase 1: Team-Teaching Professional Experience Subjects
Team-Teaching
Initial Teacher Education Student Peer Teaching
Immersion Activities
Evidencing Practice: Goal Setting and Professional Portfolio
Mock Employment Interviews
Outcomes
Enablers
Constraints and Challenges
Phase 2: Teacher Education Student Supervision Enhancement (TESSE)
Peer-Group Mentoring
Outcomes
Enablers
Constraints and Challenges
Phase 3: Professional Experience Coordination
Grouping of Initial Teacher Education Students
Pre-placement Initiatives
Supervisor Teacher Training
Initial Teacher Education Student Peer-Group Meetings
Outcomes
Enablers
Constraints and Challenges
Conclusion
References
Part IV Learning Lessons and Navigating Challenges
16 Prerequisites for Policy and Practice in School–University Partnerships in Sweden: Short- and Long-Term Incentives for Taking Responsibility
Aim, Questions and Outline
The Context: Upper Secondary Teacher Education in Sweden and at Lund University
Tensions Between Different Actors in the School-Based Part of Teacher Education: How Distance Can Create Misconceptions and Mistrust
A Frame-Factors Perspective on Collaboration
A New Policy Taking Shape in Practice
Roles and Incentives for Different Actors in Teacher Education
Schools
Universities
Pre-service Teachers
Incentives for Entering into the Partnership Stipulated by the New Policy of Practice Schools
The Lund Municipality Teachers’ Opportunities to Conduct Research
Incentives for Schools to Support Teachers Conducting Research
Time Available
How to Spread the Results
The Plan Ahead—Shared Responsibility and Increased Collaboration
Concluding Remarks
References
17 Multilateral Partnerships Supporting Community Engagement Among Pre-Service Teachers: The TELLUS Partnership
Introduction
Context
School-University Partnerships in the DACH Region
Service Learning
Service Learning in the DACH Region
The TELLUS Partnership
Lessons Learned
Be Prepared to Have a Third Space Established by a Community Partner
Be Prepared to Expand
Be Prepared for Multilateral Curricular Design
Be Prepared to Rethink Existing EL Formats
Be Prepared to Provide Multilateral Mentoring
Be Prepared to Have Partnership-Based Variability in the Curriculum
Be Prepared to Celebrate
Be Prepared to Evolve
Conclusion
References
18 Exploring Complexity in Multi-System Partnerships
Introduction
Educational Partnerships in a Complex World
Intersections Between Complexity Theory and Bakhtinian Theory
Exploring Dialogic Complexity in Partnerships
Case 1—International Partnership with an Organisation in a Developing Nation
Case 2—University Partnership with Multiple Catholic Dioceses and Universities
Conclusion
Reference
19 A Classroom Teacher’s and Teacher Educator’s Perspective of the Barriers to Their Involvement in a School-University Partnership
Introduction
Challenges of SUPs
Contrasting Political and Educational Demands
Interpersonal Challenges
Personal Challenges
Autoethnographies
Bethany’s Story: The Classroom Teacher Perspective
Jessica’s Story: The Teacher Educator Perspective
Overcoming Challenges
Roles and Responsibilities
Relationships
Conclusion
References
Part V Relationships, Compassion, and Leaders
20 The Influence of School Culture on School-University Partnerships
Background
School Leadership
Principals
Middle Leaders
Teacher Leaders
School Context
School Philosophy and Framework
Interest in Research
Conclusion
References
21 Regional School-University Partnerships: Searching for the Sweet Spot—An Inquiry into the Impact of a Pedagogy of Care
Introduction
Regional School-University Partnerships
Searching for the Sweet Spot
Pedagogies of Care
Action Research
Prior to Placement—Recognition
During Placement—Dialogic Relationality
After Placement—Affective and Embodied Praxis
Conclusion—Implications for Future Practice
References
22 The Role of the School Leader in Professional Experience School–University Partnership Models
Introduction
The School Leader in Professional Experience Partnerships
The Role of Professional Experience
The Role of School–University Partnerships
The Role of the School Leader
The RMIT Teaching Academy
Research Methods
Findings
Conceptualising School–University Partnerships
The Role of the School Leaders in School–University Partnerships
Enablers and Barriers of School–University Partnerships
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Part VI Enduring Possibilities
23 School-University Partnerships: A Richly Woven Tapestry to Share and Continue
Theme 1: Fostering Trust
Theme 2: Reciprocal Benefits
Theme 3: Embracing Flexibility
Theme 4: Commitment to Ongoing Improvement
Theme 5: Transformative Change
Conclusion
References

Citation preview

Corinne A. Green Michelle J. Eady Editors

Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships Building Connections Across Diverse Educational Systems Foreword by Emeritus Professor Kenneth M. Zeichner

Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships

Corinne A. Green · Michelle J. Eady Editors

Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships Building Connections Across Diverse Educational Systems

Editors Corinne A. Green University of South Australia Adelaide, Australia

Michelle J. Eady University of Wollongong Wollongong, Australia

ISBN 978-981-99-8837-2 ISBN 978-981-99-8838-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Paper in this product is recyclable.

Foreword

One of the most important aspects of teacher education throughout the world is the quality of the relationships and partnerships that exist between the various groups that have a stake in the quality of teachers that are prepared in initial and continuing preparation programs (Edwards, 2010; Kretchmar & Zeichner, 2016). This book, edited by two Australian teacher educators, includes case studies of a variety of teacher education partnerships mostly in Australia, but also in Bhutan, Canada, Germany, Nepal, Ireland, Sweden, and the United States of America. While most of the cases are within a given country, several involve partnering across national boundaries. These cases illuminate the various purposes for which teacher education partnerships have been used such as for initial and continuing teacher education, mentor training, and knowledge mobilization. They also reveal the qualities of partnerships that make them genuine and successful rather than mere charades that mask the continuation of the historically colonial relationships between universities, schools, and communities (Cook & Kothari, 2001; Duffy, 1994). These features include mutual benefit from a partnership for all of the stakeholders involved and shared responsibility for the creation and ongoing development of the partnership. Shared responsibility for a partnership is measured, not just by who is in the room and at the table, but also by whose voices are listened to and whose knowledge counts in the deliberations (Zeichner, 2024). One of the biggest problems with teacher education partnerships over the years has been obtaining funding and achieving sustainability. Many partnerships have been tied to external grants and to particular people. When the grants have expired or when there have been changes in key personnel, teacher education partnerships have often ended or have been reduced to superficial versions of what existed before. The cases in this book present different models that have been employed for obtaining funding and sustaining teacher education partnerships. There are many important lessons to be learned from the cases presented in this book that if taken seriously, and sensitively adapted to various local contexts, can assist teacher educators and their partners in developing and sustaining genuine

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Foreword

collaborations that take advantage of the expertise that all partners bring to the table, and that address the needs of each group. Kenneth M. Zeichner University of Washington Seattle, USA

References Cook, B., & Kothari, U. (Eds.). (2001). Participation: The new tyranny? Bloomsbury Publishing. Duffy, G. G. (1994). Professional development schools and the disempowerment of teachers and professors. The Phi Delta Kappan,75(8), 596–600. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20405182 Edwards, A. (2010). Being an expert professional practitioner: The relational turn in expertise. Springer Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3969-9 Kretchmar, K., & Zeichner, K. M. (2016). Teacher prep 3.0: A vision for teacher education to impact social transformation. Journal of Education for Teaching,42(4), 417–433. https://doi. org/10.1080/02607476.2016.1215550 Zeichner, K. M. (2024). Communities. Bloomsbury Publishing. https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/ communities-9781350173330/

Contents

Part I 1

2

Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corinne A. Green and Michelle J. Eady The Nature of School-University Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Corinne A. Green

Part II 3

4

5

6

Introducing School-University Partnerships 3 17

Value and Benefits of School-University Partnerships

Invitations, Impact, and Involvement: Tales from Successful School-University Partnerships in STEM and STEAM in Australian Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jane L. Hunter A New Model for School-University Collaborations: Mobilising Academic Knowledge and Building Cross Sectoral Synergies Around Inquiry Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sandra Lapointe and Catherine Klausen Creating Shared Spaces: A Collaborative Partnership Model that Prepares Initial Teacher Education Students for Effective Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Susan F. Westraad, Julie F. Mathews, and Caitlin R. Munday The Co-design of an Embedded School-University Partnership: An Application of Dewey’s Laboratory Style Approach to PST Experiences in Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mellita M. Jones

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59

77

97

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Contents

7

Professional Partners in Practice: Enhancing Institutional Partnership Connections in Early Childhood Through an Embedded University Mentorship Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Karen Tonge, Gai Lindsay, Jane Warren, Lynette Cronin, and Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett

8

The ‘Butterfly Effect’ of Mentoring Practices in School-University Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Amanda Mooney, Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas, and Damian Blake

9

Using a Networked Professional Learning Community to Prepare Pre-service Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Selina L. Bartels and Benjamin Boche

Part III Dynamic Partnerships that Change Over Time 10 School-University Partnerships on the Edge of Possibility: Expansive Learning and Practice Transformation Across Australia, Nepal, and Bhutan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Nick Hopwood, Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn, Binod Prasad Pant, Parbat Dhungana, Drishty Shrestha, Rina Shahi, Sonam Dorji W, Tandin Khorlo Wangchuk, Thinley Wangchuk, Tshering Zangmo, and Sonam Choden 11 Dialectic Realities and Loose Coupling in Secondary Teacher Professional Learning in Ireland: The Case of TL21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Anthony Malone 12 Rooted in Relationships, Building University-School District Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Wendy Mackey, Lisa Lunney Borden, and Shelly MacLean 13 The Role of Adaptive Expertise in Sustaining School-University Partnerships in Increasingly Complex Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Amanda McGraw and Amy Walker 14 Leveraging a School–University Partnership Model Through the Process of Co-design: A Case Study of One Australian School–University Partnership and Its Developmental Stages . . . . . . 259 Melanie Nash, Allison Byth, Emilio Kardaris, Nerinda Hodgson, Angela Fitzgerald, and Simone White 15 Sustainable School-University Partnerships: Motivators for Engagement, Enablers, and Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Stacey E. Jones and Deb Clarke

Contents

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Part IV Learning Lessons and Navigating Challenges 16 Prerequisites for Policy and Practice in School–University Partnerships in Sweden: Short- and Long-Term Incentives for Taking Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Helena Berglund, Elna Sivhed, Martin Granbom, Linda Smidfelt, and Sinikka Neuhaus 17 Multilateral Partnerships Supporting Community Engagement Among Pre-Service Teachers: The TELLUS Partnership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Carmen Heckmann, Ina Alexandra Machura, Holger Horz, Nicole Lustig, Yvonne Nünlist, and Cora Stein 18 Exploring Complexity in Multi-System Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Amanda Gutierrez 19 A Classroom Teacher’s and Teacher Educator’s Perspective of the Barriers to Their Involvement in a School-University Partnership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Bethany H. G. Carter-Sherlock and Jessica A. Sears Part V

Relationships, Compassion, and Leaders

20 The Influence of School Culture on School-University Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Corinne A. Green 21 Regional School-University Partnerships: Searching for the Sweet Spot—An Inquiry into the Impact of a Pedagogy of Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 Sharron L. Jones and Madeline A. Foran 22 The Role of the School Leader in Professional Experience School–University Partnership Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Jennifer Clifton and Kathy Jordan Part VI

Enduring Possibilities

23 School-University Partnerships: A Richly Woven Tapestry to Share and Continue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 Michelle J. Eady and Corinne A. Green

Contributors

Selina L. Bartels Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, USA Helena Berglund Lund University, Lund, Sweden Damian Blake Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Australia Benjamin Boche Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, USA Allison Byth RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Bethany H. G. Carter-Sherlock Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia Sonam Choden Lamgong Higher Secondary School, Paro, Bhutan Deb Clarke Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia Jennifer Clifton Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Lynette Cronin University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Parbat Dhungana Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, Nepal; The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Sonam Dorji W Paro College, Paro, Bhutan; University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia Michelle J. Eady University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Angela Fitzgerald RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Madeline A. Foran University of South Australia, Whyalla, Australia Martin Granbom Gymnasieskolan Spyken, Lund, Sweden Corinne A. Green University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia Amanda Gutierrez Australian Catholic University, Brisbane, Australia Carmen Heckmann Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

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Contributors

Nerinda Hodgson Montmorency South Primary School, Melbourne, Australia Nick Hopwood University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia; Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa Holger Horz Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Jane L. Hunter University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia Mellita M. Jones Australian Catholic University, Ballarat, Australia Sharron L. Jones University of South Australia, Whyalla, Australia Stacey E. Jones Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia Kathy Jordan RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Emilio Kardaris RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Catherine Klausen McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada Sandra Lapointe McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada Gai Lindsay University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Lisa Lunney Borden St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada Nicole Lustig Crespo Foundation, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Ina Alexandra Machura Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Wendy Mackey St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada Shelly MacLean Chignecto Central Regional Centre for Education, Truro, Canada Anthony Malone Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland Julie F. Mathews Alphacrucis University College, Sydney, Australia Amanda McGraw Federation University Australia, Mt Helen, Australia Amanda Mooney Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Australia Caitlin R. Munday Teaching School Alliance, Sydney, Australia Melanie Nash RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Sinikka Neuhaus Lund University, Lund, Sweden Yvonne Nünlist Crespo Foundation, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Binod Prasad Pant Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, Nepal

Contributors

Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn University of Australia; Trinity Grammar School, Sydney, Australia

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Technology

Sydney,

Ultimo,

Jessica A. Sears Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia Rina Shahi Creative Academy, Kirtipur, Nepal Drishty Shrestha Creative Academy, Kirtipur, Nepal Elna Sivhed Lund University, Lund, Sweden Linda Smidfelt Katedralskolan, Lund, Sweden Cora Stein Crespo Foundation, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Australia Karen Tonge University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Amy Walker Federation University Australia, Mt Helen, Australia Tandin Khorlo Wangchuk Paro College, Paro, Bhutan Thinley Wangchuk Paro College, Paro, Bhutan Jane Warren University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Susan F. Westraad Alphacrucis University College, Sydney, Australia Simone White RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Tshering Zangmo Taju Primary School, Paro, Bhutan

Part I

Introducing School-University Partnerships

Chapter 1

Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships: An Introduction Corinne A. Green

and Michelle J. Eady

Introduction As we open this book about partnerships, relationships, and education, we acknowledge First Nations Peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we work, rest, and play. As the editorial team working alongside the contributing authors whose work fills this book, we pay our respects to Elders past and present, recognising that these lands have been places of connection and learning for tens of thousands of years. The impetus for this book lay in Corinne A. Green’s Ph.D. research (Green, 2021) which Michelle J. Eady supervised (alongside colleague Sharon K. TindallFord). This research—some of which is presented in Chaps. 2 and 20 of this book, as well as through other publications (Green & Eady, in press; Green et al., 2020a, 2020b, 2020c)—explored why teachers and school leaders would want to be involved in school-university partnerships. Partnership activities are not a standard part of a teacher’s role; indeed, involvement in a school-university partnership can add to, compound, and expand a teacher’s workload beyond its already stretched limits (Andreasen et al., 2019; Green, 2021). And yet, as Corinne discovered through her multiple-case study research project, school-university partnerships that operate in the third space (Zeichner, 2010) can offer many benefits to teachers, school students, pre-service teachers (PSTs), teacher educators, and researchers (Green, 2021; Green et al., 2020b).

C. A. Green (B) University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia e-mail: [email protected] M. J. Eady University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_1

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Fig. 1.1 Visual representation of third space theory (Green, 2021)

The notion of the third space in teacher education draws on earlier use of the term where it facilitated the exploration of cultural identities (Bhabha, 1994) and described the ‘lived space’ where the ‘real’ (first space) and ‘ideal’ (second space) can be reimagined (Soja, 1996). Zeichner’s (2010) seminal work applied third space to initial teacher education settings to describe intentional, deliberate school-university partnerships that are collaborative and non-hierarchical in nature, where the domains of school and university intersect (see Fig. 1.1). Working in the third space involves abandoning dichotomous thinking, such as theory versus practice and teacher versus student, and instead encourages boundary crossing, co-construction, and collaboration (Daza et al., 2021; Green, 2021; Zeichner, 2010). A scoping review by Daza et al. (2021) found that in teacher education, researchers understand the third space as a place where participants’ identities are in constant negotiation due to crossing boundaries and hybrid roles within the partnerships. In addition, the third space is an arena where epistemologies intersect, new pedagogies merge, and knowledge sources symmetrically interconnect. (p. 11)

Corinne used this concept of third space in the Ph.D. thesis to provide a definition of school-university partnerships that clarified her research question and directed her case selection. Likewise, it has influenced the selection of chapters within this book. For the purposes of the Ph.D. thesis, Corinne focused on school-university partnerships that are connected to initial teacher education (ITE). Many of these types of partnerships incorporate site-based experiences where pre-service teachers spend time in partner schools as part of their university studies (Green et al., 2020b). Other literature, such as Daza et al.’s (2021) scoping review and Zeichner’s (2010) seminal work, similarly focuses on third space school-university partnerships in ITE. However, Corinne’s research found that teachers and school leaders “are interested in partnering with university academics not only for the benefit of PSTs and ITE, but also to raise the quality of the teaching profession as a whole” (Green, 2021, p. 332, emphasis added). Third space school-university partnerships certainly have great value within initial teacher education, but suggesting they are only used in connection to ITE both misrepresents the reality and limits the potential of partnerships.

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In her thesis conclusion, Corinne asserted that “school-university partnerships can productively address several of the enduring issues within the teaching profession—not as a panacea or simple solution, but as a robust and contextually relevant collaboration between key players in the profession” (Green, 2021, p. 324). This book, Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships: Building Connections Across Diverse Educational Systems, emanates from Corinne’s research and broader literature to delve deeper into third space schooluniversity partnerships—those focused on ITE, and those connected to ongoing teacher education—and explore how they can be intentionally created and sustained. Throughout this book, there are expansive interpretations of school-university partnerships—indeed, only a few of the partnerships discussed are strictly speaking between a school and a university (e.g., Chap. 15 by Jones and Clarke; Chap. 19 by Carter-Sherlock and Sears). Some are between universities and school districts (e.g., Chap. 12 by Mackey et al.); some are with school systems (e.g., Chap. 4 by Lapointe and Klausen; Chap. 18 by Gutierrez). A few chapters explore partnerships with early childhood settings (particularly Chap. 7 by Tonge et al.; also, Chap. 3 by Hunter; Chap. 6 by Jones), with others linking into primary school (e.g., Chap. 9 by Bartels and Boche; Chap. 22 by Clifton and Jordan) or secondary school (e.g., Chap. 11 by Malone; Chap. 17 by Heckmann et al.) settings. Although Zeichner’s (2010) third space theory is not explicitly identified in all cases, the underlying philosophy of this position—that of true partnership, with mutual respect, trust, and reciprocity—is clear in every chapter. The purposes of these partnerships vary, which is appropriate given Corinne’s recommendation (in Chap. 2) that school-university partnerships need to be sensitive to their context and meet the needs of those involved instead of conforming to some norm. Several of the partnerships described throughout this book are connected to ITE, whether to support the formal professional experience placements of an ITE degree (e.g., Chap. 8 by Mooney et al.; Chap. 22 by Clifton and Jordan), or to provide additional work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunities for pre-service teachers (e.g., Chap. 7 by Tonge et al.; Chap. 13 by McGraw and Walker). Still other partnerships are connected to ongoing teacher education and in-service teachers, without linking into ITE and pre-service teachers (e.g., Chap. 4 by Lapointe and Klausen; Chap. 16 by Berglund et al.). There is variation in the way that these partnerships are explored throughout the chapters of this book. Most use a case study design (e.g., Chap. 5 by Westraad et al.; Chap. 20 by Green). Several use narrative vignettes as a way for the contributing authors to reflect upon their own involvement in school-university partnerships, with their subsequent analysis giving valued insights that can be translated into other contexts (e.g., Chap. 10 by Hopwood et al.; Chap. 19 by Carter-Sherlock and Sears). Still others present action research (Chap. 3 by Hunter; Chap. 21 by Jones and Foran) or longitudinal research (Chap. 11 by Malone). Through these means, the contributing authors explore the life cycle and phases of school-university partnerships, the factors that enable and the barriers that constrain them, and the effects they have on those involved.

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The countries in which the partnerships and contributing authors are based are widespread. Many are based in Australia, across the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, and South Australia (e.g., Chap. 8 by Mooney et al.; Chap. 20 by Green; Chap. 21 by Jones and Foran). There are also chapters based in Canada (Chap. 4 by Lapointe and Klausen; Chap. 12 by Mackey et al.), Germany (Chap. 17 by Heckmann et al.), Ireland (Chap. 11 by Malone), Sweden (Chap. 16 by Berglund et al.), and the United States of America (Chap. 9 by Bartels and Boche). Chap. 10 by Hopwood et al. presents international partnerships, with teacher educators from a university in Australia collaborating with teachers in Nepal and Bhutan. Despite this array of locations, we recognise that some geographical areas, including Africa, South America, and Asia, are not represented in this book. We hope that readers in these areas will find value in the presented chapters and that they will contribute their own stories of context-sensitive school-university partnerships to future publications. In several chapters, the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are writ large— with some partnerships faltering (e.g., Chap. 6 by Jones; Chap. 13 by McGraw and Walker; Chap. 18 by Gutierrez), others needing to adapt (e.g., Chap. 12 by Mackey et al.; Chap. 21 by Jones and Foran), and still others persevering (e.g., Chap. 14 by Nash et al.; Chap. 15 by Jones and Clarke) despite or even because of the unprecedented circumstances. Highlighting these variations—both within chapters in this book, and the partnerships they present—reinforces that there is “no one-size fits all (or even one-size-fitsmost)” (Davis & Sumara, 2012, p. 39) approach for school-university partnerships. This book builds on existing literature to extend our understanding of how and why school-university partnerships can be intentionally created and sustained. It explores the connections that can be built between institutions, sectors, systems, and individuals, and the impact that these relationships can have across diverse educational settings. This is accomplished through six parts and twenty-three chapters which are outlined in brief below.

Part 1: Introducing School-University Partnerships This first part introduces the concepts covered throughout the book. It sets up what school-university partnerships are, what they can look like, and why they are significant—for those involved, and for education systems more broadly.

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Following this introductory chapter, in Chap. 2 Corinne A. Green draws on data from a multiple-case study to explore the heterogenous possibilities for schooluniversity partnerships that are sensitive to their context and meet the needs of those involved. Using examples from partnerships around Australia, Corinne demonstrates that there are a wide range of ways that schools and universities can partner together. She focuses on the depth, breadth, and multiplicity of partnerships that an institution can sustain, the initiators and drivers of those partnerships, the significance of relationships that are responsive and respectful, the value of voluntary participation and agency, and the need (or otherwise) for funding.

Part 2: Value and Benefits of School-University Partnerships Part 2 contains chapters that focus on the benefits of school-university partnerships and the value that they contribute to the work of teachers and teacher educators. By exploring successful examples from various disciplines, such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education, inquiry learning, and early childhood education, the chapters underscore the significant role that school-university partnerships play in enhancing teaching practices, professional development, and student learning outcomes. The value of these partnerships lies in their ability to integrate theory and practice, thereby fostering collaborative environments where educators and researchers work together to apply academic knowledge in real-world educational contexts. By highlighting the positive outcomes and innovative practices resulting from these partnerships, Part 2 emphasises the importance of cultivating strong collaborations between schools and universities. These partnerships not only enrich the learning experiences of students but also contribute to the ongoing professional growth and development of educators. In Chap. 3, Jane L. Hunter demonstrates how school-university partnerships can enable ongoing professional learning for teachers through participatory action research and practitioner inquiry. Jane offers three tales of three different schooluniversity partnerships in Australia that positively impacted in-service teachers’ capacity and confidence in STEM education. Each of these successful partnerships— focused on non-English speaking background schools, high-poverty schools, and middle leadership—navigated difficulties and frustrations that were outweighed by the gains experienced. Chapter 4 has Sandra Lapointe and Catherine Klausen detailing their systemslevel approach to knowledge mobilisation, known as The/La Collaborative. This Canadian initiative has been creating new ways for teachers in schools and discipline experts in universities to ‘bump into’ each other through connection brokers and a bespoke platform that reduces obstacles for these exchanges. The/La Collaborative thereby provides valuable spaces for academics to share their research in support of inquiry-based learning for school students and teachers. In Chap. 5, attention is turned to a clinical teaching model for pre-service teachers whereby a school-university partnership can facilitate an alternate pathway into a

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teaching career. Susan F. Westraad, Julie F. Mathews, and Caitlin R. Munday use a case study approach to examine the successful outcomes of the Teaching School model employed in a cluster of five Australian independent schools underpinned by a Christian worldview. The benefits of this approach include participation in communities of practice, integration of theory and practice, support for pre-service teachers’ vocational convictions, pre-service teachers’ classroom readiness, and the rich reflexive discussion space enabled through collaboration. In Chap. 6, Mellita M. Jones reports on a co-designed school-university partnership based in Australia known as the Ballarat Embedded Settings Teacher Education Partnership (BESTEP) model. This mixed methods case study draws on data from pre-service teachers, school leadership, and teacher educators—all of whom detailed the value and benefits of the BESTEP model. While its implementation was curtailed due to COVID-19, the preliminary evaluation of BESTEP and the significant interest from those involved shows the promise of this model of school-university partnership. Chapter 7 focuses on partnerships with early childhood (birth to five years) education services in Australia. Karen Tonge, Gai Lindsay, Jane Warren, Lynette Cronin, and Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett detail the Professional Partners in Practice program, where pre-service teachers and teacher educators build long term connections with the early childhood sector. Benefits associated with the program include mentoring for pre-service teachers, contributions by industry to academic programs, formalised research partnerships, further education for in-service teachers, and increased employment opportunities for graduates. In Chap. 8, Amanda Mooney, Matthew K. E. Thomas, and Damian Blake consider the unexpected outcomes of a large-scale Australian school-university partnership through the motif of the ‘butterfly effect’. They use the Theory of Practice Architectures and analyse the sayings, doings, and relatings of leaders to explore how a co-designed partnership that was originally intended to focus on pre-service teachers led to a significant system-level reform for school leaders and mentoring practices in schools. Chapter 9 has Selina L. Bartels and Benjamin Boche discussing a Networked Professional Learning Community (NPLC) with two school districts and a university in the United States of America. They focus on how these partnerships impact pre-service teachers’ experiences in schools during their placement, and how they influence in-service teachers’ mentoring practices. Selina and Benjamin report that these networked professional learning communities created solidarity across school districts, fostered confidence in in-service teachers to mentor pre-service teachers, and made pre-service teachers feel supported and connected to the school district and the university.

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Part 3: Dynamic Partnerships that Change Over Time In Part 3, chapters focus on school-university partnerships that have adapted to changing circumstances and shifted in focus over time. By doing so, these partnerships have been dynamic and responsive, maintaining their relevance to their context and for their stakeholders. Embracing innovation and staying attuned to evolving educational trends and social challenges, these partnerships have successfully navigated obstacles and seized opportunities for growth. The chapters highlight the importance of flexibility, collaboration, and ongoing reflection in sustaining and enhancing school-university partnerships. Through their ability to adapt and respond, these partnerships have continued to meet the evolving needs of stakeholders and have served as models of resilience and responsiveness in the field of education. Chapter 10, co-authored by Nick Hopwood, Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn, Binod Prasad Pant, Parbat Dhungana, Drishty Shrestha, Rina Shahi, Sonam Dorji W, Tandin Khorlo Wangchuk, Thinley Wangchuk, Tshering Zangmo, and Sonam Choden, explores the life cycle of partnerships between an Australian university and universities and schools in Nepal and Bhutan. The authors use the cycle of expansive learning to consider how the partnerships progressed and evolved via a Change Laboratory interventionist approach. Vignettes from various phases of the partnerships are analysed to explore the joint production and relationship development that occurred. Chapter 11 focuses on the Teaching and Learning for the twenty-first century (TL21) partnership that has been sustained for over twenty years in Ireland. Anthony Malone discusses how the partnership has shifted over this period, highlighting the value of the loose coupling between the partnership stakeholders—a university, participating schools, a network of Education Support Centres (localised spaces for teacher professional learning), and the Department of Education, Ireland—amidst constraining policy priorities. Longitudinal data evidence how teachers can exercise agency as they develop in capacity and confidence through involvement in the TL21 partnership. In Chap. 12, Wendy Mackey, Lisa Lunney Borden, and Shelly MacLean highlight a generative partnership between a Canadian university and a local school district serving Black and Mi’kmaw people. Drawing on Indigenous and decolonising methodologies, the chapter focuses on how the partnership began, how it has grown, and how it continues to expand. Wendy, Lisa, and Shelly situate themselves in this work to emphasise the relationality of this partnership which has led to multiple avenues for teacher professional development and collaborations focused on equity and culturally relevant pedagogy. Chapter 13, authored by Amanda McGraw and Amy Walker, illustrates the need for adaptive expertise so that school-university partnerships can be responsive to changing circumstances. Through poignant vignettes and narrative inquiry, Amanda and Amy showcase how their long-standing partnerships—involving an Australian university and several regional and rural schools, embedded into the initial teacher

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education program—have been disrupted by the intersecting and external forces of COVID-19 and workforce shortages. Chapter 14 has Melanie Nash, Allison Byth, Emilio Kardaris, Nerinda Hodgson, Angela Fitzgerald, and Simone White reflecting on a co-designed partnership model designed to enrich pre-service teachers’ placements in schools and support in-service teachers’ mentoring practices. The authors use narrative vignettes and rich storylines to illuminate how their partnership between an Australian university and fifteen local primary schools has progressed through a cycle of establishing, enhancing, expanding, and evolving community. In Chap. 15, Stacey E. Jones and Deb Clarke describe the life cycle of a fiveyear partnership between an Australian university and a nearby regional secondary school that aimed to enhance the quality of initial teacher education and the capacity of teachers mentoring pre-service teachers. Stacey and Deb focus on distinct phases of the partnership—from the co-design of ITE subjects, to professional learning for teachers, to the appointment of border workers coordinating placements. In each phase, the outcomes, enablers, and constraints are examined to understand how the school-university partnership has met stakeholders’ needs and provided reciprocal benefits over time.

Part 4: Learning Lessons and Navigating Challenges The chapters in Part 4 explore the challenges that can be associated with creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships. Lessons that have been learned—sometimes the hard way—are candidly discussed so that future partnerships can use this guidance to navigate their own pitfalls and overcome barriers. By openly sharing their experiences, the contributing authors offer a wealth of knowledge and practical strategies for building successful and sustainable collaborations. The reflections and lessons shared in this part aim to empower all stakeholders to anticipate and address challenges proactively, fostering the development of strong and resilient school-university partnerships. Through the collective wisdom gained from these experiences, future partnerships can thrive and flourish, making meaningful and lasting contributions. In Chap. 16, Helena Berglund, Elna Sivhed, Martin Granbom, Linda Smidfelt, and Sinikka Neuhaus discuss how school-university partnerships are being promoted in Sweden by recent policy priorities and incentives. The authors consider the roles and incentives for partnership stakeholders, and Linda and Martin reflect on their initial experiences as teacher participants in the partnership between Lund University and the Lund municipality. The authors explore factors that may influence the possibilities for practice-close research within the partnership, including incentives for schools to support teachers conducting research, the time available, and dissemination opportunities (such as an annual conference associated with the partnership).

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Chapter 17 presents the lessons learned from the TELLUS (Team Lehrende, Lernende, und Studierende) partnership between universities, schools, and community partners in mid-west Germany. Carmen Heckmann, Ina Alexandra Machura, Holger Horz, Nicole Lustig, Yvonne Nünlist, and Cora Stein share how the TELLUS partnership, which is deeply rooted in the needs of the schools and community involved, can give insight into the opportunities that school-university partnership stakeholders need to be prepared for. In Chap. 18, Amanda Gutierrez brings together complexity theory concepts and Bakhtinian theories on dialogism to explore how the complex systems of schooluniversity partnerships are in continuous flux. Amanda discusses the intersections of the theoretical frameworks and illustrates these with two cases of school-university partnerships: between an Australian university and a Monastic school system in Myanmar, and between Australian universities and the Catholic school system in Australia. The ways that these partnerships negotiated ideological environments and forces, dealt with challenges rooted in their time and place, and evolved—or dissolved—offer valuable insights. Chapter 19 identifies first-hand the challenges that the authors, Bethany H. G. Carter-Sherlock (a classroom teacher) and Jessica A. Sears (a teacher educator), encountered through their involvement in a partnership between an Australian university and a local secondary school. Bethany and Jessica give soulful accounts of their perspectives and the contrasting political and educational demands, interpersonal challenges, and personal challenges that they encountered. Their narratives are sprinkled with nuggets of wisdom and illuminate the importance of clear roles and responsibilities, and of respectful and trusting relationships, in successful partnerships.

Part 5: Relationships, Compassion, and Leaders In Part 5, the chapters explore some of the factors that enable school-university partnerships to thrive: dynamic relationships, compassionate interactions, and supportive leaders. The contributing authors of this section emphasise the significance of building strong relationships and nurturing ongoing communication between school and university stakeholders. They explore the transformative power of compassionate interactions, where empathy, understanding, respect, and trust create an inclusive partnership environment. Additionally, the chapters underscore the vital role of supportive and active leadership championing the partnership, providing guidance, and creating a culture of collaboration and innovation. By examining these essential elements, the chapters offer insights into how school-university partnerships can achieve their goals. They serve as a reminder that investing in relationships, fostering empathy, and cultivating supportive leadership are key ingredients for creating vibrant and sustainable collaborations that benefit educators, pre-service teachers, students, and the broader community.

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Chapter 20 has Corinne A. Green returning to the Australian-based multiple-case study that was introduced earlier in the book. This chapter prioritises the perspective of teachers and school leaders to consider the substantial role that school culture plays in motivating involvement in school-university partnerships. Corinne examines four schools’ leadership, context, philosophy, and interest in research, and uses these diverse examples to offer insight into how school culture can support and amplify the work of school-university partnerships. In Chap. 21, Sharron L. Jones and Madeline A. Foran use Australian regional school-university partnerships as a vehicle for highlighting the importance of honest and genuine interpersonal relationships, and the impact on pre-service teachers’ placement experiences when these are (or are not) present. Sharron and Madeline are in search of the ‘sweet spot’ that highlights the intersection of shared learning between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers, and use action research to explore how a pedagogy of care can transform school-university partnerships and enhance pre-service teachers’ final placement. Chapter 22 focuses on an oft-absent perspective: the role of school leaders in the implementation and sustainability of school-university partnerships. Jennifer Clifton and Kathy Jordan present the perspective of two deputy principals who are involved in a long-term school-university partnership that primarily seeks to support preservice teachers’ professional placement experiences. Jennifer and Kathy seek to better understand the school leader’s role, highlighting the developmental potential of partnerships, the importance of building on existing relationships, and the need to embrace evolution in the partnership.

Part 6: Enduring Possibilities This concluding section draws together the threads from each chapter within the book and explores the enduring possibilities of school-university partnerships. By synthesising the key themes, lessons, and perspectives shared throughout the book, this chapter offers a comprehensive perspective on the transformative potential inherent in these collaborations. It delves into the sustained impact of school-university partnerships, highlighting their capacity to adapt, evolve, and catalyse positive change over time. This section underscores the importance of ongoing commitment, collaboration, and innovation in nurturing and expanding the possibilities of school-university partnerships. It encourages readers to reflect on the lasting influence of these partnerships and to envision novel approaches to harness their potential for the advancement of future educators, students, and the broader educational landscape. In Chap. 23, Michelle J. Eady and Corinne A. Green encourage the reader to consider that school-university partnerships can be likened to a richly woven tapestry to share and continue. For this to take place, Michelle and Corinne have identified five themes or threads that are woven through many of the chapters in this book and suggest that these elements of partnerships are critical in developing deep, meaningful, and long lasting third space environments.

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Conclusion In summary, we are excited and delighted to share this book with you! We are deeply grateful to each contributing author for their diligent work and thoughtful insights shared throughout each chapter. We believe that these accounts of purposeful schooluniversity partnerships—their messiness, their struggles, and their triumphs—can be transformative for all involved in teaching and learning.

References Andreasen, J. K., Bjørndal, C. R. P., & Kovaˇc, V. B. (2019). Being a teacher and teacher educator: The antecedents of teacher educator identity among mentor teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 85, 281–291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.05.011 Bartels, S. L., & Boche, B. (2024). Using a networked professional learning community to prepare pre-service teachers. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Berglund, H., Sivhed, E., Granbom, M., Smidfelt, L., & Neuhaus, S. (2024). Prerequisites for policy and practice in school-university partnerships in Sweden: Short- and long-term incentives for taking responsibility. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge. Carter-Sherlock, B. H. G., & Sears, J. A. (2024). A classroom teacher’s and teacher educator’s perspective of the barriers to their involvement in a school-university partnership. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Clifton, J., & Jordan, K. (2024). The role of the school leader in professional experience schooluniversity partnership models. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (2012). Fitting teacher education in/to/for an increasingly complex world. Complicity, 9(1), 30–40. https://doi.org/10.29173/cmplct16531 Daza, V., Gudmundsdottir, G. B., & Lund, A. (2021). Partnerships as third spaces for professional practice in initial teacher education: A scoping review. Teaching and Teacher Education, 102, 103338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103338 Eady, M. J., & Green, C. A. (2024). School-university partnerships: A richly woven tapestry to share and continue. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Green, C. A. (2021). Partnering in the third space: What motivates teachers’ and school leaders’ involvement in school-university partnerships? [Ph.D. thesis, University of Wollongong]. https:// ro.uow.edu.au/theses1/1158/ Green, C. A. (2024a). The influence of school culture on school-university partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Green, C. A. (2024b). The nature of school-university partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer.

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Green, C. A., & Eady, M. J. (in press). Australian school-university partnerships: Shining examples that meet and exceed policy discourse. In J. Dresden, J. Ferrara, J. E. Neapolitan, D. YendolHoppey, J. S. Beck, M. Z. Faison, S. Janis, L. Provinzano, & L. Rutten (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of school-university partnerships. Cambridge University Press. Green, C. A., Eady, M. J., & Tindall-Ford, S. K. (2020a). “I think that’s my job": What motivates teachers to partner with teacher educators in ITE? In J. Fox, C. Alexander, & T. Aspland (Eds.), Teacher education in globalised times: Local responses in action (pp. 239–260). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4124-7_13 Green, C. A., Tindall-Ford, S. K., & Eady, M. J. (2020b). School-university partnerships in Australia: A systematic literature review. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 48(4), 403–435. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2019.1651822 Green, C. A., Tindall-Ford, S. K., & Eady, M. J. (2020c, December 2). Teacher and leader motivation for school-university partnerships. Teacher Magazine. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_ en/articles/teacher-and-leader-motivation-for-school-university-partnerships Gutierrez, A. (2024). Exploring complexity in multi-system partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Heckmann, C., Machura, I. A., Horz, H., Lustig, N., Nünlist, Y., & Stein, C. (2024). Multilateral partnerships supporting community engagement among pre-service teachers: The TELLUS partnership In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Hopwood, N., Pressick-Kilborn, K., Pant, B. P., Dhungana, P., Shrestha, D., Shahi, R., Dorji W, S., Wangchuk, T. K., Wangchuk, T., Zangmo, T., & Choden, S. (2024). School-university partnerships on the edge of possibility: Expansive learning and practice transformation across Australia, Nepal, and Bhutan. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Hunter, J. L. (2024). Invitations, impact, and involvement: Tales from successful school-university partnerships in STEM and STEAM in Australian Schools. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Jones, M. M. (2024). The co-design of an embedded school-university partnership: An application of Dewey’s laboratory style approach to PST experiences in schools. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Jones, S., & Foran, M. (2024). Regional school-university partnerships: Searching for the sweet spot—An inquiry into the impact of a pedagogy of care. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Jones, S. E., & Clarke, D. (2024). Sustainable school-university partnerships: Motivators for engagement, enablers, and constraints In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Lapointe, S., & Klausen, C. (2024). A new model for school-university collaborations: mobilising academic knowledge and building cross sectoral synergies around inquiry learning. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Mackey, W., Lunney Borden, L., & MacLean, S. (2024). Rooted in relationships, building universityschool district partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer.

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Malone, A. (2024). Dialectic realities and loose coupling in secondary teacher professional learning in Ireland: The case of TL21. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. McGraw, A., & Walker, A. (2024). The role of adaptive expertise in sustaining school-university partnerships in increasingly complex times. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Mooney, A., Thomas, M. K. E., & Blake, D. (2024). The ‘Butterfly effect’ of mentoring practices in school-university partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Nash, M., Byth, A., Kardaris, E., Hodgson, N., Fitzgerald, A., & White, S. (2024). Leveraging a school-university partnership model through the process of co-design: A case study of one Australian school-university partnership and its developmental stages. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Blackwell. Tonge, K., Lindsay, G., Warren, J., Cronin, L., & Neilsen-Hewett, C. (2024). Professional partners in practice: Enhancing institutional partnership connections in early childhood through an embedded university mentorship program. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Westraad, S. F., Mathews, J. F., & Munday, C. R. (2024). Creating shared spaces: A collaborative partnership model that prepares initial teacher education students for effective practice. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Zeichner, K. M. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 89–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347671

Dr. Corinne A. Green is an early career researcher and educator. She is a Lecturer in Academic Development with the Teaching Innovation Unit at the University of South Australia where she prompts educators to be intentional in their approach to teaching and learning. Corinne completed her Ph.D. in teacher education at the University of Wollongong, exploring what motivates teachers and school leaders to be involved in school-university partnerships. She has relished opportunities to collaborate with local and international colleagues on various projects in the field of teacher education and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Michelle J. Eady is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She is a Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) and International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) fellow, and a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA). Michelle, the current president of ISSOTL, holds a national teaching citation for her work in quality teacher preparation. Her research interests include the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), Work integrated learning (WIL), Indigenous Studies, and current issues in Education. Michelle has spoken at conferences worldwide and looks forward to collaborations with colleagues who have a passion for teaching and learning.

Chapter 2

The Nature of School-University Partnerships Corinne A. Green

Background Collaborative and non-hierarchical school-university partnerships—such as those presented throughout this book—have been variously recommended by researchers and governments around the world to strengthen the teaching profession across all career stages (Dresden et al., 2016; Green et al., 2020; Zeichner, 2010). Such partnerships enable stakeholders to collaborate and make context-dependent decisions that are appropriate for their needs (Jones & Chittleborough, 2018; Willis et al., 2018). Recent literature reviews by Green et al. (2020) and Jones and Green (2023) have provided collective evidence regarding the implementation of school-university partnerships in Australia, giving insight into the benefits, challenges, structure, activities, aims, relationships, and resources of these partnerships. This chapter builds on this body of work to explore the wide variety of contextually relevant school-university partnerships. It draws on data from a multiple-case study of four Australian school-university partnerships to provide embodied examples of how their heterogenous approaches supported each partnership and motivated participants’ involvement. This aligns with Davis and Sumara’s (2012) statement that “there is no one-size-fits-all (or even one-size-fits-most) model” (p. 39) for school-university partnerships.

C. A. Green (B) University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_2

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Methodology This chapter draws on data from a multiple-case study where four unique cases (that is, schools in school-university partnerships) were studied to understand teachers’ and school leaders’ motivation for involvement in these partnerships. Pertinent information about the cases, participants, and data analysis are given below; further detail about the methods used across the project can be found in the Ph.D. thesis by Green (2021). Ethics approval was granted from the researcher’s institutional ethics board and the relevant State Education agencies. The names of all institutions and participants are pseudonyms.

Case Selection The schools in this study were identified through Australia-wide teacher education networks, facilitating a purposive sampling strategy and allowing diverse options to emerge (Robinson, 2014). Typical-case selection was employed to choose four cases that are representative of ordinary school-university partnerships (Bryman, 2016; Robinson, 2014). The diverse contexts of the four cases and their associated partnerships are identified in Table 2.1.

Participants Purposive sampling techniques were employed to recruit participants from the selected case schools, with a stratified sample targeted to capture varied perspectives (Bryman, 2016). A total of 23 participants were involved in this study through semi-structured interviews (see Table 2.2).

Data Analysis To analyse the interview data, close reading techniques were applied to discover connections within and between all four cases. Close reading is about “paying attention to what was said and how it was said to increase our understanding” (Manarin, 2018, p. 100). In this study, the interview recordings and transcripts were analysed within two coding phases: reading with the grain and reading against the grain (Manarin, 2018). This chapter focuses on one of three key themes that emerged from the data analysis process: the nature of the partnerships in the multiple-case study. The second

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Table 2.1 Contexts of the school-university partnerships Grevillea Primary School (GS) and Grey Gum University (GU)

Kangaroo Paw High School (KS) and Koala Fern University (KU)

Eucalyptus Primary School (ES) and Emu-bush University (EU)

Bottlebrush Independent School (BS) and Banksia University (BU)

Location

Major city Queensland

Major city Queensland

Inner regional Tasmania

Major city New South Wales

School type

K–6 (primary)

7–12 (secondary) K–6 (primary)

K–6 (primary) in a K–12 school

School sector

Government

Government

Government

Non-government

School size

700 students 60 teachers

2480 students 175 teachers

560 students 40 teachers

520 students (1150 total K-12) 115 teachers

IRSADa of school area

8/10

2/10

1/10

6/10

6 km 10-min drive

1.5 km 5-min walk

500 m 5-min walk

Distance between 23 km institutions 30-min drive University sector

Public

Public

Public

Private

Length of partnership

4 years

5 years

20+ years

7 years

Partnership activities

GU pre-service teachers (PSTs) volunteer at GS throughout school year GS exclusively accepts GU PSTs for placements Videos of GS staff discussing their practices used in GU coursework

KS hosts KU PSTs for placements KU PSTs are targeted for employment Early career teacher mentoring program at KS, including supervising PSTs on placement Community of practice with KS and KU staff KS staff on KU Advisory Group

ES hosts EU PSTs for placements ES delivers professional learning sessions for PSTs during placement EU PSTs create and teach lessons to ES students (outside of placements) EU English Language students visit ES for special events

BU PSTs volunteer at BS throughout the school year BS teachers lead BU initial teacher education (ITE) tutorials BS hosts BU PSTs for placements A BS staff member is the BU school-based placement liaison for the region

a

The Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD) is a measure of “people’s access to material and social resources, and their ability to participate in society” (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016, n.p.). A low score indicates relatively greater disadvantage and a lack of advantage in general, while a high score indicates a relative lack of disadvantage and greater advantage in general

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Table 2.2 Categories of participants GS-GU partnership

KS-KU partnership

ES-EU partnership

BS-BU partnership

School executive

Glenys

–

Esther

Brian

In-school co-ordinator

Georgina

Keith

Elizabeth

Bernadette

Teacher

Gemma Grace Gavin Gwendolyn Gretchen

Kathryn Kayla Kylie

Emily Elena

Barbara Bianca

Kaden Kevin Kane

Edward

theme, that of school culture, is explored in a later chapter of this book (Green, 2024). The third theme, relating to teachers’ and school leaders’ commitment to the profession, has been published elsewhere (Green & Eady, in press). Further discussion of the four school-university partnerships, including the teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of the associated benefits and challenges, can be found in the Ph.D. thesis (Green, 2021).

Nature of the Partnerships Looking across all four cases, heterogeneity was evident in each school’s approach to partnering with universities. For instance, while each case primarily focused on one school-university partnership (that is, the GS-GU partnership or the KS-KU partnership), it was clear that some schools had partnered with multiple universities (e.g., Kangaroo Paw High School partnered with Koala Fern University as well as Stringybark, Macadamia, and Hazelwood Universities). The initiators and drivers of the partnerships also varied—in one case it was the school, in another the university, and in two others a more collaborative approach was used. Convergence was also clear, with each case exploring the importance of relationships, voluntary participation, and funding. The similarities and differences among these cases—and between these cases and research literature—demonstrates the wide variety of options available to those seeking to establish or maintain a contextually relevant school-university partnership.

Depth, Breadth, and Multiplicity The schools in this study were involved in different types of partnerships in terms of their purpose, activities, and relationships, as influenced by their needs and capacity.

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Table 2.3 Matrix of variations in depth and breadth of connections as well as singularity and multiplicity of partnerships in the multiple-case study Deep connections

Broad connections

Singular partnership

Multiple partnership

The different approaches evident in the study demonstrate a few of the possibilities available. In Table 2.3, the partnerships have been visualised with the thickness of the lines between institutions approximating the depth of connection, as described by study participants. Where participants mentioned other school-university partnerships, these are indicated, as are the anticipated connections from each university to other schools.

Deep Singular Partnership Grevillea Primary School intentionally developed an exclusive relationship with Grey Gum University, choosing to only accept GU PSTs for placements and other partnership activities. The purpose of this was to simplify the logistics involved—rather than “having to respond to the expectations of three different universities” (Glenys), Georgina commented that: I know exactly when these [PSTs] come in… I know exactly who the supervisor is, I know exactly who [our GU colleague] is, I know what’s going on… When they come in as a second year, third or fourth year, I know exactly where they’re at and I can help my teachers with it.

GS staff knew that GU had other partnerships and connections with other schools. Glenys recognised the need for GU to have connections to a diverse range of schools, because “over the period of four years [of the ITE degree], the university’s obligation should be making sure [PSTs] get a mix of different schools.” However, as Glenys explained, we decided to go with one university because we felt it would work both ways… We’d only be dealing with one tertiary institution, rather than trying to change things for other universities that would come in. We could get a really good understanding of the [GU] philosophy… It

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C. A. Green also opened a lot of communication around what the university was looking for, but could also listen to us… It just gave a… closer partnership than with, say, having partnerships with four different universities. It allowed us to focus on what [GU] needed and allowed the university to focus on what would be a best fit for a school [in our context].

Gavin reflected that the partnership “is more narrow but there’s much more deep connection there with the university.” Gwendolyn believed this deeper relationship “serves everyone better,” a sentiment that Glenys echoed: It’s about knowing what [GU] wants, [GU] knows what we want… [GU] can really invest in us as well, and know what we’re about… That’s what that’s about. Knowing each other’s expectations really well and knowing what we stand for. I think that leads to good quality, personally.

This deep singular partnership matched GS’s size and enabled GS to operate “a little bit like a Demonstration School” (Georgina), analogous to Professional Development Schools or Normal Schools elsewhere (Dresden et al., 2016; Sewell et al., 2018). Such schools are “often considered to be the education equivalent of a teaching hospital” (Dresden et al., 2016, p. 66) and provide PSTs with opportunities to learn about and practice teaching within an operating school.

Broad Singular Partnership While Eucalyptus Primary School was also partnered with one institution (that is, Emu-bush University) their partnership was characterised by a breadth of connections. Various ES staff maintained relationships with EU staff across the university— from the Health and Physical Education and Science aspects of the EU Education faculty to those unconnected to teacher education. The size of the school supported these varied connections, as Edward reflected: “We have such a large number of students in the school, which allows [EU] to send a lot of students… to the one place.” ES staff described their connection to EU as somewhat tenuous. Elizabeth and Edward spoke about how EU could be changing location soon, increasing the distance between ES and EU from 1.5 km (5-min drive or 15-min walk) to 3.5 km (10-min drive or 40-min walk). While this distance is not insurmountable, Elizabeth posited “if the uni moved down the road, and we can’t walk there… [EU] would probably ask [another local school]… They really just need students for their pre-service teachers to practice [teaching] on.” This suggests that, to EU, ES was replaceable should circumstances make the partnership a little more difficult.

Deep Multiple Partnerships At Kangaroo Paw High School, Keith actively pursued multiple partnerships with nearby universities, including a deep connection to Koala Fern University, to address KS’ need for staff related to the recent growth of the school. Keith spoke about

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the “collaboration between the universities” in the area, which facilitated KS’s partnerships with Koala Fern, Stringybark, Hazelwood, and Macadamia Universities. Being involved in multiple partnerships served varied purposes, as “each university has different research strengths or interests” (Keith). As Kylie noted, One thing [Keith] does well, [he] likes to play the field… but I think that’s really smart. He does have a really strong partnership with [KU], but I know he does with [Stringybark University] as well. And he dabbles in what suits this school and this need best. And I think that’s actually great.

Given its size and staffing needs as a large and growing school, KS had the capacity to maintain multiple deep and distinct partnerships with various universities, which enabled them to tailor those connections and the associated activities based on school need and university interest. This approach, where one school seeks and maintains multiple distinct partnerships with varied universities, is unique in the academic literature (Green et al., 2020).

Broad Multiple Partnerships In a similar vein, Bottlebrush Independent School also maintained multiple schooluniversity partnerships with institutions in their local area (including Banksia University) as well as further afield. In this instance, the connections were separate from one another, with differing levels of depth across the various institutions. BS’ location in the centre of a major city, with multiple universities “just on our doorstep” (Barbara), contributed to their multiplicity of partnerships. BS’s “international focus” (Brian) as an independent school led to partnerships with universities in Canada (Goldenrod University) and USA (Foxglove University). Barbara spoke briefly about the “very close relationship” between BS and nearby Melaleuca University, wherein “teachers get opportunities to go [on campus] for initiatives, or to bring students into their spaces for… their education programs.” Bernadette, as part of her leadership role, had been continuing to “looking for future opportunities” with Melaleuca University and Cycad University in particular, to “try and increase that partnership.”

Section Summary and Implications As can be seen in the four school-university partnerships in this multiple-case study, there are many ways that a school can partner with a university—or indeed, with multiple universities. Examining other cases would likely reveal further ways that these connections could be categorised and depicted. Here, the matrix of depth, breadth, and multiplicity offers insight into how partnerships may differ based on the institutions involved and their needs. In each case, the partnership connections— whether deep or broad, singular or multiple—made sense for the given context.

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Consider: What partnership connections have you, or could you, pursue—thinking about your context, capacity, and needs?

Initiators and Drivers of the Partnerships With few exceptions, the trend in the literature is to identify university-based teacher academics as the party that initiates a given school-university partnership (Gutierrez et al., 2019; Jones & Green, 2023; Manton et al., 2020). Manton et al. (2020) critique “a key difference between schools and universities that is largely overlooked in policy: universities are mandated to work in this space; schools are not” (p. 7). Additionally, partnerships initiated and driven by schools may be less likely to be reported in academic literature. Conversely, this study has intentionally focused on the school side of school-university partnerships to reveal instances of schools initiating and driving these partnerships, as well as schools working in tandem with their university partners.

School as Initiator: KS-KU Partnership Kangaroo Paw High School gave a clear example of a school initiating a schooluniversity partnership and associated activities. As a growing school in a low socioeconomic area, KS executive determined that partnerships with local universities could serve the school’s staffing needs by “breaking down that [negative] perception to the reality… which is that it’s a well-run school” (Keith). Alongside establishing partnerships with KU and other local universities, KS had a strong focus on “building the staffing capacity within the school” (Keith). To this end, KS independently developed a variety of activities such as their early career teacher mentoring program that “started getting noticed by the universities as well” (Keith). Other activities were developed and implemented within the KS-KU partnership, such as a community of practice between KU academics and KS senior teachers, or Keith’s involvement in the KU Advisory Group. From Keith’s perspective, KU’s role in these instances was as a critical friend who “can view things from the outside from a different perspective.” The power that KS wielded in the school-university partnership with KU, as well as its partnerships with other local universities, is unique in the academic literature. Andreasen et al. (2019) lamented that “collaborations between [schools and universities] are too often based on traditional, hierarchical relationships, with weak school integration in the evaluation and development of teacher education” (p. 2). The fact that Keith approached the universities as part of the school’s long-term strategy to recruit high calibre graduate teachers, rather than a university approaching the school to facilitate placements, may have a role in the agency that KS experienced in their school-university partnerships (Sewell et al., 2018).

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University as Initiator: ES-EU Partnership Within the context of long-standing relationships between university and school staff, the ES-EU partnership and activities have primarily been initiated by Emu-bush University staff. This is a common approach within school-university partnerships with a primary “focus around the provision of learning and teaching experiences for pre-service teachers” (Manton et al., 2020, p. 5). Emily explained that one of the partnership activities began when the university invited the [ES] students to go [to the EU campus] … They would have different activities where the [ES] students would move around different tables and there’d be different cultural stations, where they’d move around and learn about the culture, and taste the food, and that kind of thing. So that happened for three years, and then… [an EU colleague] contacted [one of the teachers] at the school and said, “We’d still love to have a partnership, is there any way that we can come to you?” And then, it just developed from there.

While the activity quickly became a collaborative effort between a team of ES teachers and the EU colleague “to make sure that the experience was valuable for both” (Elizabeth), the initiator was EU. Similarly, the Science partnership activity (with PSTs preparing and teaching Science lessons to ES students at the school) originated with EU action, as Elena described: Last year we were approached by [a colleague at EU] … who had a Science group [of PSTs] … He wanted them to plan and put into practice a lesson… So [the PSTs] took the lesson with the [ES students] over two separate days… [The EU colleague] was really good, because there was lots of backwards and forwards. He came in and met with me first of all – what would we need, and what would we suggest – and then I think he did a lot of planning with the [PSTs].

Elena was particularly keen to generate further connections with EU because of the value she saw the partnership activities added to the learning experiences of both ES and EU students. However, her interest in initiating connections and activities was often quashed by the difficulty she encountered in identifying and contacting appropriate EU staff: “I’ve tried to do it, and then I just think, ‘Oh, I don’t have the time to waste on this, I’m not getting anywhere.’” It is important to note that although EU was the main initiator in the ES-EU partnership, ES held their own ground when they disagreed with EU’s position or actions. A clear example of this was ES’ refusal to take 4th year PSTs for placements after seeing the way that the PSTs were overloaded with preparing for exams and a capstone assessment alongside their placement teaching responsibilities. This aligns with Helleve and Ulvik’s (2019) assertion that “disagreement should be based on agency and respect” (p. 1) and indicates that the ES-EU partnership was not so controlled by university staff that “teachers [felt] voiceless and powerless in the partnership” (Phelps, 2019, p. 11). As Esther stated, “We’re not going to be backward in coming forward,” with Elizabeth in particular speaking assertively to EU staff when needed.

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Collaborative Initiation: GS-GU Partnership One example of a more collaborative approach was evident at Grevillea Primary School, where there was a pattern of GS identifying a need related to PSTs then GU offering joint action to address it. The catalyst for establishing the GS-GU partnership was a series of school-based conversations between Glenys and Georgina about how PSTs were “coming to us, they don’t seem ready. They can go out and they can teach, that’s fine, but how can we support them to… have [placements] that are more meaningful and have them ready” (Georgina). These conversations led Glenys and Georgina to speak with their colleague at GU, who suggested that GS and GU work in partnership to implement a PST volunteer program that GU had used with other schools. This pattern continued as new activities within the partnership were generated: We said [to GU], “We’re noticing your [PSTs], they do great assessments, but they don’t quite understand how that assessment fits into the big picture of the… unit, and what you’re doing…” So [GU] came and filmed us talking about what we do and why we do it and how we do it, and they’re playing that to the [PSTs] now as part of their [ITE] courses. (Gemma)

This pattern demonstrated the respect that GU had for GS as partners in educating their PSTs and as experts in the teaching profession (Sewell et al., 2018). As Gemma expressed: “The university’s interest and involvement in our school [means that] we feel valued, that they recognise that we know what we’re doing and that we are leaders in our field.”

Collaborative Initiation: BS-BU Partnership At Bottlebrush Independent School, Bernadette was very clear that the partnership began collaboratively through her conversations with a colleague at BU: One of the things that we noticed in both… from [his] end [at BU] … where he’s in the actual education of [PSTs], and to us [at BS] seeing [PSTs] come in, is that they needed more time in the classroom… So we looked at different ways, and we saw huge benefit to when the [PSTs] are here, both for them as well as for the teacher. There’s a lot of reciprocal learning happening.

While recognising that in most cases one partner or the other will take the lead, Jones and Chittleborough (2018) note that “it is also possible for a partnership to emerge from a mutual idea grown through professional conversation” (p. 115), as was the case in the BS-BU partnership. There were some activities connected to the BS-BU partnership where the university maintained power, such as when Brian indicated he was waiting for an invitation from BU to visit the BU campus and discuss professional development goal setting with PSTs. However, for the most part, this was a shared partnership where both parties had equal footing (Sewell et al., 2018). After all, as Brian made clear, “We wouldn’t stick in a partnership that was [unequal] like that.”

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Section Summary and Implications Looking at these four cases, it is clear that a school-university partnership can be initiated by either the school, the university, or both in tandem. Several other chapters in this book explore how school-university partnerships can be initiated, with attention given to brokering connections and relationships as well as negotiating initial obstacles. As seen in this chapter, how the partnership begins and who drives its activities can have some influence on how power is held or shared within the partnership—though not definitively so. Within school-university partnerships attention needs to be paid to who has agency in the partnership and how power can be shared among equal partners. Consider: How have your partnerships begun, or how will you seek to initiate a partnership? Who is/will be listened to, and when?

Relationships As was found in the systematic literature review (Green et al., 2020), relationships between and among personnel at the partner institutions were key factors of partnership success. Deep individual connections between one or two staff members at the schools and universities were common, such as the links between Georgina and her GU colleague, and Bernadette and her BU colleague. These relationships were also recognised as being dynamic, changing and developing over time, and accommodating (within institutional constraints). For the teachers at BS, ES, and KS, their relatively limited connections to their partner universities were in many ways compensated for by the actions of Bernadette and Brian, Elizabeth, and Keith (respectively).

One-on-One Relationships The partnerships between schools and universities in this study often had at their core one-on-one relationships between individuals. These relationships helped to establish the partnerships: “It’s the classic ‘who you know’ kind of thing” (Brian). They also sustained the partnership and smoothed over issues, as Georgina pointed out when discussing how a “hiccough” threatened to hinder the GS-GU partnership: “The relationship is very positive. In fact, [our colleague at GU] said she was so upset when she heard we’d been put out that she wanted to cry. We know we have a strong relationship there.” As noted in the systematic literature review (Green et al., 2020), much of the academic literature identifies individual relationships that were key to the success of a given school-university partnership, and this was also true for the cases in this study.

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The significance of these relationships to the success of the partnerships in this study feeds into questions regarding the sustainability of school-university partnerships. Indeed, Manton et al. (2020) are “critical of school-university partnerships that [are] largely the result of connections between particular individuals, rather than systemic processes” (p. 3). Brian remarked, “with a lot of partnerships… it often does hinge around personalities, and individuals… This isn’t anything about me, but for example if I left [BS] I don’t know if [the partnership with Foxglove University] would continue.” The impact of personnel changes on partnership sustainability has been discussed in other studies, such as Traynor and Tully (2019) who found that partnerships “benefited where the personnel were consistent throughout the life span of the project [while] challenges were more acute when there were changes to personnel assigned to the partnership” (p. 1). Conversely, Edward explained that although initially the ES-EU partnership seemed dependent on his and Elizabeth’s relationships with particular EU staff, “I would think that we could leave now, and it would still be as big…It’s got its own momentum now, it will just keep rolling… That’s a really good thing.”

Dynamic, Evolving Relationships The relationships between school and university staff in these school-university partnerships were certainly not static or fixed; they evolved over time and introduced new people as the partnerships developed. This was in part by necessity, as personnel changes occurred. Brian mused that universities “change their staff all the time… It can be really hard!” Similarly, Elizabeth noted that “I have to keep meeting all these new people” in her role as in-school co-ordinator of the ES-EU partnership. Manton et al. (2020) suggest that this may be tied to the increasing trend of casualisation in tertiary education institutions, further pondering: “Given these high rates of casual workers, it is worth considering how partnership work can be enduring, when the employment of the teacher educator is not enduring” (p. 6). Nevertheless, there were indications from Brian, Bernadette, and Elizabeth that personnel changes had been successfully navigated in their respective partnerships, as with other partnerships described in the literature (Nettleton & Barnett, 2016). Jones et al. (2016) recognise that “relationships strengthen over time [and that] as partnerships mature, there tends to be a greater willingness to commit to a more active involvement” (p. 114). This could be seen in the GS-GU partnership, which had enjoyed “stable relationships with the university… you’re not dealing with different people, like a staff turnover, every time” (Glenys). Looking ahead, Glenys suggested additional activities that could be a part of the GS-GU partnership in the future, such as a professional learning community between school and university staff. She noted, It’s about three years on, four years maybe that we’ve been working with [GU]… So the time’s right. You sort of feel your way in the beginning. It’s working for us, and it’s working for them, so now let’s go to the next step.

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Glenys’s comments, along with other partnership activity suggestions made by Gemma and Gretchen, indicated the maturity of the GS-GU partnership and associated willingness of teachers to be actively involved. Allowing for the “ebb and flow to engaged partnership work” (Dresden et al., 2016, p. 65) enabled the partnerships in this study (and the relationships within those partnerships) to be dynamic and evolve as circumstances changed.

Accommodating Relationships In the context of these relationships, school staff were able to negotiate various elements of the school-university partnerships to accommodate differing needs and perspectives. Elizabeth and Keith were invited to high-level meetings with university staff at EU and KU respectively, “to have input into what was happening… from a school’s perspective” (Elizabeth). Georgina was confident that “If [GS] wants anything from [GU], [our GU colleague] would help us out with it.” This type of reciprocal dialogue facilitates the “equal status between members of the two groups, who reside at different institutions yet both work toward the common goal of educating future teachers” (Andreasen et al., 2019, p. 8). The opportunities (or lack thereof) for flexibility from university partners were demonstrated in Edward’s somewhat conflicting discussion of the timing of an ES-EU partnership activity. Edward made this statement: [EU] semester structure is… right in the middle of our NAPLAN [a nation-wide standardised assessment for school students] testing time… so it just takes a bit of time just to coordinate that. But really, the university are pretty good about it. If we have to send different groups [of ES students] at different times, they accommodate us. [Our colleague at EU] and the uni have been pretty good. They understand that we have that other pressure.

Shortly after, Edward continued: Well, [EU] don’t have flexibility in their times!... Their semester [and] our terms don’t match. So they have three weeks at the end of their semester, which just so happen to be the three weeks of our Term 2 which is NAPLAN. But they can’t change their semesters, they’re locked in.

These apparently contradictory statements from Edward—that EU accommodates ES’ needs, but ultimately does not change—can be interpreted as a clash between responsive and accommodating individuals at the university, and a slowto-change institution. As Phelps (2019) asserts, school and university partners need to “coordinate across differing work calendars and work tempos… and reconcile differing governance and decision-making structures” (p. 8). Although speaking with academics from GU, KU, EU, and BU was beyond the scope of this project, it may well be that they would resonate with this frustration regarding “the constraints of higher education scheduling and traditional faculty autonomy [that] often hinder opportunities for innovative teaching arrangements, interdisciplinary collaboration, and authentic learning experiences” (Cranston-Gingras et al., 2019, pp. 30–31).

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Limited Connections for Teachers When considering their connections to university staff, particularly for the purpose of supporting PSTs on placements, some of the teachers in this study wished they had a more substantial relationships with the university liaison. Although the specific role description and term used may vary between universities, in general the university liaison is employed by the university to support PSTs and their supervising teachers during a placement, particularly if issues arise (Allen & Turner, 2012). As Elena explained, There was a time when the [university liaisons] would be here quite regularly, and you would be in touch with them. But I think with my last [PST on placement], I don’t think I ever spoke to a person from the university… When you’re on my end, I worry, “Do I ring them? Is it bad enough to ring them?” To me, if I’m getting in touch with [the university liaison], I feel like it’s reached the end point… If they’re just casually coming through, you’re more likely to just have a little chit-chat and discuss [the PST’s progress], and then see whether to do anything.

In a similar fashion, Kathryn and Kayla lamented their limited relationship with the university liaisons for PSTs on placements: Kayla: I think one issue I have noticed is sometimes the university liaisons will come when your pre-service teacher is meant to be teaching. They won’t organise… to see [the PST] when they have the time available [to speak with them.] Kathryn: But also, I think it’s important and what I think is kind of lacking is your time with that liaison, because if you want to have a private conversation without that student, that can be a little awkward. Kayla: Or even a connection with them. You don’t have [the university liaisons’] email, you don’t have any connection with them… Kathryn: Yeah, your connection is through [the PST].

In contrast, GS has been fortunate to work with “the same [GU] people, year after year” (Glenys). As the GS teachers discussed, Gemma: The university [staff], because they do have contact with us, it’s easy to be able to ask them and say, “This is what I’m thinking…” Grace: “Have I got the right track?” Gemma: And they’re very approachable. Gavin: They’re on the front foot too, they’re touching base quickly and early.

Even though some teachers were disappointed that they didn’t have closer relationships with the university liaisons to support PSTs on placements, they did acknowledge the ways that any shortcomings were compensated for by the in-school coordinator. Kathryn pointed out that in lieu of a close connection with the university liaison, Keith was a good sounding board when teachers were questioning the competency of a PST. Similarly, Elena conceded that “I haven’t really had need to contact [the university liaisons] about something serious. I have ummed and ahhed at times [about] whether it was serious, but then again [Elizabeth] would [be] … the one to go

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to.” This aligns with findings from Allen and Turner (2012) that “the [in-school coordinator] is the ‘go to’ person within the teaching school for all involved, namely, the pre-service teacher, school staff and leaders and the university co-ordinator” (p. 6).

Section Summary and Implications The four cases described here echo a key theme about the significance of relationships that can also be seen within academic literature about school-university partnerships (Green et al., 2020). At the heart of each school-university partnership, and likewise at the centre of the institutions involved, are people. It is the connections between individuals that spark, support, and sustain these partnerships in the short- and longterm. These relationships are dynamic, not static, and may be transferred (with care) to another interested individual if needed. In a cyclical fashion, working alongside one another in partnership can develop the trust that is necessary for ongoing work in partnership. Consider: How can you deepen the relationships with key people in your partnerships while also ensuring that the partnership doesn’t rest solely on their shoulders (and therefore could continue if they weren’t there)?

Voluntary Participation In each case, participants made clear that an individual’s involvement in the schooluniversity partnership was voluntary—teachers could choose whether (or not) they wanted to be involved in partnership activities. Reading against the grain gave deeper insight in this area, as it allowed the researcher to determine whether executive and in-school co-ordinator participants’ assertions that teachers could decline to be involved in partnership activities were supported by the teacher participants themselves. For instance, Esther’s (principal at Eucalyptus Primary School) comment that “I always say [involvement] is voluntary, because there is additional thinking and workload to it” was supported by Elena’s (teacher at Eucalyptus Primary School) acknowledgement that “You could definitely say, ‘I just don’t want to do it’” without repercussions. Of the four schools, GS and BS operated on an ‘opt-in’ system, while KS and ES used an ‘opt-out’ approach (particularly for supervising PSTs on placements). Georgina indicated that while “there’s an expectation that [GS teachers] give it a go” and teachers “know my expectation is, and [Glenys’s], that I want them to have a preservice teacher,” she invited colleagues involvement by asking “Who’s ready for one next year, who wants to take on a [PST]?” The GS teachers’ comments reflected this, recognising that involvement is “completely voluntary” (Gemma) and “has to be a choice for staff” (Gretchen). The same was true at BS, where staff were asked “‘Who wants one?’” (Barbara). In contrast, Elizabeth described asking her colleagues, “‘Is there anyone here who feels like they cannot possibly have [a PST]?’ And that would

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have been just how I worded it! ‘Cannot possibly.’” Elena reflected that “I don’t think you were ever asked. ‘We’re all having 4th year [PSTs]’, you know, and that’s it, that’s how it will be. So you just go along then… You just know that you’re going to have [PSTs].” Employing a similar opt-out approach, Keith explained that he would ask his colleagues, “‘Who doesn’t want a pre-service teacher?’ because that’s going to be far easier for me to handle than ‘Who does’… We’ve got about five people who say ‘No,’ and two hundred who say ‘Yes’.” However, Kylie reflected on a potential problem with this approach: “There are a number of people who take pre-service teachers, not necessarily for the same motivations that we have. And do [the PSTs] get the same experience as perhaps the people that we know are invested in it? No.” Some teacher colleagues, participants posited, may be incentivised by the increased pay associated with supervising PSTs on placement, with Barbara noting that this payment is “not very much… It doesn’t equate to the time I put into it—at all! But, it helps.” The question of a teacher’s suitability for partnership activities is important to consider, with Nettleton and Barnett (2016) advocating that school leaders “scrupulously ensure that only their best, nurturing, and skilled teachers are serving as mentors” (p. 25) to PSTs. For example, Edward and Glenys both mentioned a reluctance to put PSTs with early career teachers who “have enough on their own plate” (Glenys). A different approach was seen at KS, where the early career teacher mentoring program supported Kayla, Kaden, Kevin, and Kane—all with less than five years teaching experience—to mentor PSTs. Kane saw this as a vote of confidence from Keith as deputy principal, because “if he’s [saying], ‘Do you want a PST? There’s one if you want one,’ then I feel like there’s something we’ve got to offer for a [PST]. Otherwise, I feel we probably wouldn’t get those offers… yet.” Kylie did indicate that Keith “doesn’t let some people have [PSTs].” While Keith did not offer further detail on this matter, his reasons may have been similar to Glenys who acknowledged, We’ve got to be careful… You [don’t want to] put [a PST] with someone who might really be a negative person… about the [education] system… You [also] don’t want to put a pre-service teacher with somebody who does just enough work to… get by every day…. Why would I put a pre-service teacher there, because I’m giving them a false sense of [the profession].

Leaders needed to negotiate these issues carefully, because “if someone doesn’t get a pre-service teacher now, they think that they’ve done something wrong or they’re being punished” (Keith), even if the reality was “there’s just no [PSTs] in the subjects you teach” (Kathryn). Ultimately, the participants in this study indicated that they, and their colleagues, were willing to be involved in the school-university partnerships and associated activities. Some participants recognised that “It’s always the same people that say ‘Yes’” (Barbara), with Glenys providing further elaboration: “It tends to be the same [teachers] that put their hands up straight away, the ones that probably have thought about it, and philosophically align about nurturing the future [of the profession].” Others noted that this positive attitude was embedded across the whole school: “One of the things that the pre-service teachers note when they come here is how willing,

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not just their supervisor, but all staff are to help them out” (Keith). This aligns with Mason’s (2013) findings that “most teachers would consider becoming more involved [in ITE programs] if given the opportunity” (p. 572).

Section Summary and Implications The fact that participation in partnership activities was voluntary, with individuals able to choose to accept or decline the invitation, was important to teachers and school leaders across all four cases in this study. Some of the schools used an ‘opt-in’ and others used an ‘opt-out’ approach, which may influence who gets involved. Nevertheless, the school leaders needed to be mindful of who they might choose to (not) involve in the partnership activities, and how they communicated that to their colleagues. Ultimately, the participants in this study were willingly and enthusiastically involved in the activities of their respective school-university partnerships. Consider: What options are given to you, or do you give to others, regarding involvement in partnership activities? Are the ‘right’ people involved?

Funding While money was needed for some partnership activities—for instance, to hire buses for ES students to visit the EU campus—on the whole each school-university partnership in this study operated without significant funding. Gutierrez et al. (2019) suggest that this puts the partnership and stakeholders at risk of exhaustion and unsustainability, with Manton et al. (2020) recognising “a theme throughout the literature… that [school-university partnerships] are enabled, and reliant on, goodwill” (p. 7). While recognising that money could hypothetically hinder her involvement in the future, Georgina was clear that to support the GS-GU partnership “I don’t need money, because our teachers are the resources. Our knowledge is the resources.” This suggests that for those seeking to establish school-university partnerships, a lack of funding need not necessarily prevent the partnership from developing. As Bernadette noted, “it’s a partnership that, to start, takes so little. It started with a conversation. I think, probably, that’s something we need to be doing more and more.”

Section Summary and Implications The four cases in this study are examples of school-university partnerships that operate without significant funding. They thereby demonstrate that it is possible for partnerships to be sustained over several years (for the cases in this study, 4– 20+ years) without external resources. However, in the systematic literature review (Green et al., 2020), non-existent or insecure funding “caused difficulties for the provision of certain activities and personnel, and cast a shadow on the future of the

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partnerships” (p. 418). A balance thereby needs to be found between waiting for funding (which may never be granted) and burning out staff by relying on goodwill. Consider: Is funding (or lack thereof) helping or hindering your school-university partnership—whether the partnership is in the early stages of development, or seeking sustainability over the long-term?

Conclusion The examples given in this chapter, drawn from a multiple-case study, demonstrate that there are a wide range of possible ways that schools and universities can partner together. The matrix of depth, breadth, and multiplicity offers a framework for exploring what approach might best suit the needs and interests of the institutions involved, enabling context-sensitive decisions. Likewise, the initiators and drivers of these partnerships can be the school, the university, or both in tandem, with implications for the agency of those involved. These four cases echo broader literature about the significance of relationships within school-university partnerships, particularly those that are responsive to change. Further, they speak to the value of voluntary involvement and the need (or otherwise) for funding and resources to sustain a partnership. The discussion in this chapter regarding these four cases can be used as a springboard to consider what implications these findings may have for other schooluniversity partnerships. The subsequent chapters in this book continue to explore the diversity of approaches within school-university partnerships, why those involved are involved, and how such partnerships can be created and sustained.

References Allen, J. M., & Turner, D. (2012, December 2–6). School practitioners’ and university staff members’ perceptions of the pre-service teacher education practicum: A comparative study. In Joint Australia Association for Research in Education and Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association Conference. Sydney, NSW. Andreasen, J. K., Bjørndal, C. R. P., & Kovaˇc, V. B. (2019). Being a teacher and teacher educator: The antecedents of teacher educator identity among mentor teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 85, 281–291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.05.011 Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2016). Census of population and housing: Socio-economic indexes for areas (SEIFA) 2016. Australian Bureau of Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods (5th ed.). Oxford University Press. Cranston-Gingras, A., Alvarez McHatton, P. M., Allsopp, D. H., Colucci, K., Hoppey, D., & Hahn, S. (2019). Breaking the mold: Lessons learned from a teacher education program’s attempt to innovate. The New Educator, 15(1), 30–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2018.1430880 Davis, B., & Sumara, D. (2012). Fitting teacher education in/to/for an increasingly complex world. Complicity, 9(1), 30–40. https://doi.org/10.29173/cmplct16531

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Dresden, J., Blankenship, S. S., Capuozzo, R. M., Nealy, A. U., & Tavernier, M. D. (2016). What is a PDS? Reframing the conversation. School-University Partnerships, 9(3), 64–80. Green, C. A. (2021). Partnering in the third space: What motivates teachers’ and school leaders’ involvement in school-university partnerships? [Ph.D. thesis, University of Wollongong]. https:// ro.uow.edu.au/theses1/1158/ Green, C. A. (2024). The influence of school culture on school-university partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Green, C. A., & Eady, M. J. (in press). Australian school-university partnerships: Shining examples that meet and exceed policy discourse. In J. Dresden, J. Ferrara, J. E. Neapolitan, D. YendolHoppey, J. S. Beck, M. Z. Faison, S. Janis, L. Provinzano, & L. Rutten (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of school-university partnerships. Cambridge University Press. Green, C. A., Tindall-Ford, S. K., & Eady, M. J. (2020). School-university partnerships in Australia: A systematic literature review. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 48(4), 403–435. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2019.1651822 Gutierrez, A., Young, K., & Jordan, K. (2019). Exploring what it means to be a professional in partnerships: Reflecting on teacher educator narratives. In A. Gutierrez, J. Fox, & C. Alexander (Eds.), Professionalism and teacher education: Voices from policy and practice (pp. 91–115). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7002-1_5 Helleve, I., & Ulvik, M. (2019). Tutors seen through the eyes of mentors assumptions for participation in third space in teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 42(2), 228–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2019.1570495 Jones, M., & Chittleborough, G. (2018). Growing university-school partnerships. In L. Hobbs, C. Campbell, & M. Jones (Eds.), School-based partnerships in teacher education: A research informed model for universities, schools and beyond (pp. 99–122). Springer. https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-981-13-1795-8_6 Jones, M., Hobbs, L., Kenny, J. D., Campbell, C., Chittleborough, G., Gilbert, A., Herbert, S., & Redman, C. (2016). Successful university-school partnerships: An interpretive framework to inform partnership practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 60, 108–120. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.tate.2016.08.006 Jones, S. E., & Green, C. A. (2023). The current nature of Australian school-university partnerships: A literature review. In M. Winslade, T. Loughland, & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Work-integrated learning case studies in teacher education (pp. 61–79). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-653 2-6_6 Manarin, K. (2018). Close reading: Paying attention to student artifacts. In N. L. Chick (Ed.), SoTL in action: Illuminating critical moments of practice (pp. 100–108). Stylus. Manton, C., Heffernan, T., Kostogriz, A., & Seddon, T. (2020). Australian school-university partnerships: The (dis)integrated work of teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2020.1780563 Mason, K. O. (2013). Teacher involvement in pre-service teacher education. Teachers and Teaching, 19(5), 559–574. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2013.827366 Nettleton, K. F., & Barnett, D. (2016). Gatekeeper or lynchpin? The role of the principal in schooluniversity partnerships. School-University Partnerships, 9(1), 20–29. Phelps, D. (2019). The challenges of bridging the research-practice gap through insider-outsider partnerships in education. Teachers College Record, 121(12), 1–28. Robinson, O. C. (2014). Sampling in interview-based qualitative research: A theoretical and practical guide. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11(1), 25–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887. 2013.801543 Sewell, A., Cody, T.-L., Weir, K., & Hansen, S. (2018). Innovations at the boundary: An exploratory case study of a New Zealand school-university partnership in initial teacher education. AsiaPacific Journal of Teacher Education, 46(4), 321–339. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2017. 1402294 Traynor, J., & Tully, D. (2019). Discovering together. Teachers College Record, 121(12), 1–34.

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Willis, L.-D., Grimmett, H., & Heck, D. (2018). Exploring co-generativity in initial teacher education school-university partnerships using the methodology of metalogue. In J. Kriewaldt, A. Ambrosetti, D. Rorrison, & R. Capeness (Eds.), Educating future teachers: Innovative perspectives in professional experience (pp. 49–69). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-548 4-6_4 Zeichner, K. M. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 89–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347671

Dr. Corinne A. Green is an early career researcher and educator. She is a Lecturer in Academic Development with the Teaching Innovation Unit at the University of South Australia where she prompts educators to be intentional in their approach to teaching and learning. Corinne completed her Ph.D. in teacher education at the University of Wollongong, exploring what motivates teachers and school leaders to be involved in school-university partnerships. She has relished opportunities to collaborate with local and international colleagues on various projects in the field of teacher education and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Part II

Value and Benefits of School-University Partnerships

Chapter 3

Invitations, Impact, and Involvement: Tales from Successful School-University Partnerships in STEM and STEAM in Australian Schools Jane L. Hunter

Introduction Educators are people who learn from teaching, rather than people who have finished learning how to teach. (Darling-Hammond, 2000, p. 166)

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed most governments’ education priorities. Teacher shortages, centralised systemic education policies, preferences for think-tank advice, decreasing initial teacher education (ITE) enrolments, and the scarcity of placements for ITE professional experience continue to challenge the flourishing of well-funded school-university partnerships (Fitzgerald et al., 2019; Gallop, 2019; Manton et al., 2020). In Australia, a recent systematic review of the literature by Green et al. (2020) reported on 59 sources of school-university partnerships that seek to develop pre-service teachers (PSTs) through authentic in situ professional learning experiences within ITE programs. Internationally, school-university partnerships that utilise the expertise of both academics and schoolteachers have been implemented to bridge the theory-practice divide within ITE programs, where sustained time in schools is a priority (Cochran-Smith et al., 2020; Forgasz, 2016). Most of these kinds of school-university partnerships in ITE and the factors responsible for their success have not been explored in depth. The benefits associated with them, as well as the directives issued by government bodies regarding their use in ITE, provide impetus for future research (Green et al., 2020). Another strand of teacher professional learning (TPL) promoting schooluniversity partnerships is to serve the ongoing growth of in-service teachers (ISTs). The term “professional learning” used throughout this chapter refers to the processes J. L. Hunter (B) University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_3

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and experiences that teachers engage with to develop their practice; while “professional development” describes structured learning activities for teachers, sometimes one-off but preferably ongoing and well resourced. There are many significant examples of inquiry-based practices for TPL in schools (Campbell & Groundwater-Smith, 2009; Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2006; Sachs, 2018). However, rather worryingly in Australia, substantial government funding for education research to support in-service TPL in school-university partnerships are scant, leaving individual schools, school systems and university partners to find their own resources (Gallop, 2019; Hogan & Williamson, 2022; Mulheron, 2022). The quote from Darling-Hammond (2000) that commences the chapter is referenced by Alan Reid (2019) in his book Changing Australian Education: How Policy Is Taking Us Backwards and What Can Be Done About It. Reid argues that if it’s the task of ISTs to develop in children and young people learning dispositions and capacities to think critically, flexibly, and creatively, then they must possess and model these capacities themselves. This means creating cultures of inquiry and research instead of yet more instruments of measurement and accountability (Rizvi et al., 2022). This position is central to the school-university partnerships I have fostered, led, and researched for TPL over the past three decades (Groundwater-Smith & Hunter, 2000; Hunter, 2015, 2017a, 2020, 2021; Hunter & O’Brien, 2018). In this chapter, I detail three research studies in the form of tales based on sustained TPL conducted through school-university partnerships with 59 ISTs at 14 school sites in NSW (Hunter, 2021). I focus on partnerships with teachers who are already employed and working full-time in Australian public schools, not PSTs per se. However, there are elements common to both types of partnerships.

Setting the Scene Through Invitations, Impact, and Involvement The research findings and data detailed in the tales that follow arose from invitations to me from groups of school principals who pooled their financial resources for each TPL school-university partnership. Over a four-year period, teams of ISTs from each of the 14 schools volunteered to participate in TPL programs through a series of action research studies. The first two TPL school-university partnerships were conducted over one school term (approximately 10 weeks) and the third, longitudinal in nature, was for six terms (approximately 60 weeks over 15 months). Each study was approved by the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) and the state education regulator. More than 1500 students from the early years (ages 4–5 years) through to the primary years (ages 6–13 years) were involved. The studies were designed to impact teacher capacity and confidence in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education through bespoke TPL. In Australia, TPL in STEM is often couched in the following terms: supporting students’ abilities; engagement with and aspiration for STEM; lifting the teaching

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quality of STEM in classrooms; providing more STEM education opportunities within school systems; increasing effective partnerships with tertiary education providers, business, and industry; and building a strong evidence base (NSW Government, 2022). Fulfilling such goals, however, requires more than curriculum change and the National and Innovation Science Agenda (Department of Industry, Science and Resources, 2015), it needs the delivery of more funding (Bonnor, 2023; Ringland & Fuda, 2018). Lack of trust in the professionalism of teachers at all levels of school education has progressively diminished the importance of what practitioners know and do. It has also led to deficit narratives that divert attention away from wider sociopolitical and economic problems by focusing on the so-called weak global test or national test results that bureaucrats choose as simple, naïve, and convenient accountability targets (Larsen, 2010; Netolicky, 2020; Zhao et al., 2019). Although researchfocused school-university partnerships are effective for rebuilding trust, the following warning from Groundwater-Smith and Mockler (2007) has yet to be heeded: “While the interests of the state are undoubtedly of significance, arguably of more importance in terms of the broader project [in this case, school-university partnerships] are the interests of practitioners and the consequential stakeholders” (p. 202). In keeping with the recommendations of Altrichter et al. (1995), this action research on TPL in three school-university partnerships focused on pedagogy. It was also tested through practical action, justified ethically, and was methodologically compatible with the demands of teaching. In the following three tales, I detail the methods used to create these successful short- and long-term school-university partnerships, highlighting their contexts, the professional growth of the participants, and what it means to contribute to a TPL research study. After each tale I discuss the wider ramifications of such school-university partnerships and the role of practitioner inquiry to realign TPL with emancipatory action in education communities beyond the academy. The research questions, while not set out in detail here, drew attention to a common set of principles.

Research Focus Research in each of the TPL partnerships centred on how ISTs build their capacity and confidence in teaching STEM.1 The research methodology, largely case study, involved: . developing and testing a scalable intervention that engages younger students and taps into their innate curiosity and sense of wonder by effectively linking content to classroom learning that has real-world orientations; 1

The research questions and full findings for the TPL school-university partnerships that explore in depth the themes and examples touched on throughout this chapter can be found in High Possibility STEM Classrooms: Integrated STEM Learning in Research and Practice (Hunter, 2021). Study designs in the three TPL school-partnerships were consistent.

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. using innovative inquiry-based examples in the early and primary years contexts using the High Possibility Classrooms (HPC) framework (Hunter, 2015); and . identifying and investigating how conceptions and themes in the HPC framework might enable or hinder STEM teaching and learning, and what might optimise or constrain TPL.

Study Design All three school-university partnership research studies used mixed methods; this encompassed online pre- and post-intervention surveys and whole days of professional development that prioritised STEM education and familiarity with the HPC framework (Hunter, 2015, 2017a, 2017b, 2019; MacDonald et al., 2019). In the third study, coaching and mentoring were additional features targeting the upskilling of middle leaders who worked as coaches with more junior colleagues (coachees) in each school. Rich qualitative data was also gained from semi-structured interviews with teachers, middle leaders, and principals; focus groups with students; classroom observations; notes from coaching meetings; analyses of school policies; and an online network that connected all participants over each research period and was vital for resource and program sharing. To inform the findings, each study used the Stages of Concern survey, a Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) questionnaire tool (American Institutes for Research, 2015), NVivo 11 software for analysis of the qualitative data, and online forms for evaluations of the professional development workshops. The three tales described next serve as Australian case-study examples of selected elements of successful school-university partnerships. Small slices of data reported as findings here in each account are drawn from the larger studies (Hunter, 2021), they include verbatim quotes from teachers and principals in each partnership. It is hoped they will inform and enhance the ongoing value of such professional relationships into the future.

Tale 1: A School-University Partnership in Five Non-English Speaking Background Schools Context Five schools in a large urban city were involved in a three-month school-university partnership with an academic partner and 16 teachers in language-diverse classrooms. At each school there were significant numbers of students whose language backgrounds were not English (across the schools it varied between 90 and 95% of the total school population), although this contextual characteristic was not a

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reporting criterion. The teachers’ classroom experience ranged from one year to 25 years; within each school there was a small team (three to four teachers), they shared resources across the five schools and came together for whole days of professional learning with the academic partner and other discipline-based STEM experts from the partner’s university.

Developing Professional Capacity and Confidence The following interview excerpts exemplify how this school-university partnership used the HPC framework to generate professional capacity and confidence in STEM teaching and learning in specific ways. One teacher said their personal agency was greatly enhanced: “I am embedding STEM into my program. I feel so much more empowered and aware about bringing the disciplines together and I never would have said at the start of the term” (Teacher Oi). For others the transformation was clear: The Engineering aspect was never there in my teaching. It makes Mathematics more meaningful. STEM has highlighted how all these subjects link to one another. I would love to keep teaching this way. I think it is the way to go. I have been reading about going from Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM); Science Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics (STEAM); to Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Mathematics (STREAM). (Teacher Bi)

After three months, five of the 16 teachers still expressed reservations and doubts, saying, for instance, “I am feeling like a beginner … getting my head around the HPC conceptions. I need more up-skilling in the form of specific teacher professional learning for STEM” (Teacher Ci). Those who expressed less clarity had perceptions of weak subject matter knowledge in STEM, which they collectively attributed to their schools’ decisions to bring in specialist teachers for release time (release from face-to-face teaching) to teach Science and Mathematics content. The following comment highlights the concern: I am an experienced teacher. In the first school term, all my Science lessons were release time and I was disappointed about that. I have always enjoyed the challenge of seeing things students discover and do in ‘hands on’ ways. It’s been good to refresh my knowledge in the workshops. I have lost a lot of content knowledge and quite dramatically at speed. But because I am teaching it again, I have had to refresh my content knowledge. (Teacher Li)

Opportunities to refresh and invigorate subject matter knowledge through the partnership involving bespoke TPL workshops that drew on university-based discipline expertise in STEM were central to activating content knowledge confidence in many of the teachers.

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Cycles of Action Learning The research-driven nature of the TPL approach for STEM using cycles of action learning was challenging. Developing a relationship with an academic partner gave the teachers an effective outside voice but also raised a dilemma for them: “Being in a research project almost forced us (in a nice way) to do things that we might not have done” (Teacher Ni). Teachers drew attention to the changes they had made to their usual patterns of teaching and learning when there was an outsider observing them. As well, feedback from team members using the cycles of action learning meant they were more conscious of practice. Apart from the perennial issues of wanting more time to plan and reflect, improved resources, and better Wi-Fi connections, their responses focused on: . . . . . . . .

a sense of improved professional identity, knowing how to effectively integrate STEM by modifying existing programs, altering the layout of the classroom, taking risks with their usual teaching strategies, working in a STEM team, real attempts to teach Engineering concepts, having to learn what all the HPC conceptions meant at once, realising the topic or theme chosen for integration of multiple content areas was not a good choice, and . standing back and letting go so that students do the learning, and then knowing when and how to assist (Hunter, 2021). The following comments from teachers speak to some factors that detract from this kind of partnership: Modifying my teaching and my programming and the way my class needs to look. Now there is noise, stuff everywhere and group work. I still struggle with my new teaching style. I am happy to change and modify it. The students love STEM and STEAM, and they don’t want to leave the classroom when the bell rings. (Teacher Di) It is a real juggling act to know what to take and not to take. It has been a really great experience even though I am an experienced teacher. If I stop learning, then how can I expect the students to learn? (Teacher Ei)

Weighing up when to modify, switch, and question teaching practice takes time. However, when it forms part of a cycle of action learning that allows for planned intervention with support from an academic partner and a small team of colleagues who are also being reflective it’s less daunting (Campbell & Groundwater-Smith, 2009).

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Sometimes School-University Partnerships Are Frustrating There seems to have been an expectation that being in a school-university research partnership for TPL would not be frustrating (Hunter, 2021). This was expressed by one teacher; she had imagined it would deliver a specific teaching model for STEM and STEAM: Getting my head around STEM in general. I felt I lacked the basics. How do you develop an integrated unit? What are the strong characteristics of a great integrated STEM program? We have not had STEM conversations across our school to bring the subjects together, and I would like to have those conversations now. (Teacher Fi)

This observation links to wider notions of “what works” in school-university partnerships involving practitioner inquiry and action research methods that include pre- and post-intervention data collection; observations; interviews and meetings; coaching; content knowledge from STEM in the partner university; and site-based TPL using a pedagogical framework like HPC. What has become clear from this partnership and from other studies like it, for example, the SySTEMic Solution Project (Kloser et al., 2018) is that professional development of teachers of the early and primary years requires both short-term and continuing education, and therefore sustained involvement, to increase teacher capacity and confidence in teaching STEM (Nadelson et al., 2013).

Principals Like School-University Partnerships The principals of these five schools said that both the research experience and working with an academic partner had given them a better understanding of the relationship between learning and the possibilities of STEM (Hunter, 2021). They could see that their schools were now on “new learning journeys” that would require “changing the school timetable”.2 One principal said, “Teachers must be agile learners.” Another, who saw their invitation for staff to engage in research as “exploring, experimenting and investigating”, expressed dismay that teachers often expect their principals to provide all the answers to teaching interventions in classrooms: “Outsourcing STEM curriculum development will not support teachers having to do it themselves”. The principals saw leading staff through partnerships of this nature as a professional responsibility. Furthermore, it was their collective view that although risktaking can be hard for some teachers, these kinds of shifts in teacher mindset will be necessary for STEM to succeed at this level (MacDonald et al., 2019). The gap between the students’ learning experiences in classrooms and what they would need as they progress through life will only widen unless teachers take risks with their own teaching practices. Likewise, teachers’ deeper understanding of curriculum will only come through exposure to ongoing TPL. One principal said if schools could 2

Attribution of quotes to principals here are not given to protect anonymity.

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“work together to build middle leaders in pedagogy” this would support integrated approaches to STEM. Another said, “Teachers sometimes don’t know what they don’t know and the good work that has been accomplished during the term must be nurtured and grown.” The research partnership with an academic “outsider on the inside” provided “a chance to experiment with different kinds of pedagogy, with different integration modes and just more STEM content”. Teachers who were not previously engaged in progressing their knowledge in the STEM disciplines were now committed to doing so. This group of principals also wanted better reporting of what it means for students to be working scientifically and mathematically in schools, and they were confident this would be an outcome of the school-university partnerships. One principal said, “It is often difficult to get a deep sense of what is going on in classrooms.” They agreed that there would be a more defined distinction in the reporting requirements between English and literacy if there was a focus on STEM. When students work in new ways, setting “different expectations for classroom management” reflects a desire for good education outcomes for them. All five principals agreed that sustaining these kinds of interventions through partnerships with schools and universities is crucial because they produce “palpable increases in teacher and students’ motivation and excitement for the STEM subjects and beyond”. It is also important to build a positive school culture where teachers can readily connect to the outside world and be better positioned to ask for assistance when they are not clear about how to integrate program curriculums from multiple content areas (Hunter, 2021).

Tale 2: A School-University Partnership in Three High-Poverty Schools Context In this study, 21 teachers co-programmed, co-taught, and collaborated using authentic equipment to unleash memorable education experiences in STEM for 525 students. The teachers’ years of experience in classrooms ranged from one to 30 years. This tale offers unique insights into how parent and community involvement in STEM alongside solicited authoritative support from an academic partner was significant at three disadvantaged schools in a large urban community on the east coast of Australia.

Developing Professional Capacity and Confidence Like the first tale in this chapter, growing teacher capacity and confidence in content knowledge for STEM proved challenging. In the first weeks, seven of the teachers

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spoke about how they coped with their perceived lack of subject matter knowledge, the scaffolding of reading levels required for STEM (given some students’ fragile literacy skills), and the management of larger groups of students. One teacher said: A partnership like this would not have been possible before. I am learning as I go – I am also a life- long learner. I might say to the students, ‘I am not sure, let’s do this together’ – or I will call my brother who is an engineer. Having a team working together has made it a lot better for the whole program. Using people on our team with a scientific background meant I have gone into Science concepts more deeply – it’s so great to have specialists in the field [Science] with whom to share ideas. I am much more confident now. The second time I teach this unit will be a lot easier. (Teacher Rii)

By the end of the three-month partnership, like the comments from this teacher, most were expressing their preferences for co-teaching and working with colleagues who were strong in Science, Technology, or Mathematics, and for functioning in a small team to plan a common unit or project.

Shaping Teacher and Student Confidence in STEM The teachers’ active teamwork throughout the time of the partnership had a noticeable flow-on effect in shaping student confidence in STEM: In terms of confidence, it has been good to work together in teams and this has boosted my confidence. Students also saw good modelling with us working together and we love that they go home very excited about their STEM learning. It builds the students’ confidence and ours as well. (Teacher Cii)

It is interesting to note how one primary school teacher with undergraduate education in Science said they had finally found their teaching passion: I have a Science background. I always used a very teacher-centred approach to just Science topics before this research project … it was a real eye opener to trust the students and give them more ownership over their learning. When the students learnt how a machine works, they had to make up their own questions. Giving them more agency and letting them take you to an area where they want to learn was great. (Teacher Pii)

The strong presence of the HPC conceptions also increased 16 teachers’ levels of confidence by the end of the partnership. This was voiced in comments about the “power of using an inquiry process for STEM” (Teacher Dii). Some looked forward to stepping into more opportunities like these, as they wanted to be able to answer all student questions: I did a lot of research before I started planning and asking questions in our STEM unit. You need to know your subject matter and think about what questions students might ask. I go home and do more research at night as I want to know the answers to their questions. (Teacher Iii)

Concepts and big ideas in Engineering were still “a bit fuzzy”, although some teachers were keen to use more design processes in subsequent STEM projects.

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Comments also targeted “just in time learning” to teach a concept (“being one step ahead” was also common), and personal research (which they liked doing). The following statement illustrates this: Learning and planning at the start was great. And along the way accommodating things that happened. The core subject matter was good to learn and so I have learnt a lot – it’s been a real learning process. Eight weeks ago, I hadn’t known what the students were doing … it’s been great. (Teacher Aii)

A Few Teachers Found STEM Difficult Only two teachers out of the 21 expressed difficulties in learning content related to Science concepts. This issue has the potential to hinder how effectively STEM is taught in the primary years: The subject matter was hard for me. I was just trying to visualise the concept beforehand. And then I had to try to figure out what that all meant in practice and how much do I really need to know? (Teacher Lii) I find the problem is my knowledge is not up to speed. If I think I am right, then that is a problem. I don’t know what I don’t know. I feel that to be a good teacher in Integrated STEM my knowledge needs to far exceed the age level I am teaching. I want to be able to identify when students have those common misconceptions about, for example, scientific concept that are perpetuated in everyday life. That is the real weakness for me in how we teach STEM at this level and that’s why students don’t go on further, perhaps because the content is wrong or bastardised or because they are dissuaded from critical thought. (Teacher Mii)

Although these kinds of comments were in the minority, they expose powerful beliefs. They are reminders that in-service schoolteachers might still need ongoing support and that teacher communities in schools must be given time to process these kinds of practice requirements. Partnering with a university-based colleague expert in teacher education is a potent way to continue TPL. Also clear is that primary school teachers are willing to do the knowledge work to grow their practices and their effectiveness (English, 2016; Hunter, 2021; Reid, 2020).

Changing Usual Teaching and Learning Practices Most of the teachers in this school-university partnership acknowledged that teacher professional learning in STEM using the HPC changed their teaching and learning practices. The findings of this study may be summarised in the following eight ways (Hunter, 2021): 1. The partnership exposed the teachers to the importance of subject matter knowledge in STEM: “If you don’t know it, you need to learn it in advance of the school term, each project and lesson” (Teacher Pii).

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2. The teachers were able to examine “better way[s] to teach where a pedagogical structure mattered more than having to tick every outcome box” and to appreciate that “going deeper is better” (Teacher Qii). 3. Frequent interruptions in the school day “really break the flow for students” (Teacher Eii), and teachers of the primary years of schooling need to better monitor this. 4. The teachers began to consider that perhaps STEAM (STEM with the Arts and Humanities) is the lens through which all learning in primary schools should be conducted. 5. De-privatising practice through “co-teaching and working with an outsider or academic partner” (Teacher Sii) positively affects teachers’ professional growth. 6. The physical environment is important, especially when students need to store their work from one lesson to the next and where working in teams requires a range of classroom designs. 7. Engaging in “unstructured work” (Teacher Jii) necessitates careful and detailed design. 8. Although stepping back and taking risks with new teaching approaches may be uncomfortable, the discomfort soon dissipates with “bit of handholding with an outside person supporting us to take the first step” (Teacher Tii). In disadvantaged schools that also have high numbers of students for whom English is an additional language, basic literacy and numeracy skills are often limited (Thomson et al., 2016). STEM literacy in these schools adds another layer of complexity. It is incumbent on teachers to reflect on this hurdle and seek time-effective ways to micro-structure learning to meet student needs: It has forced me to teach in a different way. And has changed the atmosphere in the classroom. It’s much more positive. It is also a powerful way for students to learn and pretty empowering for me as a teacher. (Teacher Uii)

By the time of this partnership’s conclusion, it was clear TPL conducted as a research experience with an academic partner had renewed and invigorated the participants’ classroom practices in STEM.

Tale 3: A School-University Partnership for Middle Leadership in Six Urban Schools Context Twenty-two middle leaders worked with an academic partner in early to upper primary years classrooms in Australia’s largest city acted as coaches to build lessexperienced teachers’ professional capacity in STEM. Participation in this schooluniversity partnership positively affected the practice of coaches across each setting.

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This tale draws on longitudinal data collected over 15 months of TPL that demonstrated changes in Mathematics and Science learning outcomes of 551 students in the middle leaders’ classrooms. Such changes were attributed to radical modifications to teacher pedagogy and to the kinds of assessments the students completed. The classroom experience of the coaches in the partnership ranged from two to 30 years (Hunter, 2021).

Professional Apprehensions At the commencement of this intervention, the middle leaders had two major but related concerns (Hunter, 2021). The first was about how to audit and then structure existing programs, units of work, and projects using an integrated approach, and the second was about the lack of time in which to do it: You need someone who is invested in some way to support and plan the unit. This is a big problem we face. How do we do this when we don’t have the time? I know good planning is essential, but it is hard. (Middle Leader Aiii)

Understanding what coaching meant in the context of an integrated approach to STEM was an early hurdle: “How to do it?” and “What works?”, or “Is it about reshaping another person’s practice?” There were also questions about how to observe other colleagues and structure feedback that would be about coaching and guidance towards personal teaching goals and not solely on mentoring where colleagues share their knowledge and expertise: I am basically coaching all the time now and trying to understand whether I should reshape my coachee’s teaching practices. When we talk and reflect on what happened, I always ask them what they need from me. (Middle Leader Tiii)

Resistance was overt for four of the middle leaders, as the weight of expectations increased during the partnership. For the first six months of the intervention, fears about the planning of inquiry-based units, projects, and programs in integrated STEM were common. The difficulty in finding good information or age-appropriate resources proved another constraint. At seven months, integrating STEM became more comfortable as the middle leaders sought input from parent experts in their communities and from STEM specialists in the partner university, local industries, and museums. Over the ensuing months, conversations about the best ways to coach continued, but they expanded to include the practical aspects of STEM and “how to effectively give feedback without telling coachees what to do” (Middle Leader 0iii). As confidence grew, responses like the following became common: I feel that I am getting more into the swing of it. Letting it come from her [the coachee] and trying to support her to reflect on this process … it’s like encouraging not telling. I talked too much talk beforehand. I have stopped that. (Middle Leader Piii)

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TPL Assists Greater Reflexivity This joint enterprise between school and university demonstrated that working in a trusted initiative with a team of colleagues supported by a school-university partnership can strengthen not only professional growth but also prospects for refining and innovating practice. Bespoke TPL in STEM—more than 25 hours of face-toface learning that included on-site meetings and workshops and sharing with the other schools in the partnership—helped the middle leaders build effective programs, units of work, learning sequences (and other issues-based projects). The integration of STEM was “challenging” at times, but when the middle leaders were presented with opportunities to experiment with disrupting their “usual teaching patterns” they became successful in a relatively short period. Substantive changes to teaching practice can be notoriously slow to accomplish (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Hunter & Mitchell, 2011; Lipscombe et al., 2020). As these middle leaders shifted their roles from administration and management to pedagogical leadership and colleague development, they were supported by STEM specialists as “trusted outsiders” and, more importantly, by their encouraging principals and the teams of colleagues with whom they planned, co-taught, and de-briefed with on a regular basis. Working in teams also supported quality teaching repertoires through refinements in the middle leaders’ practices and content knowledge.

Learning from These Tales of School-University Partnerships The research snapshots shared in these tales of school-university partnerships reveal three important ways of building ISTs capacity and confidence in STEM and STEAM by involving “insiders and outsiders”. The first is participatory action research (PAR); the second is practitioner inquiry; and the third is the value of school-university academic partnerships in ongoing TPL. There is a long history of scholarship in teacher education that connects practitioner inquiry and TPL for authentic, sustained teacher learning in the workplace (Groundwater-Hustler et al., 2003; Sachs, 2011; Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2006). Calls for practitioner research have at their core both professional agency and workplace learning led by practitioners, often in partnership with others (Campbell & Groundwater-Smith, 2009). It was Grundy (1982) who initially argued for the acceptance of practitioner research as a means of addressing TPL and school improvement by making the crucial link between teacher inquiry, research, and professional learning that, according to Campbell and Groundwater-Smith (2009), “would counter overly simple solutions packaged in short courses” (p. 205). PAR springs from the works of Kurt Lewin in business and management, Paulo Freire on critical pedagogy, and Myles Horton at the Highlander School in the US (Groundwater-Smith, 2007; Kemmis et al., 2014; Somekh & Lewin, 2011). PAR

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accords with my belief that as an education researcher my partnership work with schools is about involvement in a transformative act, something noted by Kemmis and McTaggart (2005): PAR aims to transform both practitioners’ theories and practices and the theories and practices of others whose perspectives and practices may help shape the conditions of life and work in particular local settings. (p. 568)

This philosophical stance towards the conduct of research in schools has shaped the agendas I have engaged with as an academic partner throughout my education career. Connecting to traditional conceptualisations of research ethics and the ethical professional, Groundwater-Smith and Mockler (2007) suggest that practitioner research should “observe ethical protocols and processes … be transparent in its processes … collaborative in its nature … transformative in its intent and action … [and] able to justify itself to its community of practice” (p. 206), and “create actionable, actioned outcomes” (p. 207). Each of this chapter’s research tales involved a set of carefully structured processes that were designed by the academic partner in close consultation with the participating principals and teachers as a direct response to their needs at each site. This step took time. As the academic partner I was forever mindful of Rudduck’s (1992) point that school-university partnerships can be ‘liaisons dangereuses’ if each partner has different values and cultures (Hunter, 2021). In this regard, it is worth acknowledging the useful typology of McLaughlin and Black-Hawkins’s (2004) six models of school-university partnerships: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

school bound: individual teachers mentored by university “research experts”, school wide: supported by a university facilitator or critical friend, university as “expert bringer” of research to the school(s), across schools: individual teachers mentored by university “research experts”, within and between schools: supported by university facilitators and/or critical friends, and 6. within and between institutions: all partners are experts, facilitators, and critical friends to one another (p. 274). My own experience is that each permutation of a school-university partnership produces a different sort of TPL, but provided productive learning is the goal, these variations are not too significant. Underlying the distinctions of technical, practical, and emancipatory action research is a commitment to improving practice, with teacher participation sometimes involving feelings of vulnerability because of critical reflection and self-evaluation. Such reflexivity aligns with the notion of “insider knowledge”, which, in combination with the “outsider knowledge” of an academic partner or external colleague who supports and sometimes challenges the teacher’s classroom practices, can lead to powerful TPL (Campbell & Groundwater-Smith, 2010; Kirkby, 2015; McWilliam, 2009).

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Outsider to Insider Making the transition from outsider to insider demands a particular skill set, and not all teacher education academics feel comfortable with what is required, nor do they see it as part of their teaching or research responsibilities. However, because I had previously been a classroom teacher and head teacher, I felt comfortable with making that leap to becoming an academic partner. Research partnerships like those detailed in this chapter require a change in academic mindset from being “the expert in the ivory-tower” to seeing that the broader remit of TPL is to be in and of the community and deeply connected to social action and the public life of schools—that is, to connect with the moral purpose of education (Heggart, 2022; Sachs, 2018). Each of the three small-scale research projects described here enriched the professional conversations at the participating schools and produced sustainable changes to the ways STEM education was experienced there by both the participating teachers and, importantly, by their students. Capacity and confidence in STEM continue to grow at the schools. Such approaches provide opportunities for teachers and students to teach and learn in settings that require multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary boundaries to be traversed. It’s timely to reflect on Zeichner’s (2003) findings more than two decades ago that school-based research can become a transformative professional development activity for teachers. In addition, as Campbell (2011) has suggested and paraphrased here, academic colleagues participating in school-university partnerships: . . . .

create a culture of inquiry and respect for teacher knowledge, encourage learner-centred instruction, develop and control their own foci for enquiries; and engage in collaboration work and study groups for intellectual challenge and stimulation.

The power of TPL learning and development in STEM increases when it is well funded by the school or education institution and there is a PAR framework set up in a partnership with university-based colleagues.

Final Remarks The three tales related in this chapter focus on guideline 3: “Creating schooluniversity partnerships involving participatory action research and practitioner inquiry” (Hunter, 2021, p. 201) from my recent “blueprint” for High Possibility STEM schools in Australia. I acknowledge the scalability limitations of this kind of TPL work. Reaping professional benefit from this powerful approach to TPL more widely is possible, but not without extensive and sustained financial support from industry and sponsorship at the highest levels of government. For example, there are many success stories of effective, transformative enterprises with schools who invite

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university faculties, both inside and outside of teacher education, to partner with them. However, without the possibility of ongoing funding for long-term sustainability to strengthen and maintain relationships with schools, the resulting short-termism has caused problems (Kennedy, 2016). It is important to recall that many of the ideas here are not new. School-based or action research partnerships for TPL are sometimes described as smooth or mess free (Liljedahl, 2014; Sim, 2010). However, a study by Beveridge et al. (2018) of targeted large-scale, school-based action research projects funded by the Australian government over four years found that “When there is a ‘good fit’ between academic partners and schools and when structures are in place to support academic partners in their work, the academic partner role in schools can contribute to sustained educational change” (p. 1). Negotiation of expectations is important in this type of TPL, as it’s “two-way learning” and uncovering what exactly are the unique and shared aspects of the co-inquiry is essential (p. 31). From this 2018 study it became apparent that some academic partners found it difficult to put theoretical ideas into practice (the thorny theory-practice divide), including what to do with reluctant staff, the unrealistic expectations of schools to expect academics to solve their problems, and the lack of value placed by universities on these kinds of partnerships. The Australian Research Council (ARC) and its assessment measures of impact to bridge that oft remarked gap of theory and practice would benefit by including these kinds of school-university partnership metrics. Similar higher education research funding jurisdictions around the world could well do the same. However, I would argue such challenges identified by Beveridge et al. (2018) will be far outweighed by the gains to be had by schools and universities partnering more often in TPL with in-service teachers.

References Altrichter, H., Posch, P., & Somekh, B. (1995). Teachers investigate their work: An introduction to the methods of action research. Routledge. American Institutes for Research. (2015). CBAM: The concerns-based adoption model. https:// www.air.org/resource/concerns-based-adoption-model-cbam Beveridge, L., Mockler, N., & Gore, J. (2018). An Australian view of the academic partner role in schools. Educational Action Research, 26(1), 25–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2017. 1290538 Bonner, C. (2023, February 12). School reform: Shift the deck chairs, forget about the ship. Pearls and Irritations. https://johnmenadue.com/school-reform-shift-the-deck-chairs-forgetabout-the-ship/ Bryk, A., & Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. Russell Sage Foundation. Campbell, A. (2011). Connecting inquiry and professional learning: Creating the conditions for authentic, sustained learning. In N. Mockler & J. Sachs (Eds.), Rethinking educational practice through reflexive inquiry: Essays in honour of Susan groundwater-Smith (pp. 139–151). Springer. Campbell, A., & Groundwater-Smith, S. (2009). An ethical approach to practitioner research: Dealing with issues and dilemmas in action research. Routledge.

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Campbell, A., & Groundwater-Smith, S. (Eds.). (2010). Connecting inquiry and professional learning in education. Routledge. Cochran-Smith, M., Grudnoff, L., Orland-Barak, L., & Smith, K. (2020). Educating teacher educators: International perspectives. The New Educator, 16(1), 5–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/154 7688X.2019.1670309 Darling-Hammond, L. (2000). How teacher education matters. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(3), 166–173. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487100051003002 Department of Industry, Science and Resources. (2015). National and innovation science agenda report: Welcome to the ideas boom. https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/national-innova tion-and-science-agenda-report English, L. D. (2016). STEM education K–12: Perspectives on integration. International Journal of STEM Education, 3, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-016-0036-1 Fitzgerald, S., McGrath-Champ, S., Stacey, M., Wilson, R., & Gavin, M. (2019). Intensification of teachers’ work under devolution: A ‘tsunami’ of paperwork. Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(5), 613–636. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022185618801396 Forgasz, R. (2016). Rethinking the observation placement: A community/cohort approach to early professional experiences. In R. Brandenburg, S. McDonough, J. Burke, & S. White. (Eds.), Teacher education: Innovation, intervention and impact (pp. 99–116). Springer. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-981-10-0785-9_7 Gallop, G. (2019). Trust, politics and the public interest. In T. Frame (Ed.), Getting practical about the public interest. Connor Court. Green, C. A., Tindall-Ford, S. K., & Eady, M. J. (2020). School-university partnerships in Australia: A systematic literature review. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 48(4), 403–435. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2019.1651822 Groundwater-Smith, S. (2007). Student voice: Essential testimony for intelligent schools. In An ethical approach to practitioner research (pp. 129–144). Routledge. Groundwater-Smith, S., & Hunter, J. (2000). Whole school inquiry: Evidence-based practice. Journal of in-Service Education, 26(3), 583–600. Groundwater-Smith, S., & Mockler, N. (2006). Research that counts: Practitioner research and the academy. Counterpoints on the Quality and Impact of Educational Research, Special Edition of Review of Australian Research in Education, 6, 105–117. https://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/ access/services/Download/uon:9742/ATTACHMENT01 Groundwater-Smith, S., & Mockler, N. (2007). Ethics in practitioner research: An issue of quality. Research Papers in Education, 22(2), 199–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520701296171 Grundy, S. (1982). Three modes of action research. Curriculum Perspectives, 2, 23–34. Heggart, K. (2022). Australian teachers as democracy workers. In Empowering teachers and democratising schooling: Perspectives from Australia (pp. 129–142). Springer Nature Singapore. Hogan, A., & Williamson, A. (2022). Mapping categories of philanthropy in Australian public schooling. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01596306.2022.2071841 Hunter, J. (2015). Technology integration and high possibility classrooms: Building from TPACK. Routledge. Hunter, J. (2017a). Switching middle school teachers onto STEM using a pedagogical framework for technology integration: The case for High Possibility Classrooms in Australia. In L. Liu & D. D. Gibson (Eds.), Research highlights in technology and teacher education. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. Hunter, J. (2017b). High Possibility Classrooms as a pedagogical framework for technology integration in classrooms: An inquiry in two Australian secondary schools. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 26(5), 559–571. https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2017.1359663 Hunter, J. (2019). Pedagogy, leading from the middle and digital technologies: Potent forces for STEM education in Australian primary schools. Australian Educational Leader, 41(2), 26–28.

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Hunter, J. (2020). Integrated STEM in Australian public schools: Opening up possibilities for classrooms and effective teacher professional development. In Y. Li & J. Anderson (Eds.), Integrated approaches to STEM education: An international perspective. Springer. Hunter, J. (2021). High possibility STEM classrooms: Integrated STEM learning in research & practice. Routledge. Hunter, J., & Mitchell, J. (2011). The insider and outsider model of professional learning. In N. Mockler & J. Sachs (Eds.), Rethinking educational practice through reflexive inquiry. Springer. Hunter, J., & O’Brien, L. (2018). How do high school students create knowledge about improving and changing their school? A co-inquiry using digital technologies. International Journal of Student Voice, 3. http://hdl.handle.net/10453/123677 Hustler, D. N., McNamara, O., Campbell, A., Jarvis, J., Londra, M., & Howson, J. (2003). Teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development (Research Report 429). Department for Education and Skills. Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (2005). Participatory action research: Communicative action and the public sphere. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.). Sage. Kemmis, S., McTaggart., R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action research. Springer. Kennedy, M. M. (2016). How does professional development improve teaching? Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 945–980. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315626800 Kirkby, L. (2015). Leading teacher professional learning in the middle years. In S. GroundwaterSmith & N. Mockler (Eds.), Big fish, little fish: Teaching and learning in the middle years (pp. 236–250). Cambridge University Press. Kloser, M., Wilsey, M., Twohy, K. E., & Navotas, A. C. (2018). “We do STEM”: Unsettled conceptions of STEM education in middle school S.T.E.M. classrooms. School Science and Mathematics, 118(8), 335–347. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12304 Larsen, M. A. (2010). Troubling the discourse of teacher centrality: A comparative perspective. Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), 207–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930903428622 Liljedahl, P. (2014). Approaching professional learning: What teachers want. The Mathematics Enthusiast, 11(1), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.54870/1551-3440.1294 Lipscombe, K., Grice, C., Tindall-Ford, S., & De-Nobile, J. (2020). Middle leading in Australian schools: Professional standards, positions, and professional development. School Leadership and Management, 40(5), 406–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2020.1731685 MacDonald, A., Hunter, J., Wise, K., & Fraser, S. (2019). STEAM and STEAM and the spaces between: An overview of education agendas pertaining to ‘disciplinarity’ across three Australian states. Journal of Research in STEM Education, 5(1), 75–92. Manton, C., Heffernan, T., Kostogriz, A., & Seddon, T. (2020). Australian school-university partnerships: The (dis)integrated work of teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 49(3), 334–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2020.1780563 McLaughlin, C., & Black-Hawkins, K. (2004). A schools-university research partnership: Understandings, models and complexities. Journal of in-Service Education, 30(2), 265–284. McWilliam, E. L. (2009). Teaching for creativity: From sage to guide to meddler. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 29(3), 281–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188790903092787 Mulheron, M. (2022). Local schools, local decisions: A lost decade. Journal of Professional Learning, 16, 48–57. https://cpl.nswtf.org.au/journal/semester-2-2022/local-schools-local-dec isions-a-lost-decade/ Nadelson, L. S., Callahan, J., Pyke, P., Hay, A., Dance, M., & Pfiester, J. (2013). Teacher STEM perception and preparation: Inquiry-based STEM professional development for elementary teachers. The Journal of Educational Research, 106(2), 157–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/002 20671.2012.667014 Netolicky, D. (2020). Transformational professional learning. Routledge.

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NSW Government. (2022). STEM education: Guiding the direction for STEM in NSW. https://edu cation.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/stem/about-stem/guiding-the-directionfor-stem-in-nsw Reid, A. (2020). Changing Australian education: How policy is taking us backwards and what can be done about it. Routledge. Ringland, N., & Fuda, B. (2018, February 2). We have a national STEM strategy, but what we need is a successful one. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/we-have-a-national-stem-str ategy-but-what-we-need-is-a-successful-one-87088 Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., & Rinne, R. (Eds.). (2022). Reimagining globalization and education (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003207528 Rudduck, J. (1992). Universities in partnership with schools and schools systems: Les liaisons dangereuses. In M. Fullan & A. Hargreaves (Eds.), Teacher development and educational change. Falmer Press. Sachs, J. (2011). Skilling or emancipating? Metaphors for continuing teacher professional development. In N. Mockler & J. Sachs (Eds.), Rethinking educational practice through reflexive inquiry. Professional learning and development in schools and higher education (Vol. 7). Springer. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0805-1_11 Sachs, J. (2018). Teacher professionalism: Why are we still talking about it? Teachers and Teaching, 22(4), 413–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2015.1082732 Sim, C. (2010). Sustaining productive collaboration between faculties and schools. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 35(5), 18–28. Somekh, B., & Lewin, C. (Eds.). (2011). Theory and methods in social research. Sage. Thomson, G., De Bortoli, L., & Underwood, C. (2016). PISA 2015: A first look at Australia’s results. Retrieved from https://research.acer.edu.au/ozpisa/21 Zeichner, K. (2003). Teacher research and professional development for P–12 educators in the USA. Education Action Research, 11(2), 301–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790300200211 Zhao, Y., Emler, T. E., Snethen, A., & Yin, D. (2019). An education crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Teachers College Press.

Dr. Jane L. Hunter is a former primary and secondary school teacher. She is an Associate Professor in teacher education specialising in curriculum, pedagogy, and digital learning in K– 12 education. Her work reinforces the importance of continuous teacher professional learning through ongoing school-university partnerships. The pedagogical framework developed out of her research with teachers known as ‘High Possibility Classrooms’ was awarded ‘high impact’ by the Australian Research Council (2019) and has led to innovation and changes to practice; her latest book featuring research on integrated STEM with teachers recommends a ‘blueprint’ for 10 new directions in Australian schools; on Twitter @janehunter01.

Chapter 4

A New Model for School-University Collaborations: Mobilising Academic Knowledge and Building Cross Sectoral Synergies Around Inquiry Learning Sandra Lapointe

and Catherine Klausen

Introduction Most discussions of school-university partnerships happen in the context of teachers’ education and professional development. School-university partnerships are typically designed to connect Teachers’ Colleges and Schools of Education with community partners like schools and school boards around experiential learning for future teachers, or growth and upskilling for current teachers (e.g., Barnett et al., 2010; Darling-Hammond et al., 2009; Green et al., 2020; Jackson & Burch, 2016; Jones et al., 2016; Nielsen et al., 2021; Sandholtz, 2002; Wei et al., 2009). Part of the assumption that underpins this traditional “teachers’ learning-focused” model for school-university partnerships is not only that experiential learning in the form of placements in the classroom are crucial to shaping the competencies of new teachers (e.g., Jones et al., 2016), but that post-secondary education institutions continue to play a role in teachers’ learning well beyond the completion of their degree, and that the best way to support teachers is to provide ongoing opportunity to enhance their pedagogical toolkits (Grudnoff et al., 2017; Guskey, 2002). Assuredly, successful cross-sectoral collaborations need to take place in the context of an authentic activity and offer benefits to both sectors involved. The best expressions of the traditional model of school-university partnerships fit this description, such as the “new program” highlighted by Lynch and Smith (2012), which is an integrated teacher education program that utilises a community of practice, as well as the case studies featured in Martin (2018). The teachers’ learning-focused model benefits schools by providing future and current teachers with opportunities to hone

S. Lapointe (B) · C. Klausen McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_4

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skills or build know-how around new pedagogical approaches. It also benefits universities and teacher colleges whose capacity to offer degrees that include experiential learning to future teachers, or professional development opportunities to current teachers, is central to their mission. Furthermore, research partnerships in education are widespread, and some degree of collaboration between schools and universities is involved in any meaningful research on pedagogy and learning outcomes. Academics in Education faculties build their research agenda on the assumption that they will have access to teachers and, through them, often also to their students for the purpose of collecting data or conducting observation. Down the line, schools benefit from the resulting research-based insights and practices. In this chapter, we examine and offer a rationale for an alternative to models of school-university partnerships that revolve around teachers’ learning. This new approach, based in the Canadian public school system, puts the focus of schooluniversity collaborations on knowledge mobilisation and has the potential to be transformative at a systems level. Our aim is to both extend the conceptual space in which discussion of school-university partnerships are articulated, and share the many insights gained over the last four years around a research project that resulted in the creation of a new online platform designed to support collaborations between current teachers and university-based researchers in the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts: The/La Collaborative Inquiry.1

A New Approach to School-University Partnerships Fruitful collaborations between schools and universities need to be supported by policies and strategies on both sides of the partnerships that converge to support the creation of genuinely cross-sectoral networks and communities of practice (Barnett et al., 2010; Vavasseur & MacGregor, 2008). Shared interest in applied pedagogy and the need for continuous learning is a natural pole for such strategies and policies, and it is this interest that informs teachers’ learning-focused models of school-university partnerships: such partnerships revolve around the idea that school-university collaborations help bridge a “skills gap” of current and future teachers to meet the ever-evolving needs for learners (Nielsen et al., 2021). Schooluniversity partnerships that cater to current teachers’ learning are typically designed to connect teachers who have applied, practical knowledge of pedagogy with scholars whose research bears on some aspects of pedagogy and from whom they can learn (Nielsen et al., 2021). Studies of collegial environments and models of cross-sectoral collaboration between school and university educators usually recommend the creation of discipline-specific, cross-sectoral communities of practice and the adoption of institutional policies and strategies that encourage the creation of networks of school and 1

For information and access to the platform: https://collaborativessh.humanities.mcmaster.ca/thecollaborative-inquiry/.

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university educators. Such networks can take various forms, but in order to fulfil their purposes, they need to overcome a range of obstacles (Martin, 2018): . . . . . .

Gaps in information resulting from sector insularity Gaps in support for professional development Perceptions of status linked to lack of intercultural awareness Lack of time Bureaucracy Disconnect between school and university curriculum taxonomies and learning objectives.

The rationale for encouraging collegial relationships and collaboration between teachers and university-based researchers is always rooted in the perceived benefits that enhanced pedagogical capacity would have for learners. But these collaborations are also typically understood on a “deficit approach,” meaning that current teachers still lack skills or competencies, or they have a need for knowledge around new approaches and collaborations with universities (e.g., regarding professional development, upskilling) and are designed to provide teachers with added skills and knowledge they would need to fill the gap (Sandholtz, 2002). Many school-university partnerships are motivated by professional development, and revolve around elements such as: . . . . . .

Initial teacher education Educator mentorship Mastering of school curriculum Resource-sharing New teaching approaches Curriculum development.

In return, university-based researchers with interest in primary and secondary education can leverage these partnerships for the purpose of applied research, possibly gaining access to pools of subjects for empirical data gathering. It is difficult to argue that teachers’ learning shouldn’t be a priority when thinking about the interface between school and university. But there is no reason why schooluniversity partnerships could not be designed to serve other purposes. Specifically, teachers who conduct inquiry and project-based learning in the classroom have needs around expertise on a multitude of topics that would best be served by universitybased experts outside of the education faculty. University-based researchers also have needs, however, which collaborations with schools could help meet, much beyond those associated with the educational mission of Teachers Colleges and applied research on teaching and learning in Faculties of Education. There are few examples of school-university partnerships that centre on knowledge mobilisation instead of teacher training. Academic researchers are increasingly expected to reach out to non-academic audience to increase the impact of their research and expertise, most often in the form of time-intensive contract research and consultancy based on their area of academic specialisation (Olmos-Peñuela et al.,

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2014). Knowledge mobilisation in the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts generally happens at the individual level, on a “producer push, user pull” model: the researcher produces specialist knowledge in a format which can be shared with a non-academic user at the user’s request (Phipps et al., 2012; Phipps & Shapson, 2009). We wanted to develop an approach to knowledge mobilisation that would move away from the push and pull model, and generally move away from the long haul and intensive collaborations focused on mobilising specialist knowledge toward “micro-collaborations” that mobilise broad disciplinary know-how that can serve to support teachers who conduct inquiry in the classroom. The knowledge mobilisation model we propose centres on the awareness that there are knowledge needs beyond specialist expertise that university-based researchers are well- positioned to meet, and that the accumulation of frequent and short collaborations mobilising this knowledge has the potential to create synergies that could streamline systems-level changes, including better integration of learner pathways across the Kindergarten to undergraduate postsecondary continuum.

Focus on Inquiry-Based Learning The decision to structure teacher-academic collaborations around inquiry and projectbased methodologies reflects a recent, but profound and intentional pedagogical shift occurring across Canadian K–12 education (Friesen & Scott, 2013). Our focus on inquiry is also meant to support this shift. Educators are moving away from what has been described as an “assembly line” approach to teaching and learning, toward pedagogies that often resort to inquiry and project/problem-based teaching and learning approaches (Wilder, 2015).2 This change is largely driven by access to the internet and a new reality where career pathways are no longer linear but revolve around continually changing career opportunities. Consider, for instance, that many recent graduates of post-secondary education institutions are now in jobs based on technologies that didn’t exist when they were in high school. Hence, students’ learning needs revolve around a new kind of literacy: students need to learn how to learn and be part of the knowledge creation process. Memorisation of facts and systems no longer serve students’ futures, as pieces of information can be referenced conveniently by smart phones and the like. What students require instead is to be able to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing society, and in careers that will require them to continually adapt and develop new specialised skills (Mitarlis et al., 2020). The implications of these new approaches to teaching and learning are not confined to curriculum changes in elementary and secondary education. Inquiry and 2

Inquiry-based learning is one of many names for this kind of pedagogy, including project-based and problem-based learning. We will not go into precise detail of which version of inquiry-based learning is in mind here, as each teacher will instantiate the pedagogy differently, while the broad-strokes shape of the approach remains the same (Friesen & Scott, 2013).

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problem-based learning is found world-wide around formulas that have evolved to suit a diversity of pedagogical contexts, such as training for health care provision (Dujin, 2019; Mumtaz & Latif, 2017), business management training (Kadir et al., 2016), and upskilling within enterprise workplaces (O’Brien et al., 2019). The literature supports an underlying notion that educating learners for employability and good student learning are very much aligned (Yorke & Knight, 2006). One incentive for adopting inquiry and problem-based approaches in the classroom is the expectation that inquiry and problem-based learning is effective at building “foundational skills” such as critical thinking (Kek & Huijser, 2011; Kong et al., 2014), analytical reasoning (Chun, 2012; Mitarlis et al., 2020; Mumtaz & Latif, 2017), continuous or life-long learning (Moalosi et al., 2017; O’Brien et al., 2019), communication skills (Jollands et al., 2012; Latif et al., 2018; Moalosi et al., 2017), creativity (Hung, 2015; Kardoyo et al., 2020; Maulidia et al., 2020), integrity (Suryanti & Supeni, 2019), intercultural awareness (Barrett, 2018; Busse & Krause, 2015), collaboration skills (Dag & Durdu, 2017; L’Ecuyer et al., 2015; Wilder, 2015), problem solving skills (Kadir et al., 2016; Tosun & Taskesenligil, 2013), self-directed learning (Bagheri et al., 2013; Malan et al., 2014), and teamwork (Winarno et al., 2018). While inquiry-based learning can be approached from many different directions, the hallmark of the pedagogical methodology is constant: rather than encouraging learning that covers wide thematic domains but may remain superficial, students are guided into in-depth study. In inquiry-based learning, a student is taught to ask strong and nuanced questions about complex topics, pursue those questions by identifying appropriate sources, make connections between ideas and concepts, evaluate them, and draw connections between what they learn. Inquiry and problem-based learning aims to teach students how to critically engage with new information, preparing them to approach new and complex topics to gain in-depth understanding, something they will continually need to do as they contribute as citizens in our society (Malan et al., 2014). More specifically, in most Canadian contexts, inquiry and problem-based pedagogy is centred around the crafting of pertinent questions which students design to guide them as they engage with content.3 The inquiry learning process comprises a series of iterative steps—each corresponding to a task, from the formulation of research questions to the gathering and organising of relevant information, the interpretation and analysis of information, the evaluation of arguments and the drawing of conclusions to the communication of inquiry results, i.e., the sharing of the responses arrived at in response to the research questions.4 The inquiry-learning process is iterative: it is not intended to be applied linearly, and K–12 educators are encouraged to engage their students at different points in the process. 3

For example, in Canadian and World Studies (Ontario curriculum for grades 11 and 12) pp. 32–33, and Social Sciences and Humanities (Ontario curriculum for grades 9–12) pp. 22–23. 4 The distinct articulations of the inquiry learning process in the high school curriculum documents do vary slightly, and this particular articulation is drawn from the Canadian and World Studies Ontario Curriculum, grades 11 and 12, p. 33.

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How Collaboration Works The process that structures collaboration in our project is supported by a bespoke online platform. Teachers initiate the process and receive the support of “connection brokers” from the moment they create such a request. To create an account, teachers are not required to provide any information beyond their name and email address. The only function of the account is to allow them to request collaborations—with no limit to the number they can in principle request at any time. A teacher begins their request with a choice between two kinds of collaboration: teacher focused or classroom focused. The teacher focused option, labeled “Consult”, aims to offer teachers a straightforward way to get necessary background information regarding a topic that they may not have taught not before, or have not taught in some time. Teachers can request an individual consultation with an expert around any aspect of Social Sciences, Humanities, or Arts subject-matters for a one-on-one conversation. Teachers can also request a collaboration with an expert around any steps of the inquiry process to engage directly with the students in their class, hence a classroomfocused option. Teachers select the option that best fits the stage of inquiry for which they require expert involvement—Question, Research, Draft, and Feedback5 —which will take the form of a class visit during which the university-based expert interacts directly, in person or virtually, with students around the relevant aspect of their inquiry or project. When they submit a collaboration request, teachers are asked a brief series of questions designed to help the connection broker assess their need and establish the constraints around the logistics. The role of connection brokers is to match teachers’ requests with experts—who will have enrolled separately by filling out a simple form. Requests are first reviewed by an administrator who assigns it to a connection broker whose responsibility is to shepherd both the teacher’s and the expert’s collaboration experiences. This includes assessing teachers’ request and needs, reviewing the database of experts to identify a collaborator, assigning them to the collaboration, ensuring communication with both parties around expectations and logistics of the classroom visit, and answering any questions collaborators might have along the way. The motivation for this process is that the connection broker takes on the facilitating efforts: managing communications, ensuring enough information is shared when needed, and aligning expectations. Automated platform emails are embedded in the process to streamline communication. For example, as soon as the collaboration has been assigned a connection broker, the platform automatically notifies the teacher with the following message:

5

As previously mentioned, the distinct articulations of the inquiry process—words used and specific instructions of each stage—vary slightly in curriculum documents across Canadian provinces, while the shape and motivation of inquiry remains the same. This list of options on the platform was based on a synthesis of all articulations to be the most widely recognisable set of options to teachers.

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Dear Teacher [Name Teacher], My name is [Name Connection Broker] and I’m a connection broker with The/La Collaborative. I’ve been assigned your collaboration request and I’m delighted to be working with you. Please visit the platform and click on the relevant collaboration to find out more. We’d like to remind you that in order for the classroom visit to be successful, all information relative to your Inquiry Learning activity, including students’ preliminary questions, must be made available to the expert at least 48 h in advance. If you haven’t already done so, please make sure to sign into the platform and complete your request. I’m looking forward to taking the next steps with you. Please contact me if you have any questions using the Chat Box associated with this collaboration on the platform. You are also always welcome to schedule a meeting with me if you prefer. I would kindly ask you to let me know if you have any questions for the expert and to let me contact them for you. This will ensure a smooth process and I’ll make sure I get all the answers you need! Very best wishes, [Name Connection Broker] Connection Broker, The/La Collaborative *Please note that this is an automated message, and that this email address is not monitored. If you would like to get a hold of us, you can do so through The/La Collaborative’s Inquiry platform, or email us at [email protected]. In order for the connection broker to be in a position to identify a suitable collaborator and provide useful, time-efficient instructions to the expert, it is important that they collect information about the aspects of the inquiry-process on which the classroom visit will focus. Nonetheless, the initial intake-process is otherwise fairly uniform across each of the options. Teachers are asked to provide information on the course in which the inquiry activity is taking place, their level of familiarity with the topic, class size, as well as some information on the types of skills they are hoping the activity will help develop, and finally some logistical information such as preferred dates, time, and venue (in person or virtual). With this information at hand, the connection broker will be in a position to query the database to select a university-based expert or to recruit a new one if the expertise is not already available on the platform. As with the use of any online platform, engagement and collaboration can be disrupted by a variety of factors. Connection brokers take the lead to mitigate any disruptions and will reach out to teachers and provide support whenever they leave a request unfinished, respond to requests for clarification, and so forth. The principle here is to use technology to support the connection broker whose task is to create reallife human connections; the online platform is a mere extension of the connection

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broker’s capacity. Teachers are notified when a new communication occurs, but they must log back into the platform to review messages and respond. Use of the chat-box—as opposed to email—for communication purposes is meant to create a dedicated space for collaborations with academic partners which the teacher and expert can access on their own terms. Depending on the activity they select, teachers will also be required to provide information on the course/unit goals, the final assessment task or inquiry product, and the success criteria for the final task or product. Along with a list of student’s provisional inquiry questions, all this information is summarised and shared with the expert who has been assigned this collaboration through the platform by the connection broker. The information is meant to fit on one page and is shared with the academic collaborator. It is curated to make it possible for them to gauge the level at which the students are thinking about the subject matter, and to provide them with the information they need to prepare for their classroom visit. Since the idea is that the expert is extending their office hours, they are instructed not to prepare beyond a mere review of the themes behind the students’ questions and to focus on helping students in their reflection. The information shared is structured to calibrate the academic collaborator’s expectations regarding the collaboration, keep the time commitment low, and prevent any perception that the collaboration requires any more preparation than regular office hours. The process of assigning an expert is also streamlined through the functionality of the digital interface. Once the connection broker has identified a suitable expert for the classroom visit, they can assign them provisionally to the collaboration at which point an automated message is sent to the expert. The message includes a brief description of the aspect of the inquiry on which the activity will focus— Consult, Question, Research, Draft, Feedback—and some information regarding the expectations. The automated email message footer contains buttons for three options, two of which are self-explanatory: ‘Accept’, ‘Decline’, and ‘Need More Info’. If an expert clicks on ‘Need more info’, an automatic email is generated and sent to their connection broker who will follow up and answer queries through the chat-box. If the expert declines, they receive an automatic email thanking them for their time, providing a brief reminder of the value of their expertise to teachers with an option to reconsider or recommend someone else. When the expert accepts a collaboration, this triggers further automated notes from the platform that update all involved. Upon the expert’s acceptance, this is the point where the collaboration is engaged, and both collaborators will be working toward it in parallel under the guidance of the connection broker. While they are not encouraged to meet in advance of the classroom visit, the connection broker may determine that a pre-visit meeting would be helpful in a specific case and will coordinate this. Although our early pilots indicated that an in-class collaboration’s success is not improved by previous contact between the teacher and the expert, it is not uncommon for an expert to request more information. This highlights the need for the connection broker to manage expectations adeptly. The unique experience of an expert directly engaging with students of a class on the students’ questions is the goal of the short visit—not a prepared presentation. The

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parallel coordination ensures that professional cultural differences do not come in the way of setting up the foundations of a fruitful collaboration.

Rationale The platform creates collaborations between universities/post-secondary education institutions and K–12 educators that leverages assets from academics (i.e., broad disciplinary know-how) and teachers (i.e., extensive pedagogical expertise) that enhance learning experiences for students in the context of inquiry and project-based methodologies. The university partners who participate in the program are not based in education faculties. They are scholars with a research agenda and expertise in or adjacent to the subject-matters to which teachers apply their didactic know-how in the classroom (e.g., social studies, sciences, languages, arts, to name only a few). The program implements a partnered process by brokering structured collaborations in which teachers and university-based subject-matter experts share the responsibility of a classroom-based learning activity, for the duration of a lesson, each playing a different role. Project-based and inquiry learning activities are the ideal opportunity around which to structure such collaborations. The project (The/La Collaborative) began with funding awarded for a Partnership Development Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). SSHRC’s Partnership granting program is aimed to support developing partnerships to engage in knowledge mobilisation while involving university students or emerging scholars in a meaningful way, and where results can be scaled to a regional, national, or international level.6 Community partners on the grant included the Ontario History, Humanities and Social Sciences Consultants’ Association (OHHSSCA), and a technology partner startup (CampaignRaven) contracted to build the online platform used to host and coordinate these connections. The broad outline of the project in its conception was to mobilise the knowledge within the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA) for the mutual benefit of scholars and members of the Ontario’s History, Humanities, and Social Sciences Teachers Association, with an eye to scaling to a national level. From the outset of the project, the team engaged in shared leadership with OHHSSCA and integrated end-users, and each stage involved broader teacher feedback and co-design. The first step was to identify the type of knowledge that would most benefit teachers if it were to be mobilised. We began by conducting a focus group in 2018 with teachers connected to OHHSSCA in order to test our assumptions about their perspectives on the expertise found in universities, and to identify a

6

For more information see: https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/programs-progra mmes/partnership_development_grants-subventions_partenariat_developpement-eng.aspx.

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specific activity around which to structure interactions. Through a process of dialogical discovery, the teachers suggested a focus on best practices for inquiry-based learning. The shared leadership of the project set the tone for the entire project: with a focus on fostering a culture of peers, teachers are the experts of their classrooms and university researchers offer subject matter expertise by collaborating to support the inquiry practices of K–12 students. Following the lead of teachers, in 2018 we designed the collaboration process, user experience of the platform, and key terms with teacher input. It was the teachers who argued that we should use the term “expert” to refer to university-based researchers, which came as a surprise as we thought it would be crucial to emphasise that expertise was available on both sides. We designed a set of mock ups based on a user journey: a university expert would join a single class meeting to contribute to students’ projects through dialogue with the class. Small pilots of the program were initiated to gather feedback from a wider breadth of teachers for research and development. For example, an in-person pilot of a collaboration in early 2019 tested the assumption that the type of knowledge that would best serve classroom discussion with high school students was broad disciplinary know how on the topic, and that experts from various disciplines could contribute meaningfully to student’s learning. The feedback from these early pilots was overwhelmingly positive.7 Once the platform was developed, targeted pilots in 2021 served to test teachers’ interaction with the online platform and finetune user experience.

Reciprocity of Needs and Assets The teachers’ learning model of school-university partnerships builds on a number of assumptions which are useful to point out. One of them is that teachers are in a “deficit” position that universities are uniquely positioned to resolve through upskilling (Sandholtz, 2002). But school-university collaborations do not need to revolve around deficits. They can be designed instead to leverage assets on each side of the partnership to increase teachers’ capacity, benefit learners directly, and create new value for universities outside of the usual research paradigm. This was the starting point of the project that resulted in the creation of The/La Collaborative, a bilingual (English and French) platform that connects Canadian K–12 teachers with academic researchers for short but impactful collaborations. One of the main goals of the interactions created through the project remains knowledge mobilisation: the academic is mobilising knowledge into the community where it can be taken up by students to add to their learning. But there is much to be gained by both the academic and the teacher. For instance, academics get a first-hand look at how their discipline is approached in earlier education, and insight into how the teacher conducts these inquiry activities—indirectly benefitting from 7

To learn more about the results of early pilots, see this video: https://youtu.be/8wrznvdgiIE.

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sharing their classroom expertise to inform the academic’s own teaching. The teacher likewise has the opportunity to grow in confidence by participating in the dialogue. This reciprocity is rooted intentionally in the approach to knowledge mobilisation that underpins the project. It builds on three assumptions that are largely unproblematic: (a) Increased synergy across K–12 and post-secondary education (i.e., K–16) is desirable; (b) Teachers have expertise in pedagogy that positions them uniquely to lead learning in their classroom; and (c) University-based researchers, in addition to being academic specialists, have broad disciplinary subject-matter expertise that can also be used. The third point is especially important. The project’s strategy is to take (a) as a brute fact, i.e., something that is desirable in itself, and identify contexts in which school-university partnerships could leverage (b) and (c) as reciprocal assets in pursuit of (a). From an asset standpoint, the purpose is to support collaborations that unlock the reciprocity of teachers’ expertise in pedagogy and university-based experts’ broad disciplinary know-how to serve both the purpose of inquiry and project-based learning in the classroom and the creation of collaborations that serve systems-level synergies across K–16. Increasing pressure on academic disciplines and research programs to demonstrate both their social relevance and impact, as well as their capacity to maintain healthy levels of enrolment in both undergraduate and graduate programs, is often served through outreach. But in order to contribute to fulfilling the broader communityengagement mandate of universities who wish to position themselves as anchor institutions in their regions, researchers need to find new ways to mobilise, in addition to their research interest and expertise, their broad disciplinary know-how and subject-matter expertise to create impact in their communities. The project also builds on crucial features of teachers’ training in connection to (b). Namely, that elementary and secondary school teachers’ pedagogical expertise is sometimes deployed in the context of courses on topics that are unfamiliar to them, or in the context of learning activities that bring students to engage with subject-matter at a level for which subject-matter training of teachers is insufficient. A student’s inquiry could lead them to the edges of new developments in a discipline, e.g., to questions pertaining to the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence advancement, for instance. Inquiry and project-based learning are pedagogical approaches in which this issue is more likely to arise; it is impossible to predict where students’ research will take them and what questions they will seek to answer. Faced with the task of educating their students on a wide range of topics or to engage students in inquiry and project-based learning, elementary and secondary school educators are likely to have a need for greater subject-matter expertise. To frame this back in terms of needs, our approach leverages knowledge and assets on both sides to meet reciprocal needs, namely:

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. Needs of teachers: Collaborations increase teachers’ capacity in the classroom by leveraging the expert’s visit as an additional resource, like a human textbook. Outcomes are not entirely predictable but could reasonably have an indirect impact on teachers’ perception of their own competence and confidence, and thus also contribute to their professional growth (Vavasseur & MacGregor, 2008). The latter is a hypothesis that remains to be tested. . Needs of university-based researchers: The collaborations increase the impact of individual research and knowledge in quantifiable ways, helping researchers meet knowledge mobilisation objectives and gain a broader perspective of how their subject is approached in K–12, which can have an impact on their own pedagogy. . Needs of students: The collaborations increase students’ perception of synergy across K–16, reducing psychological and sociological barriers to post-secondary education especially for first generation students who may not have had contact with university-level educators in the past. . Needs of universities: Each individual collaboration increases the impact of a campus on its community, bolstering capacity to meet institutional targets around the community-engagement mandate. At scale, expert visits establish a culture of engagement that can transform communities’ perceptions and expectations around universities’ role as anchor institutions. Assuredly, the collaborations between teachers and academics are designed to answer the needs of teachers around expertise and do so by creating a new outlet for university-based researchers to mobilise their broad disciplinary know-how. They cater to university-based researchers’ needs to create measurable impact in their community. This is often both a personal goal on the part of the researchers to contribute to their community, as well as the mandate of their university. But the better way to think of the outcome of the collaborations avoids talk of “needs” altogether and instead points to the many ways in which “assets” are mobilised on both sides of school-university partnerships to create value for all those involved: teachers, university-based researchers, and students. Because inquiry learning always by definition bears on a specific topic and revolves around questions that require insight into the subject matter, teachers who have the expertise to facilitate inquiry and project-based learning and guide students through the process of questioning, researching, drafting, and incorporating feedback also find themselves required to act as subject matter experts on a range of research topics with which they cannot reasonably be expected to be familiar. Subject-matter expert visits offer themselves as a convenient solution: they extend the universitybased experts’ “office hours” to the prospective students in the collaborating classroom. The expert operates like a human textbook from whom students can learn as part of their project. Rather than the teacher receiving lengthy training in the subject matter in order to pass it on to their students, the experts become an additional classroom resource on which teachers draw. Our approach is best understood as a systems-level approach to knowledge mobilisation designed to build capacity for enhanced learning around inquiry by

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viewing interactions both across and within system levels as important factors (Nielsen et al., 2021).

What Counts as Expertise While it is difficult to deny that there has to be objective standards of expertise, there are various types of expertise and various needs for expertise as well, and key to a fruitful collaboration is to calibrate expectations, especially on the side of the expert. For instance, in academic contexts, people tend to differentiate between broad disciplinary knowledge, area of competence (which is often useful to determine teaching assignment), and area of specialisation. For academic purposes, the expectation is that scholarly work mostly revolves around the latter: an expert is someone who can contribute to a specific, specialised scholarly subfield. There is a tendency to perceive broad disciplinary knowledge and areas of competence, from an academic perspective, as merely a by-product of the amount of training and study it takes to become an academic expert. And while this by-product may serve pedagogical needs of undergraduate students at the beginning of their degrees, specialisation is what is assumed to drive research, and by extension, the knowledge to be mobilised and the focus of cross-sectoral knowledge-based collaborations. This is a missed opportunity. Because broad disciplinary knowledge is a byproduct of academic specialisation, it is not broadly available outside of academia. As a by-product, it is also underutilised. However, broad disciplinary knowledge is precisely the level of expertise that is needed to meet the needs of students who conduct project-based inquiry and what would increase their learning experience. What defines the type of expertise needed within The/La Collaborative’s Inquiry program is always ultimately the list of students’ questions captured in the teachers’ request. By prioritising this direction of fit, The/La Collaborative implements a process designed to undermine the widespread assumption that experts should also define what is worthy of study, or that the expertise needed falls within disciplines that can be determined a priori. For instance, academics whose areas of specialisation and expertise fall within fields as diverse as policy, sociology, and philosophy can be equally well suited to answer the needs of students around projects focused on global inequalities. The process is also designed to ensure that the teacher’s pedagogical expertise is an integral part of the collaborative process. University-based experts visit the classroom as an add-on, to complement the didactic work of the teacher on which students’ learning is built. The experts do not become the teacher: they are a resource made available to the students by the teacher. In view of this, the question that underlies the connection broker’s task when assigning an expert is: Whose expertise could contribute meaningfully to students’ learning? The answer depends in each instance on the broad topic of the activity and of the course and on the principle that the expert visit is not meant to provide students with answers or ready-made information on the topic, but to help them think through

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their questions, deepen their understanding of inquiry methods (or “research skills”), and receive input that can bolster self- reflection. For example, a request could be made to help students around quantitative survey design. In this case, a connection broker will seek an expert likely in the social sciences who utilises this methodology. This expert could be from an anthropology or psychology department, even though the visit is to take place within a sociology course. This latitude is possible because the area of specialisation or competence to which the expert applies these methods is likely to be irrelevant in the context of a 90min Q&A activity with high school students. In some cases, the collaboration may revolve around an activity that requires factual knowledge, e.g., around a specific historical event. In such cases, the range of suitable experts narrows to those who can speak meaningfully about that event.

The Value of Systems-Level Approach to Knowledge Mobilisation Our project validates a model of a school-university partnership intentionally designed to focus on knowledge mobilisation, as an alternative to the more traditional approaches that focus on teacher’s learning and professional development of teachers. There are two characteristic features of the initiative that are crucial to creating a path to school-university collaborations that operate at a systems level, prioritising knowledge mobilisation and increased synergy across K–16 for the benefit of all stakeholders. First, The/La Collaborative creates a low-stakes, low-risk environment in which participants that belong to different systems can “bump into” each other for new opportunities to share ideas. The platform is designed to reduce obstacles to these types of exchanges (e.g., information gap, time constraints, administrative structures), building on the important premise that “schools as learning systems or ‘systems that learn’ need agents to ‘bump into’ each other so expertise can flow” (Nielsen et al., 2021, p. 537). Second, the focus on reciprocity, and in particular the imperative that collaborative processes be designed around reciprocal needs and assets, builds on the assumption that while universities need to be involved in bolstering the capacity and skills of teachers beyond initial teacher training and in-service teacher training, the collaborations that are built around school-universities partnership need to go beyond immediate research, funding, and professional development opportunities. In our model, teachers and academics bump into each other around collaborations where the desired outcomes are not ambitious. Iteration, at a scale, over time compounds the effects to produce change at the systems-level. Most approaches to knowledge mobilisation in SSHA, including ours, are meant to increase the impact of academic scholarship and knowledge and create social change. A systems perspective on knowledge mobilisation is crucial, and large-scale

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social change is sure to involve scaling an initiative in multiple ways. Key is the adoption of a multi-level, multi-stakeholder perspective that is designed to scale around three axes: out, up, and deep (Moore et al., 2015). To this point, the use of technology increases the capacity of connection brokers who can, in theory, cater to the needs of hundreds of teachers at the same time, increasing the impact of academic scholars on a greater number of students, while also reaching nation-wide using virtual visits (i.e., “scaling out”). By creating new ways for teachers and academics to “bump into” each other across sectors, we create the sort of synergy that can lead to culture changes, changing the very institutions we are a part of by changing policies, funding, incentive models, and so forth as part of “scaling up.” Finally, by focusing on mobilising knowledge and assets of collaborators around inquiry and building on reciprocal needs of collaborators, the collaborative processes “scale deep”—changing the way people think about these concepts and how they value them. In time, programs such as ours would be part of a larger emergent movement in society away from a culture of disconnect between school-universities, shifting away from the false dichotomy of theory–practice divide (Jackson & Burch, 2016), and toward K–16 synergy, transforming the way we understand collaboration.

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Dr. Sandra Lapointe is Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University. She is a Commonwealth alumna, a Fellow of the Humboldt Foundation and an award winning scholar. Her current research agenda revolves around bringing a Social Sciences and Humanities perspective on issue connected to knowledge mobilisation, skills development and policy for social innovation. Dr. Lapointe is the co-founder of the Canadian Forum for Social Innovation, the Director of the McMaster Social Innovation Ideas and Action Lab and the Director of The/La Collaborative, a pan Canadian partnership funded by SSHRC, Mitacs and the Future Skills Centre. Dr. Catherine Klausen is a postdoctoral research fellow at McMaster University where she works as the Research and Training Coordinator of The/La Collaborative. Catherine completed her Ph.D. in social epistemology at the University of Waterloo and continues her interest in how we share knowledge in groups through engagement in knowledge mobilization activities and research.

Chapter 5

Creating Shared Spaces: A Collaborative Partnership Model that Prepares Initial Teacher Education Students for Effective Practice Susan F. Westraad, Julie F. Mathews, and Caitlin R. Munday

Introduction Teacher shortages have been highlighted as a global concern (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation [UNESCO], 2022) and there is an international focus on how to better attract, prepare, and retain teachers in the teaching profession. In Australia, recent initial teacher education (ITE) reviews and discussion papers outline some of the key challenges related to these three areas (Australian Government, 2022; Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2015; Department of Education Skills and Employment, 2022; Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group [TEMAG], 2015; Thompson et al., 2020). Sullivan et al. (2019) suggest that “downward trends in the supply of teachers, coupled with dramatic rises in the demands for teachers, necessitate an urgent reappraisal of how schooling systems and individual schools can retain quality teachers” (p. 2). One response to these challenges is the establishment of closer partnerships between universities and schools that facilitate the creation of supported ITE pathways which promote contextually responsive, immersive, and sustainable models of teacher formation. These pathways aim to minimise ITE attrition and longerterm attrition once they formally enter the profession through providing a supported, immersive experience that assists ITE students to enter the profession positioned for success.

S. F. Westraad (B) · J. F. Mathews Alphacrucis University College, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] C. R. Munday Teaching School Alliance, Sydney, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_5

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This chapter describes the development, implementation, and ongoing evolution of an ITE partnership model within the Australian context. This model is known as the Hub model and involves a collaboration between schools within the independent sector and a private University College using Teaching Schools as the key operational mechanism.

The Hub Model The Hub model was introduced in 2017 as a partnership initiative between a group of affiliated schools united under the umbrella of a Teaching School entity and a University College to model best practice in teacher preparation. In this model initial teacher education (ITE) students are employed in a participating (host) school for one or two days a week in a paraprofessional role while they complete their teaching award. They are also allocated a school mentor for the duration of their studies. Once they are conditionally accredited, they are usually employed by one of the host schools. Together the Teaching School and University College work to support ITE students and explore ways of integrating theory and practice in a model that best prepares ITE students for their professional roles. In a recent response to the New South Wales (NSW) Government Inquiry into Teacher Shortages in NSW in 2022, the University College described the hub model in the following way: The central aspect of the… Teaching School Hub model is that it flips the conventional model of teacher training, bringing exceptional higher education entirely onsite to local school clusters. This strategic approach to human resources allows the schools to sponsor annual cohorts of quality pre-service teachers and provides clinical training from day one – a permanent practicum. It enables a tertiary-industrial partnership approach to teacher training, embedded in regional knowledge and the unique ethos of the schools. (Alphacrucis University College [AC], 2022, p. 20)

The Hub model creates a third space (Taylor et al., 2014; Zeichner, 2010) to support and maximise ITE student experience. This third space is embodied in the Teaching School and is created with the intent of designing and running supported ITE programs and pathways. It is distinct in that it seeks to embed ITE into the formative environment of a school. It is committed to an ecology of learning, that is experiential, deeply responsive to context, and that links the formation of future teachers and educational leaders to the ethos of schools. The Hub model draws on the experience and evidence of clinical teaching models around the world (Alter & Coggshall, 2009).

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Literature Review The literature and the media report a growing alarm regarding teacher shortages as the current generation of teachers retire and the number of enrolments in ITE programs decline (AC, 2022; Baker, 2019). In addition, the gaps of ITE in Australia have been highlighted over the last two decades in numerous reports, reviews, agreements, and blueprints (AITSL, 2015; Department of Education Skills and Employment, 2022; Parliament of Victoria Education & Training Committee, 2005; TEMAG, 2015). These documents have continuously cited the following overarching areas for attention: 1. The disconnect between what is taught at the tertiary institution and the practice of teaching. 2. The need for partnerships between tertiary institutions and schools in the preparation of teachers for the profession. 3. Classroom and school community readiness, i.e., improvement of the Professional Experience programs. These reports have elicited numerous structural and content related changes to ITE programs since 2012 (AITSL, 2013; TEMAG, 2015), for example, the introduction of ITE programs at a Master award level; the establishment of national standards for all levels of teachers (AITSL, 2013; NSW Government, 2013); the training of mentor teachers (TEMAG, 2015); and the development of partnerships between schools and tertiary institutions. It is, however, well documented that many graduating teachers who successfully meet the requirements of their academic program still do not feel classroom ready nor stay in the profession for more than five years (Kearney, 2014; TEMAG, 2015). Many reasons have been provided for the exodus of graduating teachers (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Hochstetler, 2011; Hong, 2010). Miles and Knipe (2018) described the ‘transition shock’ of moving from ITE programs into employment as a teacher as too great for many, i.e., teaching demanded far more than expected, and they leave the profession quickly (Buchanan et al., 2013; Gallant & Riley, 2014; Goddard et al., 2013; Hong, 2010; Weldon, 2018). Faith-based schools have noted an added layer in employment of teachers. They seek to employ teachers who are adherents of or empathetic to their vision and mission statement of faith, who will readily become part of the school’s culture (community of practice) and understand the school’s philosophy of education (Hastie, 2019). The Hub model, initiated as a response to the above concerns, is modelled on the clinical teaching model where schools take agency for the training and preparation of their teachers in partnership with a tertiary provider (Twelves, 2019). The use of the clinical teaching model is not new or unexampled, it is derived from clinical practice (in the medical field) where practice is less about routine ways of working and more about deliberate process of rehearsal, intended to refine particular skills. When applied within the teaching profession the emphasis of the clinical teaching model is on “the experiential processes by which novices develop their abilities to teach effectively” (Burn & Mutton, 2015, p. 218).

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Alter and Coggshall (2009) summarise the key characteristics of a clinical practice profession as: . The centrality of the clients (students) and the knowledge demands on the practitioner, whose work requires the use of evidence and judgement (rather than pure technical skill), located within a community of practice operating with shared standards. . The use of clinical reasoning (Kriewaldt & Turnidge, 2013), decision-making that draws together analytical and intuitive cognitive processes to arrive at a best judged ethical response in a practice-oriented context—a kind of practical wisdom— values the judgements made in action. . The bringing together of research-based understandings of teaching and learning into dialogue with the professional understandings of experienced classroom teachers. Partnerships between schools and tertiary providers are essential for the success of the clinical teaching model and for providing a way forward in ITE programs to bridge the theory/practice nexus (Brady, 2002). Kruger et al. (2009) describe partnerships between tertiary institutions and schools as “teacher education programs with practices linking school teachers, teacher education students and teacher educators in more direct and ongoing ways than the conventional teacher practicum” (p. 43). This definition emphasises that a partnership is not just about professional experience but a professional relationship of shared learning between schools and tertiary institutions. To encourage the bridging of school and tertiary experiences for ITE students, AITSL (2011) requires ITE providers to evidence the establishment of “enduring school partnerships” (p. 15). Rossner and Commins (2012) investigated what enduring partnerships might mean for ITE programs. They concluded from existing partnerships that there were four common characteristics of ‘enduring partnerships’: 1. Commitment to reciprocal learning relationships between the tertiary institutions and the schools. 2. Explicit roles and responsibilities given and carried out. 3. Genuine collaboration between stakeholders. 4. Responsiveness, that is, creation of learning relationships between mentors and ITE students (Le Cornu & Ewing, 2008). Rossner and Commins (2012) also advocated the need to immerse ITE students in school ‘communities of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991) or ‘learning communities’ (as described by Le Cornu, 2010) as an essential ingredient of ‘enduring partnerships’ (Le Cornu & Ewing, 2008). Wenger (2006) described a ‘community of practice’ as a group “formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour” (p. 1). The Hub model presented in this chapter is seen to present a viable solution to some of the ITE challenges. This chapter outlines a case study of one of the Teaching Schools which has partnered with the University College and examines the

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effectiveness of this model with a particular focus on ITE preparation and the nature of the partnership.

Context The Teaching School described in this case study was established by a cluster of five independent schools (in the Sydney region) and a tertiary provider (henceforth referred to as the University College) who share a common commitment to the formation of teachers in the Christian tradition. This Teaching School is one of six such Teaching Schools developed in partnership with this University College. Teaching Schools emerge within a localised context, and as such reflect the particularities of that context. For this Teaching School, there existed an underlying commitment to Christian teacher formation (the development of the teacher intellectually, professionally, and spiritually). It seeks to provide an immersive, contextually responsive, and deeply integrated pathway into the classroom by delivering, in partnership with the University College, undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education degrees, embedded in schools, and underpinned by a Christian worldview. Currently the program, as experienced by the ITE student, is built around four elements: . Undergraduate/postgraduate teacher education degrees delivered by the University College in a variety of modes. Trainees are offered a scholarship for their degree. . Employment one day a week as a Teacher’s Assistant in a school supported by an experienced Mentor Teacher for the duration of their degree. . Special weekly training for Trainee Teachers as a cohort shaped by their needs, as well as the skills and attributes required for being a teacher in a school. These sessions are designed and facilitated in partnership with the schools in the cluster, whose staff help to deliver this bespoke program of learning. . Additional annual lectures delivered by leading educationalists and thinkers nationally and internationally. The selection process for ITE students wishing to study teaching through the Teaching School Hub is rigorous, and includes application, interview, and teaching rounds at both the level of the Teaching School and University College.

Method The research study presented in this chapter employs a qualitative approach to explore the effectiveness of the Hub model in relation to ITE student preparedness and the nature of the partnership that led to its establishment and which enables its ongoing success.

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A qualitative approach was adopted to support the collection of rich data grounded in human experience (Sandelowski, 2004) around specific focus areas. This study focused on the Teaching School and Tertiary provider partnership, as discussed in this chapter, and took the form of a case study which allows for an in-depth analysis of factors relevant to a specific context. The partnership between the University College and the Teaching School in this study has existed for three years. The total number of ITE students who were currently enrolled in, or who had recently completed their time at the Teaching School at the time of the research was twenty-three. Purposive sampling was used to select nine ITE students who had been part of the Teaching School for a minimum of one year or who had completed their time in the Teaching School and recently graduated from the University College. These ITE students were asked to complete a survey designed around carefully constructed open ended questions. These questions focussed on stakeholder experiences, enablers and inhibitors of the model, theory versus practice integration, and classroom readiness of ITE students. In-depth, interviews guided by the same questions were conducted individually with two School Coordinators, the University College Program Directors, and a University College Development Executive who had played an instrumental role in the establishment of the partnership. Ethics approval was sought and received for the study, and all efforts were made to de-identify participants and preserve their anonymity. The three researchers each held key roles in the partnership: Teaching School Director, Regional Director, and University College Head of School of Education. Each researcher completed a personal reflection guided by the core questions posed to participants. Their roles as participants, collaborative researchers, and key partners presented a complex dynamic when reviewing the data. However, triangulation of researchers and data, together with reflexivity and member checking, provided for credibility of the data (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The analysis of the data was approached through a program improvement lens and the researcher discussions were rich and viewed as valuable for strengthening both the model and the partnership within a transformative paradigm (Taylor, 2013). A rigorous thematic analysis method following a six-phase process (Nowell et al., 2017) was applied to interpret the data. This thematic analysis was useful for “examining the perspectives of different participants, highlighting similarities and differences, and generating unanticipated insights” (Nowell et al., 2017, p. 2).

Results and Discussion The findings analysis was structured around two focus areas: the nature of the partnership embedded within the Hub model, and the model’s effectiveness for teacher training. These are discussed in relation to the key categories that emerged.

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Nature of the Partnership This section outlines the key themes that emerged from the study in regard to the nature of the partnership. The discussions highlight the aspects of the partnership that work well and reveal areas for improvement.

Commitment and Vision In understanding the nature of the partnership embedded within the Hub model, commitment and vision emerged as central factors. These factors formed the basis of the partnership since inception and continue to be drivers. Though variable in degree and expression, there is a sense that this vision is shared between key entities— namely schools, the University College, and the Teaching School. Participants identified that the vision, to which each partner committed, was twofold: an alternate approach to faith-based teacher preparation, and to secure a pipeline of quality teachers for faith-based schools (AC, 2022; Hastie, 2019). Firstly, such an approach was to define itself against the deficits of conventional ITE including gaps between theory and practice, classroom-readiness and the provision of support structures. Secondly, that schools be active agents in the teacher preparation process in recognition that teaching exists within “an integrated learning ecology” (University College Development Executive). Thirdly, that the vision was for a faith-based model of teacher formation, in the Christian tradition. Such a vision clustered ethos aligned schools into a Teaching School and promoted a tertiary-industry partnership where values were similarly aligned. This alignment was an important basis for the complex roles and collaboration required by such a partnership. Finally, the model of delivery for this alternate approach to teacher preparation promotes greater integration of theory and practice, focuses on skill development and practical experience, cultivates vocational conviction, provides an environment of support, and supports responsiveness to the individual. Commitment to this vision was driven by more specific needs of key stakeholders. For the University College, the viability of the existing ITE program in its previous iteration necessitated re-invention. Similarly, the prospect of a solution to strategic human resource challenges within schools (i.e., not having enough staff), was just as pressing as the longer-term concerns of ‘mission drift’ (i.e., losing the vision of the schools and the University College). The potential for such an approach to address such needs reflected the considerable human and financial investment made by all stakeholders in resourcing the Hub model. However, while necessary for unifying schools and Universities in the formation of the Hub, this vision also served as motivation for the involvement of key individuals: More generally, if we continue to have faith-based schools in Australia then, then we have a responsibility to steward them well, and part of such stewardship requires consideration of the people who will staff and lead them, excellent Christian educators, and if current models are not producing such educators, then we are compelled to create alternate models. (Teaching School Director)

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Reflecting on the early involvement of schools in the formation of the Hub, the University College Development Executive described one school principal as “… a visionary leader, able to make decisions, disposable income and a vision for the future, which took Christian Higher Education seriously.” Individual commitment to this vision was as important as institutional commitment. However, while there was shared commitment, those closer to the operational level at the respective institutions, while acknowledging the vision, were more sensitive to some of the operational challenges. These were identified as being both structural and relational in nature. Program Directors reflected: It was still a lot of hard work and a lot of expectations. And we say, well, all right, that’s all because we’re pioneering, we’re working it out. And the expression was we’re building the plane as we’re flying it.

Such reflections suggest that because ‘the plane is being built as it is being flown’, there is a need to articulate the vision from the very beginning, and to continually revisit it, in order to ensure that all are ‘on board’. Further, that fidelity to a vision requires constant negotiation as it is ‘worked out’ in practice.

Roles and Relationships The Hub consists of webs of relationships across all levels of the model (see Fig. 5.1). These include relationships between the Teaching School Director and the school leaders, coordinators and mentors, the Teaching School Director and Regional Director, the Regional Director and the University College Head of School of Education, and staff within the School of Education. The ITE student interacts primarily with the School Mentor, the Teaching School Director, the Regional Director, and the University College Program Directors who are responsible for their academic progression and experience.

Fig. 5.1 Organisational chart for partnership model

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The success of the Hub model is dependent on good relationships at all points of interaction. If there is unhealthy and unresolved friction in any relationships, then the overarching partnership between Teaching School and University College does not function optimally. This was highlighted in the research data with the Teaching School Director (who represents the schools) and Regional Director (who represents the University College) being seen as important central roles in the partnership. In a sense they assume the role of boundary brokers who promote a “sense of safety and security in partnerships while challenging potentially long-held assumptions” (Daza et al., 2021, p. 6). The ITE students acknowledged the role of these directors as being pivotal to their overall experience especially at an individual level: “the directors will have a greater focus on the individual trainee and their formation, both inside and outside the classroom”. They were also seen by the ITE students to be responsible for overseeing quality across the different levels of the partnership with each feeding back to their stakeholders with the Director of the Teaching School holding a higher level of responsibility in this process. These roles were also seen to be critical by the University College Head of School who stated that: The roles of the Teaching School Director and Regional Director play a significant role in this partnership. Having the right people in these roles who can work together and navigate various structures and relationships across the various partners and organisations is key to the success of the partnership.

School Coordinators also perceived these roles as important in presenting a ‘human face’ to the schools and being able to advocate for the program and University College which, being a smaller provider, is not well known to all the schools. The University College Program Directors who oversee the academic courses perceived the role of the Regional Director to be crucial to the success of the Hub model. They did, however, express concern that there was sometimes a crossover of roles in relation to ITE student communication where rather than ITE students communicating directly with them, other parties were communicating on behalf of ITE students. The Program Directors suggested that more work was needed on clarifying communication processes and a strengthening of their relationships with the Teaching Schools through visits and other mechanisms. This supports a ‘complementary’ model of partnership (Furlong et al., 2000), which adopts an approach where there is an articulated separation of the roles and responsibilities of various players. The Regional Director also highlighted the partnership between the Teaching School Director and Regional Director as central to the model and that They need to be on the same page in their philosophy and willingness to overcome the challenges that are to be faced when dealing with the bureaucracy of each. They need to be able to support each other in decisions made and setting the vision.

This boundary crossing and the need to work beyond the familiar is highlighted in other work around school and tertiary partnerships together with the need of ‘working together’ rather than ‘working with’ (Taylor et al., 2014). The overarching roles of the key partners were well articulated by the various partners in the research with the ITE students articulating these particularly well. One

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ITE student summed up the roles of the University College, Schools, and Teaching School as follows: The University College’s role in the program is the tertiary accredited component. Their role is to facilitate the accreditation of Teaching School ITE students and to form their understanding on a university level. The school has a responsibility in the formation of the ITE student as a teacher. The intention is for ITE students to be able to apply their tertiary learning and grow in their understanding of teaching in a school context. The Teaching School facilitates additional learning and forms a bridge between the University College and the school.

Reference was made by some of the key partners of the need to mediate ‘intention’ versus ‘reality’ or what one participant referred to as the ‘ideal’ versus the ‘perception’. Thus, while partners share a common vision, the partnerships may have had different expectations around delivery as well as roles and expectations and it was expressed that there is still a need to work on these aspects of the partnership.

Collaboration Collaboration is an essential component of a partnership model (Rossner & Commins, 2012) and was again highlighted in this research. One ITE student described the partnership in the Teaching School as ‘synergistic’, that the cooperation between stakeholders produced a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. This best captures its potential or even the original intent. While it was evident that collaboration was necessary for the formation of the Teaching School and its ongoing operation, the network of relationships that exist to support the ITE student and their formation also bring complexity. This is reinforced by the reimagining of traditional roles in initial teacher education e.g., the role of the University College versus the role of the Teaching School, and the introduction of new roles (Kruger et al., 2009). Participants identified several contexts where this complexity was most acutely felt, such as discerning ITE student needs and how they might be met, the multiplicity of voices in decision making, communication and consultation, procedural and structural visibility and flexibility, and differing expectations of ‘quality’. The University College Head of School highlighted that as the Hub continues to evolve, a “shared idea of partnership” is required that overcomes the rhetoric of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Structures Schools and tertiary providers work within structures and supporting processes that are designed for specific learning purposes. The Hub model requires the schools and the University College to adjust, redesign, and where required create new structures, processes, and spaces that support the overarching shared vision (Kruger et al., 2009).

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Prior to Teaching School Hubs, the University College had run undergraduate and postgraduate ITE programs in a traditional or conventional model. Adapting these structures has been a challenge. As the Regional Director for the University College stated: It has been challenging to pioneer the Teaching School model as the University College has had to adapt to this model and is still developing its approach and lecturers. In hindsight, it would have been good to have spent time adapting and consolidating the programs offered before launching into the model. New Teaching Schools will benefit from the developments that have taken place over the last two years. More development of some areas needs to take place especially around assessment and delivery of lectures.

Working outside of the established organisational structures was identified as difficult for the Program Directors and the School Coordinators. There was a sense that they were still working within overarching existing structures and roles with the expectation that they would meet the requirements of the Hub model (Daza et al., 2021). A School Coordinator shared that they found it difficult to manage the responsibilities of their school coordination role in addition to their current school responsibilities. Program Directors expressed they were spending a lot of additional time on sorting out issues relating to the Hubs and Hub ITE students especially in relation to “timetables, subjects, workflow and professional experience”. Working according to a different calendar that was not aligned to the college semester and supported by overarching systems was seen to be particularly challenging. This was intensified by the challenge of ITE students being conditionally accredited and teaching in schools while managing their tertiary studies, many on a full-time study load. The University College Head of School of Education stated that While the University College has been able to be flexible given that it is a small college, this is an advantage and a challenge. Working with schools who have more resources than the college presents a challenge. Ways to address this will need to be explored especially as ITE student numbers increase.

On reflecting on their experiences, the ITE students highlighted the Teaching School insight sessions as central to building community and collegiality and suggested that this could be strengthened to include structures that further facilitate this process. The Teaching School was seen to be a central structure within the model with one participant commenting that the Teaching School is the “overarching glue that keeps the schools and the University College working together. This is the machinery that organises school coordinators, assists mentors and liaises with the College to ensure a meaningful degree is experienced by the trainees”.

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The Effectiveness of the Model for Teacher Training This section outlines the primary themes that emerged from the study around what participants considered to be the strengths of the model in relation to ITE preparation. It also highlights some areas within the model that can be considered for improvement.

Theory and Practice The Hub model has sought to address the need to bridge the theory/practice nexus described in various reports and literature (AITSL, 2015; Brady, 2002; Department of Education Skills and Employment, 2022; Parliament of Victoria Education & Training Committee, 2005; TEMAG, 2015). TEMAG (2015) especially noted the need for partnerships between tertiary providers and schools to enable this integration. The Hub model has provided ITE students with the opportunity to be in classrooms where this is described as the benefit of being able to: Integrate my theoretical knowledge and practical skills as I have been able to readily make connections between the readings and other academic input and what I observed or participated in within the school environment. (ITE student)

One ITE student explained how this translated into practice: “I was able to gain an understanding of content knowledge or behaviour management strategies and then plan and utilise this knowledge in my own practice in the classroom”. The opportunity for trainees to learn the theory of teaching and practice this knowledge in a safe environment in the classroom reinforces Rossner and Commins’ (2012) suggestion that effective partnerships need to be committed to reciprocal learning relationships. All ITE students interviewed were positive about the model assisting them to integrate the theory with the practice of teaching. Examples of reasons for this success include: . “Ongoing weekly classroom practice providing practical experience in the classroom from day one, alongside an experienced and pastoral mentor”. . “Group reflection and discussion in bespoke sessions” with the chance to “regularly engage in deep reflective practice with my peers.” . “Teacher Trainee goal setting/reflections/observations/reviews all add significant opportunity for integration”. . “Learn[ing] about teaching strategies, philosophies, and theories, practise them, refine them, and discover where they work, why they work, and if they work for me in my context”. The interviews with the Program Directors reflected similar thoughts regarding the integration of theory and practice. The model was referred to as an “action research project, to get into the classroom, and try to put into practice whatever it is they are proposing to reflect upon”. Other reflections considered the additional resources

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provided by the Teaching School in the form of “workshops and guest lecturers as pivotal to assisting the ITE student in their integration of theory and practice”. The ITE students are “being stretched, growing, as they apply new understandings and take risks in a safe environment.” While the common assumption is that theory informs practice, in a true example of reciprocity, the practice space (in this model the school or classroom) was found to equally inform the theoretical space (the University College). This was reflected in comments made by both ITE students and Directors. The Regional Director for the University College stated: “The ITE students are part of forums in their study where they can discuss theory and practice at a deeper level as they have witnessed it at school.” This reciprocity was further illustrated by an ITE student: “Likewise, I could bring insights from my school experiences to others in the Teaching School cohort and the wider ITE student population of the University College during lectures etc.”. There are, however, impediments to the model, which have challenged its success. Rossner and Commins (2012) suggested that for enduring partnerships to occur there must be commitment to reciprocal learning relationships between the tertiary institutions and the schools. Alter and Coggshall (2009) further elucidated that a clinical based practice should combine the theory of research-based teaching with the profession. Whilst reciprocal learning has been a positive outcome in the integration of theory and practice there was also seen to be little correlation of the study the ITE student is undertaking with the mentor teachers and the trainees’ practice in the classroom. The ITE students’ comments indicated that the reciprocal learning doesn’t always happen as it could. They advocated that there was a need to align subjects as much as possible with school experience and enable a platform for discussion regarding the theory learnt with what was happening in the classroom. One Teacher Trainee explained this specifically: At present, the study and the relationship with the mentor teacher are relatively separate. I think that if they were encouraged to check in at the start of a semester, to see which units were being studied, and then give opportunities for the ITE student to integrate that. For example, in the last Semester I studied both inclusive education, and a unit on various learning theories. In hindsight, I could have been more thoughtful about integrating that with my work at school during the terms.

Therefore while the Hub model is seen to have provided a space for the integration of theory and practice, there is still work to be done on strengthening this.

Classroom Readiness Miles and Knipe (2018) described the ‘transition shock’ for graduating teachers moving into full-time work as one of the key factors for early exit from teaching. An aim of the Hub model is that schools have greater agency in the preparation of their ITE students for the profession in collaboration with the Teaching School and the University College (Twelves, 2019). Currently the ITE students believe they are classroom ready because they are “being taught how to teach, grow and care for

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my students while balancing competing demands.” This is a view reinforced by a Program Director’s observation of Teacher Trainees in their professional experience placements. A significant factor contributing to the ITE student perception of classroom readiness was role modelling or “exposure to exemplary teachers.” The Hub model provides them with multiple opportunities to observe and work alongside experienced practitioners. The sustained release of responsibility was described as another factor contributing to classroom readiness. As one ITE student aptly explained: The slow release of responsibility. I feel that my stamina, knowledge and skills as a new teacher are significantly stronger because I can slowly grow my capacity/practice. I hope that this means I am more likely to enjoy a sustainable and thriving career and avoid the dreaded new teacher burnout.

Another aspect of classroom readiness is understanding and integrating into the ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 2006) of a school and how the various stakeholders operate within the ‘learning communities’ of the school (Le Cornu, 2010). An ITE student reflected on how this immersion is taking place: As I have been immersed in a school community for the years of my studies, I have become familiar with and had opportunities to participate meaningfully in the wider school context. I believe this has helped prepare me to be an active, positive contributor to my school context into the future.

Immersion in the totality of a teacher’s work within the broader community of practice, i.e., ITE student awareness of a teacher’s responsibilities beyond the classroom as well as in the classroom, suggest that they are not just classroom ready, but also school ready. Employer confidence (Gallant & Riley, 2014) that the trainees were classroom ready was also cited by the ITE students and Program Directors as a positive outcome for the model. The ITE students referred to the confidence that both their employers and they had that they were well-prepared for the rigours of a full-time teaching role because “we can jump right into my new role without the trepidation and uncertainty that a traditionally trained new graduate is likely to hold.” A Program Director explained employer confidence in the Hub Model as “a four-year job interview at the beginning of their program. But it’s proved to be very much the case. They are seen as desirable ITE students to become teachers in schools.”

Vocational Conviction Whilst the integration of theory and practice and a sense of preparedness to teach are significant factors in the Hub model, a sense of vocational conviction for each ITE student is core to the model’s vision and purpose. Research has shown that a teachers’ commitment to the profession is closely associated with their level of vocational conviction which supports long term sustainability in teaching (AC, 2022; Department of Education Skills and Employment, 2022; Hastie, 2019).

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The focus on vocational conviction begins at the interview process in the Teaching School model. Potential ITE students are asked why they are interested in enrolling in the program. Many candidates answer that they sense they have a ‘calling’ to the profession. They often elaborate by talking about positive experiences they have had as youth leaders, on camps, or teaching at their church. These experiences, along with their faith, have led them to consider teaching. The Hub model then assists in the development of this vocational conviction in every aspect of the program through to the ITE students’ final graduation. The Director of the Teaching School outlined the many and various ways that vocation and teacher formation are experienced in the program: Breadth of experience of and exposure to different models of teaching, classroom practice, and school. This has been really important given the different types of Christian schools that exist and are represented within the Teaching School Model. Strong connection to a community of practice, both within the school and through the trainee cohort. The significance of the ‘cohort’ has been much greater than I had anticipated, and a very significant contributor to a Trainee’s formation as a teacher.

This sense of vocational conviction was reflected by two ITE students when discussing their preparedness to teach: “It has grown my conviction to be a teacher. I have a sense of purpose as a teacher that goes beyond enjoyment and work/ life balance. This sense of purpose and strong conviction will sustain me through hard times”; and “strong sense of vocation, well-articulated educational philosophy, underpinned by Christian convictions (coherent and integrated)”. These ITE students have articulated that teaching for them is not simply a job but they are “passionate about shaping young lives through teaching” (Teaching School Handbook, 2023, p. 6). Program Directors also highlighted vocational conviction as being important for sustainability as teachers. They referred to the ‘buy in’ ITE students might demonstrate to a school because of their understanding of the community of practice and their experience with all dimensions of a teacher’s role.

Conclusion The research suggests that at these early stages, the Hub model is effective in addressing the concerns and needs of the Australian Schooling sector. While it is not without challenges, especially in its start-up phase, there were definite benefits articulated such as: participation within communities of practice within an environment intentionally designed to maximise this; the integration of theory and practice; an emphasis on and support for an ITE student vocational conviction; and classroom readiness. It is evident that the success of the model is to a large extent reliant on the quality, nature, and structure of the partnership. A shared vision and ongoing commitment to this vision is critical when navigating uncharted territory and bending old structures

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into new more flexible ones and collaboratively creating new ways of doing things. The epicentre of the partnership needs to be strong and stable, primarily captured in the relationship between the Regional Director and the Teaching School which filters down to all layers of the partnership. This preliminary study yields several implications for current practice and future research. There is need and scope for further research that builds upon the initial findings outlined in this exploratory study, specifically: . Longitudinal impact and sustainability of the model . Comparative study between Hubs . Comparative study between Hub model and conventional models of teaching training, and between the Hub model and alternate employment based ITE models. The further exploration of the third space concept as applied to the Teaching School in partnership with the University College would be beneficial to defining the model and maximising this space for all stakeholders. The following emerged as implications of this study for the implementation of the model and associated practice: . The vision needs to be constantly communicated, at each layer of the partnership. . There is a further need to clarify key terminology and role responsibility, at an institutional as well as individual level. . Further training is required to strengthen and refine the model, and to equip those participating. . There is the need to explore how systems and processes might adapt to support and accommodate the flexible nature of partnership expressed within the model as it evolves, particularly at the operational level for participating institutions. An unintended outcome of the study was the richness and value of the reflexive discussion space that resulted from the collaboration of the three researchers. While we had acknowledged the limitations of this study given our involvement as participant researchers, we had not anticipated the value of researching the model together. Our research discussion sessions provided a rich collaborative space for reflecting on the model, our respective roles, the roles of other stakeholders, and to identify areas for redress and reimagination of the model. Thus, the collaborative research venture in itself served to strengthen the partnership and to create a shared understanding of what is required for the next stage of our journey together.

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Dr. Susan F. Westraad has worked in education leadership roles across different organisational contexts. In her role as Program Director with the General Motors Foundation she led several large evidence-based research projects on school and teaching improvement. She was awarded several American Chamber of Commerce awards for her work in developing education models to address key education issues. She is currently Head of School of the Education Faculty at Alphacrucis University College. Dr. Julie F. Mathews is an educational leader with experience in leadership and management in schools and the tertiary sector. Since 2008 Julie has developed and delivered programs for Initial Teacher Education and Masters’ programs. Julie is currently the Regional Director for Alphacrucis University College for the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney (TSAS). TSAS is a teaching HUB

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which operates a clinical teaching model that prepares ITE students for the profession. In her doctoral studies Julie completed research and analysis of a mentoring program at the University of Wollongong. Her thesis presented the benefits of mentoring for ITE students in transitioning to the profession. Dr. Caitlin R. Munday is Founding Director of the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney (TSAS). She is also Research Fellow (Professional Learning) at The Scots College, Sydney where she oversees several staff research and development programs, including significant university linkage projects and partnership.

Chapter 6

The Co-design of an Embedded School-University Partnership: An Application of Dewey’s Laboratory Style Approach to PST Experiences in Schools Mellita M. Jones

Introduction School-university partnerships (SUPs) are often considered panacea to outcomes for effective teacher preparation, and various models of how they are enacted are prolific in the literature (e.g., Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment (AGDESE), 2022; Darling-Hammond, 2014; Green et al., 2020; Kruger et al., 2009; Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG), 2014; Ure et al., 2009). Despite this, systemic models of SUPs tend to be structured as models of pre-service teacher (PST) professional experience that translates into relatively short-term blocks of time in a classroom rather than distributed across a period of university coursework (Mayer et al., 2015). Of course, there are a wide range of alternative models of partnership (Green et al., 2020; White & Forgasz, 2016); these tend to be particular to the universities and schools involved, and usually reflect an approach instigated and designed by the tertiary institution(s) (Zeichner, 2021). Moreover, issues with SUPs arise due to a lack of mentoring training and unmanageable workloads that teachers face, which limits capacity for effective supervision and mentoring of PSTs in schools (AGDESE, 2022; Heffernen et al., 2019; Mayer et al., 2015). Despite these concerns, time in schools is still largely viewed as one of the most essential aspects of initial teacher education (Mayer et al., 2017). This chapter reports on the design of an embedded SUP that came out of an Australian state government innovation grant. The project, entitled Ballarat Embedded Settings Teacher Education Partnership (BESTEP) model, was codesigned with school principals in a regional setting of Victoria, Australia, and M. M. Jones (B) Australian Catholic University, Ballarat, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_6

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involved groups of PSTs attending schools for 1–2 days per week concurrent with their university coursework. The school placements were modelled on Dewey’s (1904) laboratory style placement where reflection and theory-informed practice and inquiry were core. Time in schools counted towards coursework rather than days of formal professional experience. This meant PSTs were able to provide learning support directed by the classroom teacher, working predominantly with individual or small groups of primary school aged children, and they were not formally assessed on their practice. They were directed by lecturers to complete certain tasks including observations, and student, teacher, and broader school community discussions, which became the basis of reflective and theoretical discussions in the university setting. The following sections explore some of the concerns in current teacher education practices and the bases for these concerns as reported in the extant literature. An overview of initial teacher education is provided, followed by an outline of Dewey’s Laboratory Style Placement model, which informs the design of the project reported in this chapter. The project design is then explained, detailing both the collaborative design process undertaken with principals in the region, as well as the particularities of the model implemented. The research methodology used to explore the outcomes of the model are then detailed alongside a description of the participants. Results are reported and discussed in relation to their implications for future initial teacher education given the myriad of stressors facing the profession—including issues of retention and preparedness for classroom teaching.

Initial Teacher Education In recent years teaching and teacher education have been significant parts of many quality discourses and debates; not just in the field of education itself, but also in social and political arenas. Teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher preparation courses draw much criticism from everyone: the general public, politicians, and even its own practising and pre-service teachers (e.g., see AGDESE, 2022; Clarke et al., 2014; Mayer et al., 2017). It is unfortunate, says Larabee (2010), that “teaching is an extraordinarily difficult job that looks easy, which is a devastating combination for its professional standing” (p. 298). The most significant criticism of initial teacher education is tied to its curriculum, which is thought to be overly theoretical and disconnected and decontextualized from classroom practice (Darling-Hammond, 2012). This has seen the advent of the ‘theory–practice divide’, where practical experience in educational settings is pitted against the theoretical learning based in the university setting (Ryan, 2023). This artificial ‘gap’ is a concept that has emerged and be-devilled teacher education since its positioning in colleges and universities. Whilst practice is essentially theory in action (Bourdieu, 1977), achieving the nexus between theory and practice is possibly one of the most elusive, questioned, and researched areas of teacher education in the common era. This research has been unanimous in reporting that effective teacher education occurs when the theoretical aspects associated with university study are

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closely entwined with the practical and contextualised experiences provided by the school setting (Darling-Hammond, 2012, 2014; Jones et al., 2016; Loughran & Hamilton, 2016; Zeichner et al., 2015). The different sites of the University and the School (or other education setting) are both of significant importance, providing different but complementary experiences through which PSTs can develop their knowledge and their practice of teaching (Loughran & Hamilton, 2016). Recognition of this has led to a call for universities and schools to develop much stronger relationships and to work in close, collaborative partnerships (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2014; TEMAG, 2014; Ure et al., 2009; Zeichner, 2021). Whilst the traditional two-to-six weeks block practicum component of teacher education is often looked to for providing situated and practice-based learning, and thus fulfilling some of the partnership agenda, it is rife with issues. These issues include, but are not limited to, that practicum: . is often completed in isolation from university peers and teacher educators, thus a likely outcome is the uncritical adoption of the prevailing culture and pedagogies of the school/classroom teacher, be they good or bad. . often occurs after a block of university curriculum/pedagogy course work, which makes it difficult for subject-specific assessment to be embedded in practicum tasks; and makes it impossible for ongoing reflection and discussion on schoolbased experiences amongst a community of peers and expert facilitators who assist with the linking of theory and practice. . provides limited exposure to the full range of curriculum areas due to reasons tied to teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs (Bandura, 1977) that sees them avoiding, or teaching in less desirable ways, those areas of the curriculum that they themselves find difficult, with Science being a prime example (Jones & Carter, 2007). Theory and practice are symbiotic in their mutual contribution to effective teacher education—the understanding of one is reliant on understanding the other (Korthagen, 2011). Among other things, recognition of this symbiosis has led to a plethora of research into how the SUPs can be best leveraged to address the nexus between theory and practice in teacher education and ensure a full and rigorous exposure to the curriculum. Arguably, one of the most important strategies in achieving this is the practice of critical reflection. Reflection has long been associated with teacher education but perhaps only in the past two decades has it been theorised and emphasised as essential in what it brings to learning about teaching (e.g., Agnew et al., 2023; Boyd, 2014; Korthagen, 2011; Loughran, 2014). It is reflection on practice, not practice on its own, that leads to meaningful learning about teaching. It is not simply exposure to practice that enables learning, but rather in being able to identify and understand the reasons for particular teaching actions (Reid, 2014). Thus, it is together that the university and the school settings can provide the relevant experiences for the integration of theory and practice. One model of integrated work practice that has had particular traction across a range of professions is the Work Integrated Learning (WIL) model (Patrick et al., 2008). WIL requires practical learning situated in a relevant workplace to enable

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better ties between the theory and practice of professional course work. In the case of teacher education, I argue that this requires concurrent University and Schoolbased experiences. Concurrent experiences, distinct from supervised and assessed practicum, provide more authentic school experiences that can be used as the contexts for timely discussion, deconstruction, analysis, and reflection on practice back in the university setting. Concurrent experiences also enable different areas of the curriculum to be a targeted focus of the school experience, and thus provide better opportunities for PSTs to practice teaching across the full range of curriculum areas. Loughran (2006) speaks of the importance for PSTs to engage in experimentation with their own practice “in situations in which judgement and assessment are minimised in order to encourage risk taking so that strong personal learning might be experienced” (p. 161). This is difficult to achieve in the practicum due to its need to include supervised and assessed teaching. This assessable nature often leads to PSTs viewing their practicum as another assessment task in which they need to adopt the strategies and behaviours preferred by the supervising teacher. A concurrent WIL approach allows for more effective use of classroom time to experiment with teaching without the ‘threat’ of assessment. Such opportunities have been found to assist PSTs in developing their own teaching styles; higher levels of confidence; and a stronger sense of teacher identity (Jones & McLean, 2012). Moreover, Kruger et al. (2009) have found that the most effective forms of school-university partnerships occur when the focus of the school-based experience is on the learning of children in the class rather than that of PSTs. This further supports the need for a component of school-based experiences to be separate from the formally assessed practicum. With increased opportunities to build their skills, knowledge, and confidence, PSTs are more likely to graduate with the ‘classroom ready’ standards demanded of them in the current discourses around teacher education. There have been alternative approaches to teacher education, particularly since the TEMAG (2014) report, where universities have trialled less traditional schooluniversity partnerships. For example, The Melbourne University Graduate Model (Redman, 2014), the ACU Formation project (Ryan et al., 2016), and QUT’s award winning Teacher Education Done Differently (TEDD) (Hudson & Hudson, 2011), among others. These programs all report favourable outcomes for the linking of theory and practice, something attributed across the models to increased focus on the partnership between schools and universities and the capacity to better link course work with experiences in schools and early learning settings. Such approaches all reflect elements of Dewey’s (1904) ‘laboratory style schools’ where practical and theoretical components were recognised as mutually informing and equally important components of initial teacher education. Dewey’s laboratory school approach and its application to the BESTEP model is explained in the next section.

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Dewey’s Laboratory Style Placement The design of BESTEP was informed by Dewey’s laboratory style school which recognises the essential role of praxis by “creat[ing] a new curriculum in which developmental, intellectual, and social goals were viewed as inextricably intertwined” (Tanner, 1997, p. 13). To achieve this, Dewey (1904) describes the laboratory school as the use of “practice work as an instrument in making real and vital theoretical instruction; the knowledge of subject-matter and of principles of education. This is the laboratory point of view” (p. 1). Discussing Dewey’s laboratory model, Tanner (1991) notes that learning is “not only a body of facts, but a form of living personal experience” (p. 103), which Dewey, Tanner relays, says “must be the latter before it can become the former” (p. 103). Whilst traditional, assessed practicum placements may enable the personal living experience described by Tanner, what it does not tend to do is foster the interaction of theory and practice concurrently. Indeed, Dewey (1904) notes of traditional placement structures that there is “considerable postponement of skill in the routine and technique of the profession” (pp. 3–4). Dewey (1904) claims that traditional structures, with their monitoring, assessment, control, and lack of authenticity in the pre-service teacher’s experience, are akin to “learning to swim without going too near the water” (p. 5). He argues that removal of some of these barriers to an authentic experience is needed. Moreover, Dewey notes that traditional practice experiences tend to create mimicry of the teaching observed because it is more concerned with practice than the reasons for that practice: Observation should at first be conducted from the psychological rather than from the ‘practical’ standpoint. If the latter is emphasized before the student has an independent command of the former, the principle of imitation is almost sure to play an exaggerated part in the observer’s future teaching, and hence at the expense of personal insight and initiative. (p. 15)

The alternative, Dewey (1904) proposes, requires “convergence” (p. 24) whereby “consecutive and longitudinal” (p. 25) experiences of practice and scholarship are entwined. He argues that this means teacher preparation needs to privilege opportunities for observation—not “for the sake of seeing how good teachers teach, or for getting ‘points’ which may be employed in one’s own teaching, but to get material for psychological observation and reflection” (p. 25). Moreover, Dewey believes the best approach to such a focus is to have PSTs working as assistants in the classroom: there would then be more intimate introduction to the lives of the children and the work of the school through the use as assistants of such students as had already got psychological insight and a good working acquaintance with educational problems. Students at this stage would not undertake much direct teaching, but would make themselves useful in helping the regular class instructor. There are multitudes of ways in which such help can be given and be of real help–that is, of use to the school, to the children, and not merely of putative value to the training student. (pp. 25–26)

Given the ongoing debate around the quality of initial teacher education worldwide, and ongoing inquiries that seem to report on the importance of quality professional practicum (e.g., AGDESE, 2022; European Commission, 2014), Dewey’s

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century-old ideas appear as relevant today as they were back then. The model explored in this chapter resonates with Dewey’s ideas around pre-service teachers as classroom assistants. The model is explained further in the next section.

The Ballarat Embedded Settings Teacher Education Partnership (BESTEP) Model The Ballarat Embedded Settings Teacher Education Partnership (BESTEP) model was designed by a group of teacher educators at the Ballarat regional campus of Australian Catholic University (ACU), a large multi-campus university in Australia, in collaboration with Catholic school principals in the local region. The design process was considered important in achieving an authentic partnership approach that best met the needs of both the school and university partners such that PSTs would be of genuine assistance in the classroom. A proposal for the model was presented at a principals’ cluster meeting where principals provided feedback on initial ideas for the model and made suggestions that addressed their needs. A number of design iterations were discussed over a period of 12 months prior to implementation in follow up discussions at further principal cluster meetings. To achieve the concurrent university and school experience, BESTEP required PSTs to spend three days per week attending on-campus classes which were run in a workshop style rather than the traditional lecture and tutorial structure. They spent the other two days per week in a school, early learning, or kindergarten setting. The timing and duration of BESTEP aligned with normal university semester dates, which ran for 12 weeks each across two semesters. Being a regional campus of the university, strategies that would best cater to rural and regional needs were also considered in the design. This led to the education setting days being scheduled adjacent to the weekend. This scheduling enabled rural/regional students to spend more time in their local hometowns which were commonly at distances of up two hours’ car drive from the university campus (sometimes more), when they travelled home on weekends.

Tasks in Educational Settings BESTEP days in educational settings were designed to best support the needs of schools and children involved. This meant classroom teachers could guide the activities undertaken by PSTs, with the caveat that tasks were to be classroom and learning rather than administrative in focus. In this way, PSTs became a classroom helper, performing duties similar to that of a learning support officer or classroom assistant as described by Dewey (1904). Tasks may have included:

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. working under the teacher’s direction to support children’s learning (individuals/ small groups) . possibly leading some whole group sessions if/when appropriate . working in the classroom on other activities the teacher identifies . attending meetings/duties with the classroom teacher as deemed appropriate by the teacher/school . assisting with individual student assessment (e.g., running records) . PSTs would not plan lessons per se but might work with the teacher on planning. Informal feedback from teachers was also encouraged, but they were not required to complete formal assessment or reporting on PST performance. This was a feature considered important by principals in the design process, as they reported that teachers were often stressed by university assessment and reporting requirements in the traditional practicum model, and they wanted to ensure that teachers’ work was supported rather than exacerbating their already heavy workloads. Whilst PSTs’ primary role in the educational setting on BESTEP days was to support children’s learning as directed by teachers, they were also required to complete observations and reflections that linked to their university coursework. These were designed to minimise impact on the educational settings and teachers/ educators involved but were important in providing the experiences on which PSTs would deconstruct and reflect in university-based workshops. Examples included: . Running a lesson or series of lessons in a particular discipline area (e.g., Science/ PE/Health/etc.) . Conducing literacy/numeracy interview(s) . Assisting with running records . Mapping the learning of particular children . Assisting with development of inclusive education plan(s) for children with additional learning needs. The exact nature and timing of these tasks were negotiated with teachers/educators and were documented in a shared handbook that was then provided to PSTs, schools, and teacher educators at the beginning of the semester. A reflection template was developed to assist PSTs in recording their experiences, ideas, and observations. This template was designed for an open response to what PSTs ‘See/Feel/Think/Do/ Follow up’.

Practicum Placements Where possible, PSTs completed their traditional block placements in the education setting in which they completed their BESTEP days. This ensured that they were already familiar with the education setting’s routines and expectations, and that they had an established relationship with the children as they moved into the formal practicum period—the intimacy called for by Dewey (1904). Block placements took

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place in the University’s normal Professional Experience calendar period. They maintained all traditional requirements in terms of number of supervised and assessed days, number of hours/lessons/days of consecutive days’ teaching, and classroom control. Teachers/educators were required to complete practicum assessment reports for these teaching periods, and educational settings were paid the normal rates of remuneration provided for practicum supervision. If the teacher/school/PST would prefer not to have the block placement attached to the two-day per week setting then alternative settings were arranged. This was another important design feature that enabled either the school or the university to recommend a formal placement in an alternative setting. It is important to note that PSTs were not paid for any of their time in schools, whether for BESTEP or for the traditional block practicum, thus potential conflicts of interest associated with completing practicum in places of paid employment were avoided.

The Role of Teacher Educators Teacher Educators took on multiple roles in the BESTEP model. Firstly, they fulfilled the traditional teacher educator role of designing/updating curriculum and teaching of course work, although, as mentioned earlier, content was delivered in more of a workshop style than in a traditional lecture-tutorial structure. As a part of the planning for BESTEP, teacher educators provided guidance on the sorts of things PSTs should look for and/or do whilst in education settings to support their developing understanding of unit-specific content. To support the SUP, teacher educators also took on BESTEP supervision responsibilities. Each teacher educator was assigned a certain number of educational settings in alignment with their workload. They were required to maintain contact with their assigned setting through a combination of emails, phone calls, and site visits. Site visits were encouraged to take place with groups of PSTs/teachers at the educational setting to promote informal, supportive conversations. More formal and private visits were scheduled if there were concerns or issues to be addressed. The purpose of BESTEP supervision was to strengthen relationships and enable early identification of any issues. BESTEP supervisors monitored all PSTs at their assigned setting, although they did not necessarily teach all PSTs placed at the setting. BESTEP supervision was accounted for in the workloads of teacher educators without additional financial burden on the university. Each unit within the course traditionally had three hours per week of face-to-face teaching time. In the BESTEP model, these three workload hours were shared between the education setting and university site, with one hour of workload per unit given to the education setting and two hours given to university workshops. This model enabled BESTEP supervisors to maintain contact with each educational setting on a regular basis to check PST progress, monitor potential issues, and maintain relationships. The workload model also enabled BESTEP to remain cost-neutral relative to the more traditional structures operating on other campuses of the university. BESTEP supervisors were encouraged,

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but not required, to become the tertiary supervisor for the block placements with additional workload attached. After 12 months of planning, BESTEP was implemented in educational settings in the region at the beginning of the 2020 university year. Approximately three weeks into the implementation, COVID-19 led to the unprecedented and widespread shut down of schools and stringent requirements for access to kindergarten and early childhood settings. In Victoria, Australia, these closures and requirements extended for the whole school year. Furthermore, the Victorian Government Department of Education placed a ban on all research in government schools. As such, COVID19 had a devastating impact on the trialling of the model. Ongoing school closures throughout 2020–2021 and staffing changes at the university meant the model was never fully implemented and trialled. However, preliminary data from some stakeholders was collected, and although this data cannot provide a robust evaluation of the model, it does provide some insights into some of the potential benefits and challenges.

Methodology A mixed methods case study utilising multistage evaluation design (Creswell & Guetterman, 2019) was planned for the evaluation research. Aligning in particular with Stake’s (1995) constructivist/interpretivist approach to case study, the project was primarily underpinned by a strong motivation for discovering meaning and understanding of experiences in context (Harrison et al., 2017). Such an approach acknowledges the inherent involvement of the researcher in the case “as it occurs in its context and in its particular situation” (Stake, 2006, p. 2). This view of case study research reflects the involvement of researchers as participants and meaning-makers in the present study, which is situated in the contexts of multiple educational settings where initial teacher education preparation occurred for 2020 ACU Ballarat-based pre-service teachers. The multi-stage evaluation design aspect of the study where “researchers seek to evaluate the impact of a program…[utilising] both formative and summative evaluation steps” (Creswell & Guetterman, 2019, p. 559) was intended to be conducted in yearly stages over a 4-year period (to align with the 4-year duration of the degrees involved), with the program to be revised in response to findings throughout. This fits with Stake’s (2006) view of case study also, which he sees as “shap[ing] the activity as well as the experiencing and interpreting of the activity” (p. 2). Due to the impacts of COVID-19, however, this multi-stage evaluation has not been possible, and data collection was subsequently limited to a single open-response questionnaire administered to: (1) Pre-service teachers involved in BESTEP in 2020. (2) School Leaders (e.g., principals, deputy principals) of Catholic schools involved in BESTEP (due to bans on research in government education settings).

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(3) Teacher Educators involved in delivery of university-based course work. School principals were given the option to include their teaching staff and it is suspected that they all opted not to as only Principal feedback was received from the educational settings. This is again, undoubtedly, due to the impact of COVID19 on teachers’ workload and wellbeing at the time of data collection. There were substantially more female participants than males, which is commensurate with the prevalence of females studying and employed in Primary and Early Childhood Education in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries around the world (European Parliamentary Research Service, 2020).

Recruitment (1) Pre-service teachers: the research project was outlined at a program launch preservice teacher briefing at the beginning of the 2020 academic year. Steps for becoming involved were explained. Opportunities for questions were provided. PSTs were sent a follow up email containing an information letter and a link to an online consent form at which point they could decide whether they wanted to participate in the research. (2) School Leaders: Leaders of participating Catholic schools were briefed about the program and its research component via a face-to-face meeting with a followup email. They were invited to participate themselves and given an option to extend the invitation for participation to their wider staff. Hard copies and follow up e-copies of the information letter and consent forms were provided. (3) Teacher Educators: Teacher educators of initial teacher education (ITE) units at ACU Ballarat campus were invited to be involved as a researcher and participant, a participant only, or to not be involved in the research at all. This invitation was communicated via email to all staff involved in teaching ITE courses in Semester 1 (March–June) 2020. Each participant cohort received a dedicated letter of information outlining the nature of the program and what would be required if they elected to participate. Consent forms for their participation were also collected. A total of 65 educational settings (schools, kindergartens, early childhood settings) hosted a total of 128 PSTs as a part of the BESTEP program in 2020. Table 6.1 depicts the numbers of participant cohorts, those invited to participate in the research given COVID-19-related bans, as well as the number of participants who ultimately responded and provided feedback.

Data Collection As noted above, data collection was limited to a single online questionnaire for each of the three participating cohorts: the PSTs, Principals, and Teacher Educators.

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Table 6.1 2020 participant numbers Participant cohort

Involved in BESTEP program

Invited to participate in research data collection

Involved in research data collection

Pre-service teachers

128

128

29 (22.6%)

Leaders of educational settings

65

11

5 (45.5%)

Teacher educators

12

12

6 (50%)

Note The research design and instruments received HREC approval (Ethics register number: 202015H). Additional approval to conduct research in Ballarat Diocese Catholic schools was obtained from the Ballarat Catholic Education Office

The questionnaire contained open-ended response questions to enable participants to describe their experiences of the program without being restrained by preconceived program attributes. Each cohort’s questionnaire was tailored to the target audience in order to gather feedback relevant to their experience of the program during its shortened implementation.

Data Analysis Open-ended responses to questionnaires generated qualitative data which was analysed deductively through the use of thematic topic codes (Richards, 2009). These codes initially emerged in what Braun and Clarke (2006) identify as (1) researcher familiarisation and (2) initial coding phases of data analysis; where raw data is reviewed, and initial categories of response noted. Codes at this stage of the analysis largely aligned with the nature of the question being responded to, as these were also designed with thematic content in mind (e.g., positive/challenges experienced). Once initial codes were identified, they were reviewed and refined through a process of expanding and collapsing, leading to the identification and naming of themes— Braun and Clarke’s (2006) Phases 3 and 4 of thematic data analysis. This process led to the identification of five themes which applied across all participant cohort data: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Expectations/feelings/motivation prior to implementation Positives Experienced Challenges Experienced Recommendations for Program Improvement Desire for Program Continuation.

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Table 6.2 PST participant course and course progression Course

Year commenced

Total

2017

2018

2019

2020

Bachelor of education primary

2

5

9

2

18

Bachelor of early childhood and primary education

3

3

3

2

11

Total

5

8

12

4

29

Results Findings from 2020 data collection and analysis are reported here under the five identified themes.

Participant Cohort Synopsis Pre-service Teachers 29 PSTs responded to the online questionnaire. Eleven (39%) of the respondents were studying a Bachelor of Early Childhood and Primary Education degree, and 18 were studying a Bachelor of Education Primary degree. Table 6.2 provides an indication of how far PST participants had progressed through their course. Table 6.2 shows a reasonable spread across the year levels and courses, with a slight increase in proportion of third year Bachelor of Education Primary students participating.

School Leadership Eleven Catholic school principals were invited to participate in the research evaluation. Of these, only five of the principals responded to the invitation. They ranged in years of educational experience between 15 and 40 years, with between 10 and 28 years working in leadership. All but one school hosted PSTs for both the BESTEP and practicum components of their initial teacher education course.

Teacher Educators Of the 12 teacher educators involved in BESTEP implementation, half responded to the invitation to participate in the research evaluation. Responding participants had between one and 15 years of experience as a teacher educator. All six had previous experience teaching in a non-university education setting: one with secondary

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teaching experience, four with primary teaching experience, and one with experience as a kindergarten teacher. The following findings report the six themes identified in the open-ended question responses from each participant cohort. Within each theme, representative samples/ quotes from the feedback as well as summary statements of commonalities are included.

Theme 1: Expectations/Feelings/Motivation Prior to Implementation Initially, PSTs were worried about the time BESTEP added to their university commitments. They reported feeling “anxious”, “nervous of the unknown”, “worried about the 2-day commitment” and unsure “how to juggle days in schools with work and other commitments”. Some feelings of positivity were also reported: “Excited [about] being in a classroom, gaining more practical experience, being able to learn directly from the source [and have] extra days leading up to block placement is a great idea.” Leaders from education settings saw a wide range of benefits including benefits for PSTs, and for their own education setting both generally and specifically for the children. For PSTs, they noted how the model enabled “valuable experience in classroom management, planning, pedagogy” stating that “PSTs require as much time in the classroom as possible to develop their teaching skills.” Time in classrooms was viewed as being “imperative … to complement their academic studies” as well as an opportunity “for PSTs to make connections within schools and gain a stronger understanding of the day-to-day events within a school that placements often don’t provide.” Principals also viewed BESTEP as “a great opportunity to explore other models of pre-service mentoring” and to “consolidate staff learning, by having to explain guided reading, etc., they are deepening their understandings also.” As such it was viewed as a professional learning opportunity for in-service teachers. Teacher educators were “excited” that “PSTs would be able to gain experience in classroom with students and to connect theory with practice” in an “authentic teacher education experience”. It was viewed as an opportunity for “meaningful assessment [to be] built into the coursework alongside the classroom experiences” rather than during block placement times at the end of the semester. It was viewed by one teacher educator as: such a positive step forward … because I could see clearly how theory of education and the practice of schools would be linked. I could also see that schools and university would be working together and they would not be separate identities.

One teacher educator thought the model was “good” but they “worried how it might impact on schools’ teaching and learning activities” and was “concerned about less on campus tutorial time in lieu of time in educational setting.”

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Overall, principals and teacher educators were very positive about the program and its intentions prior to implementation. PSTs expressed a mixture of initial feelings with approximately one quarter being very positive and looking forward to the additional school-based experience, one quarter feeling excited but nervous about the workload, and approximately half feeling quite anxious and/or overwhelmed about the extra commitment to university work that they saw as taking away from their time to engage in part time employment. As noted earlier, student workload for BESTEP was supported through a reduction in university-based time for each unit, which accounted for approximately half of the 2-day per week placement. All units have a recommended 150 h of study time (with a minimum of 36 h face-to-face/directed study time), so the additional time in educational settings was fairly minimal in the context of the whole unit. It was also thought that the depth in understanding the more praxis-oriented experience offered would reduce the amount of non-contact study and assignment time. After the program commenced, participants across all cohorts had only positive reports, although there was a lot of disappointment expressed regarding the impact of COVID19 which essentially halted the BESTEP program just as it was getting off the ground.

Theme 2: Positives Experienced The positive experiences of the BESTEP program were felt across all participant cohorts and focused on the value of the school-based experience being so closely tied to university course work. For PSTs, the relationships they formed with teachers and children, particularly knowing that their practicum would be in the same setting later in the year, was positive. PSTs also expressed opportunities to be involved in ways that practicum had not previously enabled such as being “invited on school camp” and being “able to observe and learn from the students/gaining great experiences of classroom management strategies, daily routines, involved with guided reading, etc.” They also reported the benefit of being “in a classroom without the pressures of block placement assessment” and that having the “same school for BESTEP and the following block placement made placement less stressful.” One PST stated: Instantly I understood the value of BESTEP. I had established a relationship with the classroom teacher and was planning on being involved in the classroom schedule rather than just observing. I was going to be involved with learning experiences I hadn’t previously done on placements.

School principals also reported favourably the “fantastic involvement from students engaging in class” and the “relationships built between students and staff.” They also noted that their “staff appeared to be highly supportive of the concept and looked forward to working with students on an ongoing basis” but were disappointed that “due to COVID-19 [interactions were] minimal” but they “look[ed] forward to seeing program implemented fully in 2021.”

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Teacher educators were overwhelmingly positive about the experience and reported on their own experience and feedback from the settings they supervised. One noted the “positive comments from schools—some stating they had been waiting years for such a program that connected schools with work at uni.” There was also a comment about the “extra work initially” but that this allowed teacher educators to become “more connected with each other through the planning.” In relation to PST learning, teacher educators noted how the model provided “authentic learning experiences, meaningful assessment, opportunities to build mastery, [and] opportunities for authentic critical reflective practice” and saw the model as having “the potential to grow our PSTs in a unique way, graduating with a clear and in-depth understanding of teaching based in theory and practice.” Overall, as expressed by one PST, it was viewed as “extremely valuable for practical learning, networking, gaining experience, and connecting theory and practice.”

Theme 3: Challenges Experienced There were minimal challenges expressed by PSTs and school leaders once the program commenced, although some PSTs reiterated their previous comments regarding “increased workload caused stress” for some PSTs and/or feelings that they were unable to work in their part time jobs as much, creating financial stress: “We need these BESTEP hours to do our uni studies and to work to support ourselves.” There were no issues or challenges reported by school leaders other than the PSTs “not able to attend due to COVID-19.” Teacher educators reported the most challenges, for a range of logistical rather than philosophical reasons. For example, whilst there was a benefit in that “PSTs were able to support their thinking in discussions in uni tutorials [it was a] challenge to program time for all that PSTs wanted to share as well as cover material to be taught.” One teacher educator also noted that “school visits took more time than was anticipated and allocated, especially when visits included recess time. This time, however, was used to build relationships with the school staff, which was highly valuable.” It was also noted that “some PSTs were in a school or only an ECE [Early Childhood Education] setting” and that “it would be better if PSTs studying the Early Childhood and Primary course were in both settings each semester.” Generally, however, there was very minimal feedback regarding challenges experienced—partly, no doubt, due to the short time in which it was able to operate before COVID-19 impacted its implementation.

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Theme 4: Recommendations for Program Improvement Program recommendations came mostly from PSTs and teacher educators. PSTs in particular recommended to “reduce number of days per week in an educational setting” and to “improve communication at the beginning”, “prepare PSTs earlier” and “further clarify roles and expectations of PSTs, uni, and schools.” School leaders mostly refrained from suggesting improvement measures, stating, for example, that they were “unsure at this stage as it wasn’t fully implemented [due to COVID-19]”. One school principal suggested that: Individual schools should survey their staff at the commencement of the program to determine what benefits the program will offer their students and themselves. Compare this to the end of the program and it will be very interesting to see what was achieved and what new outcomes occurred which were not predicted.

Teacher educators, in line with PSTs, recommended to “reduce days in an educational setting from 2 to 1 day per week” or to have “2 days per week for 1st Years and 1 day per week for other cohorts.” They also recommended “greater induction so that students are clear on their responsibilities and commitments” whilst still acknowledging that “preparation/organisation/operationalisation of BESTEP was excellent—very well thought out, giving consideration to all stakeholders—and handled extremely professionally.” Other recommendations from teacher educators included placing “PSTs in both primary and Early Childhood settings each semester” and having “greater liaison with Placement Officers to assist with coordination of BESTEP education setting placement and block placement setting.” Overall, program recommendations were focussed on logistical matters, ranging from the number of days of school-based work, the location of placements for Early Childhood and Primary PSTs, and induction timing and processes.

Theme 5: Desire for Program Continuation School principals and teacher educators overwhelmingly reported a desire for the continuation of the BESTEP program, while PST responses were mixed. One PST stated “I loved the concept of BESTEP. I think it is a great opportunity to gain experience and to make connections.” Other PSTs also supported the idea of its continuation, but in a modified form: “I would want to continue, but I think it would be better to have it only on one day to ease the pressures of university, work, and life balance.” Another reiterated this, stating “it is already hard enough on university students to do assignments to the best of their ability and earn money part time outside of their studies.” Approximately 20% of PSTs did not want to participate in the program again due to workload issues and the resulting stresses and pressure on time, while about 10% were unsure.

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School leaders unanimously supported the program’s continuation, seeing “BESTEP as a win–win opportunity” where “the benefits [were] gained by the preservice teacher, students and the classroom teachers … by working together and unpacking what they do to educate each child”. One principal stated “I strongly believe the pre-service teacher education needs to shift, to provide educators with greater support and understanding as they take on their own classrooms. This model offers a lot of potential to develop our next generation of teachers.” Teacher educators overwhelming wanted the program to continue, noting that “BESTEP puts all students on an even level of opportunity particularly the students who have relocated to Ballarat [a regional setting] for university and are not considered as privileged as others.” One teacher educator commented how BESTEP assisted PSTs in making connections with the broader education community—something, they thought, that “not all of them are equipped to … set these connections for themselves.” Another commented that although “there was not enough time trialling the model to make effective judgements on it” they “believ[ed] in the underpinning theory informing the program” stating that “It brings authenticity, meaning, and rigour to teacher education. I think our course work was much better for being able to build concomitant school experiences into it.” Along similar lines, another stated: I believe it is such a GOOD program for the very BEST reasons and only POSITIVE outcomes will be achieved by both the schools, uni and most importantly our students. I also believe that it gives uni educators the wonderful opportunity to be more connected to schools. (Emphasis in original)

These responses reflect the general sense that all participants wanted to see the program continue once COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, although some useful recommendations were made for modifying the program to enhance its delivery and the PST experience. The program did resume in 2021, although again only for a short period of time as COVID-19 had ongoing impacts throughout 2021 and 2022. These included restricted access to education settings and the University’s efforts to catch up on formal student placements that were missed during earlier school closures. As such all non-essential school experiences were not supported as the university recovered from the COVID-19 impacts on placements. It is hoped that BESTEP will be re-instated once the lasting effects of COVID-19 on school placements has dissipated.

Discussion It is clear that the concurrent, non-assessed experience of working in classrooms had benefits for praxis, and this was reported by all participant cohorts, an outcome supported by other alternative models that encourage concurrent practice (e.g., Hudson & Hudson, 2011; Neal & Eckersley, 2014; Ryan, 2014). Educational leaders saw benefits for PSTs having more experience in the classroom outside of/in addition

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to the block placement time, as a professional development tool for their teaching staff, and for the benefit of their students due to the increased ability to cater for individual children by having another adult in the classroom to assist with the teaching and learning. Both Teacher Educators and PSTs saw how theory related to practice, as evidenced through tutorial discussions at university. Teacher Educators could be more targeted and purposeful in their course content and PSTs could ‘try it out’ and/or observe in a classroom without the pressure of placement assessment. The notion of removing the assessment pressures of practicum from practicum components of teacher education has been mentioned in the teacher education literature for many years (e.g., Hudson & Hudson, 2013; Loughran, 2006). PSTs were also appreciative of gaining classroom experience, observing daily routines, and being involved in learning and teaching opportunities with the students. All of these benefits address concerns raised in the recent review of Quality Initial Teacher Education (QITE) related to pre-service teachers needing more time in classrooms to gain experience in aspects of teaching such as classroom management, working with families, and catering for diversity in the needs of individual children (AGDESE, 2022). They also attend to Ryan’s (2023) observation of the “intersection between theory, evidence, and practice” (p. 3). These aspects of teaching require first-hand experience and cannot be obtained in the relatively short periods of teaching practicums. Much longer periods of time, across a school year, are needed to experience the breadth of issues and challenges that teachers are likely to face. The BESTEP model, informed by Dewey’s (1904) laboratory style of placement, provides this longitudinal exposure and enabled practise to occur in more manageable and supported ways. Discussing their experiences back at university as they were occurring meant other PSTs could learn from one another from real situations and the attendant emotions involved and thus promote the essential critical reflection that is widely recognised as crucial for learning and growth (Omidvar & Kislov, 2014; Schön, 1987). While leaders of educational settings were happy with PSTs coming in for two days per week, PSTs stated that this was too great a time commitment, and they overwhelmingly preferred one day per week so that they could continue the program while being better able to juggle other commitments such as study and work. Teacher Educators also cited time as a factor, stating that visits to educational settings took more time than originally anticipated and the pressure to cover content and allow for adequate sharing of school experiences in the University contact periods. The increase in academic workloads and subsequent decline in the wellbeing of academics has been increasingly identified as a concern over the past two decades (e.g., see Fitzgerald et al., 2019; Giroux, 2002). This is, therefore, an important consideration that may require increased or changed models of funding for the sector if real improvement in initial teacher education is to be realised. Despite this drawback, teacher educators did identify changes to their teaching practise, noting how BESTEP enabled more authentic, praxis-oriented approaches to their teaching. They all commented on PSTs’ increased capacity to link theoretical ideas with experiences observed in classrooms, and all reported in favour of the model as being ideal for

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effective initial teacher education. Such findings address the prevailing criticisms that have been directed at teacher education for decades. Although COVID-19 caused BESTEP to be halted for the majority of 2020, the feedback from participating cohorts indicated that all see benefits to such a program. One of the objectives, that of enhancing relationships between the university and key education stakeholders, was observed. This was evidenced through positive discussion between all cohorts, making connections and building relationships further during Teacher Educator visits to educational settings, and the view from Leadership of the benefits to their school and students. Similar findings have been reported by Daniel et al. (2023) in their regional hub model of a SUP. From the feedback obtained in this study, the potential for enhancing the quality of teacher education through research-informed partnership practices, another of the study objectives, was indicated. This was shown through PSTs beginning to make connections between theory and practice, Teacher Educators being more reflective and purposeful in their unit content to support BESTEP in the classroom, and teachers using BESTEP as a form of professional development for their mentoring and teaching practices. It is yet to be seen if BESTEP will meet the objective of attracting aspiring teachers from regional and rural areas to the regional University campus as the program has only run for part of the first year of implementation. Data from future iterations will be able to help determine whether or not this objective will be met.

Limitations There were several limitations in the evaluation research conducted—the most substantial one being the very short duration that BESTEP ran due to the impact of COVID-19. Most participants experienced only three weeks in educational settings before the widespread shutdown of schools and strict entry requirements were implemented for visitors to kindergartens and early childhood settings in the state of Victoria in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the state. As such the findings reported here are only very preliminary and much greater testing of the model is needed to evaluate its real impact. The number of participants was also a limitation. A ban on research in education settings for the majority of 2020 by both ACU and the Victorian Government Department of Education meant participant recruitment was narrow (Catholic schools only) and then compounded by a relatively low response rate. Furthermore, the study occurred in a regional setting which may have influenced the nature of the data as PSTs and educational settings all deal with rural/regional-based education issues, which can be very different to those of metropolitan settings (House of Representatives, 2020). Hence again, the findings show preliminary ideas and further research is needed into the true nature of the impact of the model on PST, educators, and teacher educator perceptions.

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Conclusion This study, despite its limitations, suggests that Dewey’s (1904) century-old laboratory model to initial teacher education has relevance to today’s thinking about how school-university partnerships could be enacted. For decades the literature in the field along with a number of reviews into initial teacher education have emphasised the importance of strengthening school-university partnerships (e.g., AGDESE, 2022; TEMAG, 2014). Despite the consistency of these recommendations, piecemeal approaches inspired by individual universities and schools or small groups of universities and schools working together (e.g., Jones et al., 2016; Winslade et al., 2023) persist, usually supported with short-term funding that often impedes their longterm sustainability. Whilst the wide range of different SUP approaches may have benefits for dealing with context-specific nuances, it does not present easy pathways for enabling more integrated and authentic SUP work, nor does it emphasise the “shared responsibility” (Ryan, 2023, p. 4) of this work for schools and universities. Indeed, SUP work often relies, instead, on the work of individual academics and teachers, both of whom already face unprecedented workload pressures (AGDESE, 2022; Fitzgerald et al., 2019). A model such as BESTEP addresses some of the workload issues through its ‘classroom helper’ type model that minimises the reporting and assessment that teachers need to engage in, as well as providing a more natural experience for PSTs of the day-to-day activities of educational settings, without the pressure and risk associated with the formal practicum. As such, early findings indicate that BESTEP added value to the education of both PSTs and school children, as well as engendering opportunities for professional learning and reflective practice for educators and teacher educators. It also enhanced relationships and connections between stakeholders, which Zeichner (2021) notes as a crucial element of effective SUP work, even though it only ran for such a short time. For these reasons, BESTEP was found to be worthy of continuing into the future, though with some modifications to its delivery. One obvious suggestion moving forward might be to have a more systematic and policy-based approach to teacher education whereby PSTs are employed by schools for a minimum number of hours per week in a learning support officer-type role. Such an approach would support education settings to access classroom support workers whilst alleviating the pressure on PSTs as they try to balance their studies and part-time work. This is again no different to Dewey’s (1904) recommendation over a century ago. In this way, schools could acquire the additional classroom and learning support that they already pay for through employing other people; PSTs would gain the additional educational setting practice that enhances their learning and confidence; and teacher educators could plan and deliver university course work knowing that their students have education-based experiences to utilise for reflection and assessment purposes. A re-envisioning of school and university funding models that better support partnership work would also be beneficial and assist in alleviating the workload pressures faced by staff in universities and education settings.

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All three of these things align with recommendations from the most recent inquiry into teacher education, addressing both needs of schools and teacher preparation (see AGDESE, 2022). Obviously, such a widespread change in requirements across sectors would require careful planning and coordination to balance logistical needs and contextual nuances of the settings involved. However, through such a program, all stakeholders stand to benefit, all stakeholders would be contributing to the profession’s future in authentic and meaningful ways, and we might be able to start moving beyond the small, individual university programs that currently prevail. Impacted by the onset of COVID-19 and subsequent school closures, findings into BESTEP program outcomes are preliminary but show promise for a model that is embedded in coursework and schools in authentic ways. It highlights the essential role that both schools and universities have in preparing PSTs to teach (Loughran & Hamilton, 2016; White & Forgasz, 2016) and challenges the traditional practicum model that persists in the face of multiple inquiries—both political and academic—that question its veracity and quality (e.g., Mayer, 2014). Furthermore, a mutually beneficial partnership provides increased opportunities for cross-sector work and support which could lead to both universities and schools gaining a better understanding and hence respond to the needs of educational settings, children, and teacher education. Finally, as Dewey (1904) noted of his laboratory school, BESTEP provides a kind of practical experience [that] enables … the future teacher to make the transition from his more psychological and theoretical insight to the observation of the more technical points of class teaching and management. The informality, gradualness, and familiarity of the earlier contact tend to store the mind with material which is unconsciously assimilated and organized, and thus supplies a background for work involving greater responsibility. (p. 26)

The BESTEP model addresses all of Dewey’s suggestions and now needs more substantial trialling and evaluation.

References Agnew, A., Ó Grádaigh, S., & Hall, T. (2023). Virtual professional experience observation: Lessons learned from five years of implementation, development, cross-institution collaboration, and research. In M. Winslade, T. Loughland, & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Work-integrated learning case studies in teacher education: Epistemic reflexivity (pp. 379–390). Springer. Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. (2022). Next steps: Report of the quality initial teacher education review. Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. https://www.dese.gov.au/quality-initial-teacher-educationreview/resources/next-steps-report-quality-initial-teacher-education-review Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioural change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press. Boyd, P. (2014). Using ‘modelling’ to improve the coherence of initial teacher education. In P. Boyd, A. Szplit, & Z. Zbróg (Eds.), Teacher educators and teachers as learners: International perspectives (pp. 51–73). Wydawnictwo Libron.

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Kruger, T., Davies, A., Eckersley, B., Newell, F., & Cherednichenko, B. (2009). Effective and sustainable university-school partnerships. Beyond determined efforts of inspired individuals. Canberra, ACT: Teaching Australia [electronic version]. http://hdl.voced.edu.au/10707/144200 Larabee, D. (2010). An uneasy relationship: The history of teacher education in the university. In M. Cochran-Smith, S. Feiman-Nemser, D. McIntyre, & K. Demers (Eds.), Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts (3rd ed., pp. 290–306). Routledge. Loughran, J. (2006). Developing a pedagogy of teacher education: Understanding teaching and learning about teaching. Routledge. Loughran, J. (2014). Professionally developing as a teacher educator. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 271–283. Loughran, J., & Hamilton, M. (2016). Developing an understanding of teacher education. In J. Loughran & M. Hamilton (Eds.), International handbook on teacher education (Vol. 1, pp. 3– 22). Springer. Mayer, D. (2014). Forty years of teacher education in Australia: 1974–2014. International Research and Pedagogy, 40(5), 461–473. Mayer, D., Allard, A., Bates, R., Dixon, M., Doecke, B., Kline, J., Kostogriz, A., Moss, J., Rowan, L., Walker-Gibbs, B., White, S., & Hodder, P. (2015). Studying the effectiveness of teacher education: Final report. Deakin University. https://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30080802/wal kergibbs-studyingthe-2015.pdf Mayer, D., Dixon, M., Kline, J., Kostogriz, A., Moss, J., Rowan, L., Walker-Gibbs, B., & White, S. (2017). Studying the effectiveness of teacher education: Early career teachers in diverse settings. Springer. Neal, G., & Eckersley, B. (2014). Immersing pre-service teachers in site-based teacher schooluniversity partnerships. In M. Jones & J. Ryan (Eds.), Successful teacher education: Partnerships, reflective practice, and the place of technology (pp. 31–48). Sense. Omidvar, O., & Kislov, R. (2014). The evolution of the communities of practice approach: Toward knowledgeability in a landscape of practice—An interview with Etienne Wenger-Trayner. Journal of Management Inquiry, 23(3), 266–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492613505908 Patrick, C., Peach, D., Pockee, C., Webb, F., Fletcher, M., & Pretto, G. (2008). The WIL [Work integrated learning] report: A national scoping study [Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Final Report]. Queensland University of Technology. Redman, C. (2014). The Melbourne graduate school of education master of teaching: A clinical practice model. In M. Jones & J. Ryan (Eds.), Successful teacher education: Partnerships, reflective practice, and the place of technology (pp. 11–29). Sense. Reid, J.-A. (2014). ‘Practice’: Foregrounding the study of teaching in initial teacher education. In M. Jones & J. Ryan (Eds.), Successful teacher education: Partnerships, reflective practice and the place of technology (pp. 121–135). Sense. Richards, L. (2009). Handling qualitative data: A practical guide (2nd ed.). Sage Publications. Ryan, J. (2014). Linking rural and regional communities into teacher education. In M. Jones & J. Ryan (Eds.), Successful teacher education: Partnerships, reflective practice, and the place of technology (pp. 48–64). Sense. Ryan, J., Butler, H., Kostogriz, A., & Nailer, S. (2016). Advancing partnership research: A spatial analysis of a jointly-planned teacher education partnership. In R. Brandenburg, S. McDonough, J. Burke, & S. White (Eds.), Teacher education (pp. 175–191). Springer. Ryan, M. (2023). Reflexive epistemic communities of practice: Enabling the profession through sustainable partnerships. In M. Winslade, T. Loughland, & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Work-integrated learning case studies in teacher education: Epistemic reflexivity (pp. 3–10). Springer. Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. Jossey-Bass. Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Sage. Stake, R. (2006). Multiple case study analysis. Guilford. Tanner, L. (1991). The meaning of curriculum in Dewey’s laboratory school (1896–1904). Journal of Curriculum Studies, 23(2), 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027910230201 Tanner, L. (1997). Dewey’s laboratory school: Lessons for today. Teachers College Press.

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Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG). (2014). Action now: Classroom ready teachers. https://www.dese.gov.au/teaching-and-school-leadership/resources/act ion-now-classroom-ready-teachers-report-0 Ure, C., Gough, A., & Newton, R. (2009). Practicum partnerships: Exploring models of practicum organisation in teacher education for a standards-based profession. Australian Learning and Teaching Council. https://ltr.edu.au/resources/ALTCFinalReport_PracticumPartnerships_ Electronic.pdf White, S., & Forgasz, R. (2016). The practicum: The place of experience? In J. Loughran & M. L. Hamilton (Eds.), International handbook of teacher education (Vol. 1, pp. 231–266). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0366-0_6 Winslade, M., Loughran, T., & Eady, M. J. (Eds.). (2023). Work-integrated learning case studies in teacher education: Epistemic reflexivity. Springer. Zeichner, K. (2021). Critical unresolved and understudied issues in clinical teacher education. Peabody Journal of Education, 96(1), 1–7. Zeichner, K., Payne, K., & Brayko, K. (2015). Democratizing teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2), 122–135.

Dr. Mellita M. Jones (Ph.D., M.Ed. (Research), MICD, GCHE, GDED (Secondary), B.Sc.; SFHEA) has an established applied research record concerned with effective teacher education for the twenty-first century. This research covers key areas of teacher education pedagogy including university-school partnerships and personalising learning in teacher education. Through her work in international community engagement, she is concerned with the purpose of teacher education for securing a socially just and equitable world, and as such, has research linked to global citizenship education concerned with social justice. Critical reflective practice is a cross-cutting theme in Dr. Jones’ research as is its basis in excellence in teacher education practice.

Chapter 7

Professional Partners in Practice: Enhancing Institutional Partnership Connections in Early Childhood Through an Embedded University Mentorship Program Karen Tonge , Gai Lindsay , Jane Warren , Lynette Cronin , and Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett

The Significance of Early Childhood The first five years of a child’s life are a time of critical and rapid brain development (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2010) and the quality of experiences during these first years of life can have lasting impact and lead to differential outcomes throughout childhood and beyond (Heckman, 2017; National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2010). It is therefore indisputable that the best outcomes in early childhood development come from investing as early as possible, and efforts focussing on these formative years result in optimum efficiency and effectiveness (Heckman, 2012). During this period, children need to be exposed to positive interactions and high-quality contexts important for shaping a strong sense of wellbeing and positive adjustment (Winston & Chicot, 2016). Participation in high quality Early Childhood Education (ECE) not only benefits their learning and development, but it also plays an instrumental role in shaping children’s academic trajectory, social-emotional development, and long-term well-being (McLaughlin et al., 2016). While quality ECE is both complex and multidimensional, when it comes to young children’s learning and development, teachers matter, and it is well-established that quality ECE hinges largely on the quality of the workforce (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2021; NSW Government, 2022; Siraj & Kingston, 2015; Siraj et al., 2018). Moreover, attracting,

K. Tonge (B) · G. Lindsay · J. Warren · L. Cronin · C. Neilsen-Hewett University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_7

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training, and retaining suitably qualified graduate teachers is essential to ensuring a well-functioning early childhood educational system (Boyd & Newman, 2019). This chapter provides a detailed description of a course-level, embedded model of mentoring practice—the Professional Partners in Practice (PPP) program, delivered in The Bachelor of Education—The Early Years degree (birth—5 years) at the University of Wollongong (UOW), Australia. To provide a context for the chapter, an overview of the ECE sector in Australia will be firstly provided, detailing current challenges and complexities impacting the sector that have the potential to disrupt both the workforce readiness of pre-service teachers, and the delivery of high-quality experiences for children in ECE. In response to these challenges, and the need to prepare skilful and knowledgeable degree-qualified early childhood teachers, discussion of the Early Years (EY) degree, work integrated learning (WIL), and PPP demonstrates how this model has the potential to equip pre-service teachers for their profession through meaningful connections with the ECE sector while investing in and strengthening the capacity of ECE services to promote quality early experiences for children. The discussion presented in this chapter is grounded in cyclical coursework reflections and evaluations, a key aspect of the relational and participatory mentoring and professional reflection practices embedded in the PPP mentoring model.

Early Childhood Education Services: The Australian Context While participation in ECE is not compulsory for children in Australia, ~ 87% of children attend some form of ECE in the years leading up to formal schooling (Australian Government, 2022). This includes a range of service types: family day care, long day care, occasional care, preschools, and mobile services. These services vary with respect to age ranges of children attending the service, weeks, and hours of operation, as well as ratios and staff qualifications. A characterising feature of the ECE context is the inherent variation across the sector with respect to staff qualifications. In Australia, all educators working in ECE must have an early childhood qualification, and these qualifications range from a Certificate (12 months duration), to a Diploma (2 years duration), to a Degree (4 years duration). In each ECE service, at least 50% of the educators must be Diploma qualified or higher and while early childhood teachers (ECTs) have the highest qualification (i.e., Degree), some services (where less than 25 children are enrolled per day) may have access to an ECT for no more than 20% of the service’s operating hours (ACECQA, 2023). All ECE services are regulated by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA)—an independent national authority that supports governments to implement changes that benefit children and their families. ACECQA monitors and promotes the consistent application of the Education and Care Services National Law and supports the education and care sector to improve quality outcomes for children (ACECQA, 2022). This is done through administering the National

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Quality Framework (NQF)—a national system for regulating early childhood education, including legislation, national quality standards, sector profiles and data, and learning frameworks, such as the Early Years Learning Framework (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022).

Early Childhood Teachers: Quality and Preparedness Teacher effectiveness is central to the structural and pedagogical strength of the ECE service (ACECQA, 2017; Gibbs, 2020; Harrison et al., 2019; Neilsen-Hewett et al., 2022a), and a well-educated workforce is essential for both achieving and maintaining quality practice (NSW Government, 2022; Siraj & Kingston, 2015; Siraj et al., 2018). The recent ACECQA workforce strategy ‘Shaping our future’ (ACECQA, 2021) underscores the strong association between higher qualifications of the early childhood workforce and improved child outcomes, with highly skilled pedagogues better able to employ a range of strategies to both extend and support children’s learning and development. The strong and enduring connection between teacher effectiveness, quality service provision, and child outcomes underpin the current prioritisation across many countries with respect to workforce growth and development (Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development, 2020). The current workforce challenges experienced in Australia include, yet are not limited to: the attraction, development, and retention of a skilled ECE workforce (ACECQA, 2021); low status experienced by Early Childhood Teachers (ECTs); lack of career pathways; minimal professional development opportunities; and ECTs being underpaid in comparison with primary and secondary school teachers (Education Services Australia, 2021). These factors often lead to concerningly high attrition rates of ECTs (Thorpe et al., 2020) which is further fuelled by a history of inadequate government policy strategies to support ECTs (Boyd & Newman, 2019). ECTs have increasingly complex and multi-faceted roles. Not only are they teachers, responsible for delivering quality practice and pedagogy, but due to the growing, and warranted, demands of working in a professional setting, ECTs also need effective leadership skills (Fonsén & Ukkonen-Mikkola, 2019). Such leadership skills include: an ability to organise and manage resources and time; advocate for children, families, and the profession; mentor and manage staff; as well as navigate the dynamic and complex demands of services. Given the increasingly dynamic and complex role of an ECT (ACECQA, 2022), it is not surprising that many graduates feel they lack the confidence and leadership skills necessary to be ‘job ready’ (Community Early Learning Australia, 2021; Neilsen-Hewett et al., 2022b). An ongoing challenge for those designing and delivering pre-service teacher education therefore is to ensure graduates transition into the workforce with the skills, knowledge, and emotional resilience necessary to not only succeed but flourish (ACECQA 2021; Nolan et al., 2014; Cumming et al., 2015; Temple & Emmett, 2013). The Bachelor of Education—The Early Years degree (birth—5 years) at UOW, Australia, has

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Fig. 7.1 The triadic components of the early years degree program

developed a specialised degree-program in response to these current challenges and complexities facing the EY sector, as is described below.

The Bachelor of Education: The Early Years, University of Wollongong, Australia The Bachelor of Education—The Early Years degree (birth—5 years) at UOW, Australia, is a specialised birth to 5 years degree. The program provides pre-service teacher education through an integrated and embedded approach to theory, pedagogy, and practice. For the duration of the 4-year degree, pre-service teachers engage in a program of coursework (Academic Program), in Professional Experience placements (PEX), and in professional learning and mentoring (Professional Partners in Practice, PPP). The program is accredited and regulated by the governing body ACECQA. The Early Years (EY) degree is founded on pre-service teacher professional growth. A framework of situated learning contributes to knowledge and skills as well as growth and development in confidence, professional identity, philosophy, and workplace readiness. Embedding opportunities for learning into practice is key, affording time and attention to real life situations, balancing intensive and continuous experiences within early childhood contexts. The three key components of the EY degree program as illustrated in Fig. 7.1 reflect an integrated and complementary academic and work integrated learning (WIL) design. The blend of theory and practice provides invaluable sector experience and professional connections that enhance employment pathways and opportunities.

Work Integrated Learning The EY degree aims to nurture and graduate professional, reflective, and workforce ready ECTs and to strengthen reciprocally beneficial institutional partnerships between university teacher education programs and the ECE sector. This is founded

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on the UOW Strategic Plan, committing to empowering students for their future (UOW, 2023a), and dedicated to enhancing the employability of students through the provision and support of WIL strategic teaching and learning (UOW, 2023b). The WIL component of the EY degree consists of pre-service teacher engagement in PEX and PPP; these are designed to sit alongside and complement the academic (coursework) program (see Fig. 7.1). As summarised by Rowe (2017), WIL is recognised as important in higher education programs: Work experience is increasingly seen as an important complement to traditional higher education. There are a variety of forms of these educational programs, such as internships, sandwich programs, field work, and cooperative education, that is referred to generically as Work Integrated Learning (WIL). (p. 3)

Over the duration of their degree at UOW, pre-service teachers complete up to 80 days PEX which is a government regulated, intensive engagement in an ACECQA approved early childhood service working with children aged 6 weeks—5 years. Although the mentoring that occurs during PEX is important and to be valued, it is often characterised by intermittent and short periods of mentoring which is not sufficient alone. A more sustained and continuous process was warranted to complement other pre-service teacher experiences. Graves (2010) suggests that for situated learning to be most beneficial, it is necessary to ensure time and space for relationships to develop and for participants to become genuine partners in practice. Effective work integrated learning contexts are multi-dimensional, and include both individual and contextual factors, opportunities for task repetition, strong alignment of experience to future work expectations, and the relation of the academic program to tasks, job, and career (Rowe, 2017). Additionally, scholars suggest that authentic information sharing, and reflective discussions are supported by professional partnerships situated within communities of practice (Hart et al., 2023; Lave & Wenger, 1991). The PPP mentor program—a sector-responsive model of institutional partnerships in action—therefore extends upon mandated PEX requirements and acknowledges the importance of continuous pre-service teacher engagement with service(s) and mentor(s). Within the UOW Early Years PPP mentor model, regular and sustained participation in real-life WIL contexts is prioritised to strengthen the quality of graduates, build enduring and meaningful connections, and ensure a resilient and sustainable ECE workforce.

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Professional Partners in Practice: A Model of Embedded Mentoring Mentoring Mentoring is not a new concept, and according to Hadley et al. (2023) the place of context is central to the process. This premise challenges the dominant paradigm in which a more experienced mentor supports the less experienced mentee, instead advocating for a platform of bi-directional growth and sharing within the context of the program. The university-sector partnership is an ideal platform for establishing placebased mentoring, with an ability to promote depth of knowledge, skills and professional growth amongst pre-service teachers, academics, and the ECE workforce—a triadic partnership that has the potential to be mutually beneficial and sustainable. Quality mentoring is needed to not just develop practitioners who are reflective and highly capable, but also to support graduates who can quickly adjust to the education setting and successfully transition into the workforce (Yoo et al., 2023). These are qualities that may be afforded by an effective mentoring model.

Development of PPP Partnerships Since 2009, the EY PPP mentoring initiative has evolved to establish extended mentoring partnerships between UOW EY pre-service teacher mentees (from this point forward referred to as pre-service teachers) and professionals (mentors) in ECE settings. The PPP Coordinator (an academic in the EY team) liaises with preservice teachers and ECE sector partners to identify and allocate appropriate mentor allocations for every pre-service teacher in the EY degree. These partner mentor/ pre-service teacher pairs are allocated based on location convenience as well as the workplace context and individual pre-service teacher’s career interests. In many instances, the identification of potential mentors follows the successful completion of a pre-service teacher’s first PEX placement, building on the initial situated learning and trust building that has occurred.

Bi-directional Teaching and Learning Opportunities PPP provides pre-service teachers with regular, ongoing WIL and professional mentoring support in the ECE sector for the duration of their degree. Each PPP relationship is unique to each pre-service teacher, mentor and the ECE service context. Unlike mandatory and time-limited PEX placements where pre-service teachers are assessed for short blocks of time, PPP mentoring is focused on relationships and trust-building and supports pre-service teachers to achieve personal and professional

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goals over time. PPP mentors also benefit professionally, with the opportunity to lead the professional growth and development of the next generation of early childhood professionals, while gathering evidence for teacher accreditation requirements. Importantly, and critical to the program effectiveness, both mentors and preservice teachers complete online training that includes video interviews and practice exemplars. The training defines situated learning, mentoring strategies, and goal setting, and explains mentoring expectations. The PPP mentor role to support regular pre-service teacher WIL and mentoring is mostly integrated into the regular daily duties of teaching, curriculum planning, and partnerships with colleagues and families. Mentors liaise as necessary with the PPP Coordinator to discuss engagement issues and achievements. Once a semester, pre-service teachers are required to consult their PPP mentors about the completion of an identified practice-focused assessment task. This requirement incentivises regular PPP mentor program engagement and supports the preservice teacher to build research, communication, and professional collaboration skills while reinforcing connections between academic content and practice experience. These shared academic tasks are equally valuable for the mentor as it provides an opportunity for ongoing professional engagement with current research and evidence-based practice. It is the pre-service teacher’s responsibility to instigate conversation with their mentor about the focus of the assessment task and specifically, to learn from the PPP mentor’s experience. To support accountability, pre-service teachers are required to submit a PPP mentor assessment task form which has been signed by the mentor to confirm the pre-service teacher has liaised professionally and regularly with their mentor regarding the focus of the assessment task.

An Individualised, Situated Experience A strength of mentoring is that it can be individualised to suit the varied professional growth and capacity of both pre-service teachers and mentors. The nature of participation in PPP mentoring varies depending on whether pre-service teachers already work in the early childhood sector or commence the mentor program as novice pre-service teachers. At a minimum, PPP requires attendance and participation in the PPP mentor service for a minimum of 23 days or equivalent per calendar year for the duration of the degree. Whether engaged in workplace or voluntary PPP, mentoring may occur through a combination of attendance, phone calls, staff meetings, family events, shared professional development, and workplace discussions. Once a connection is established, UOW pre-service teachers are frequently offered casual and permanent work in their PPP service. This is an arrangement that concurrently addresses sector workforce shortages and quality staffing goals while expanding pre-service teachers’ experience, professional qualities, and workforce readiness.

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The PPP Experience: Mentors and Pre-service Teachers The following sections describe two exemplary mentoring partnerships with the PPP mentor program. We reflect on the experiences of two mentors framed by a model for professional growth. Mentor 1 has extensive experience as a teacher and sectorial leader (> 30 years) and Mentor 2 is an early career teacher and leader who was within the first 5 years as a leader in their service. Both partnerships were ongoing, sustained, and lasted the length of the pre-service teachers’ degree. Both pre-service teachers were female, had followed a direct pathway from school to university, and were in their final year of their degree. The reflections of the mentors and pre-service teachers were captured through informal conversations as part of the ongoing PPP reflection and evaluation process. Regular conversations highlight the benefits and potentialities of the PPP program over and above a traditional PEX experience. Mentors and pre-service teachers acknowledged the reciprocal benefits of the PPP program for ongoing professional development for themselves and each other.

Model for Professional Growth Katz (1995) outlines a model for the professional growth of novice early childhood educators which encompasses four key stages: survival, consolidation, renewal, and maturity. These stages underpin and inform the progression of pre-service teachers’ professional identity and development throughout the PPP mentoring program. The four stages also offer clear guidance to mentors regarding helpful strategies to support and mentor pre-service teachers. Individual progression from novice survival to professional maturity is unique, and both pre-service teachers and their mentors may demonstrate elements of each of the stages at varying times depending upon the context, capacity, and circumstances. While Katz’s model suggests a linear progression toward maturity amongst early childhood practitioners, van Ginkel et al. (2016) propose that mentoring for professional learning should be adapted to the context and the shifting needs of both pre-service teachers and their mentors. We therefore adapted Katz’s model for professional growth to recognise that pre-service teachers and mentors may move back and forth between the stages as they progress toward professional maturity (see Fig. 7.2). While the model speaks directly to the growth of novice teachers, it is important to acknowledge the reciprocal benefits and extended growth opportunities for mentors with involvement in PPP. These include supporting mentors to develop their own professional skills and knowledge as they develop and sustain supportive and reciprocally beneficial partnerships with pre-service teachers. The ‘Survival’ stage recognises the time pre-service teachers require for situational learning (Katz, 1995). During this stage, the pre-service teacher is mainly focused on their own needs as they familiarise themselves with the service, observe practice, develop a relationship with the mentor, and evaluate their potential identity as an ECT (Doan, 2013). When the mentor partnership is beginning, the main role

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Fig. 7.2 Adaptive stages of professional growth in PPP (adapted from Katz, 1972)

of the mentor is to build the relationship, get to know the pre-service teacher, and provide guidance, instruction, modelling, affirmation, and reassurance (Ambrosetti & Deckers, 2010; Denmark & Podsen, 2016; Hudson, 2016). One mentor explained the importance of orientation and how they see this as a foundation for fostering positive relationships: We orient our new pre-service teachers by giving them the time to come into our service, to start developing relationships. We believe that relationships are the basis of everything. We talk about policies, procedures, day to day running, shifts, staff meetings. I go through everything, so they are very familiar. They are essentially a staff member, so we like to include them as part of our team. I give them all information they need to be an integral part of our service. (Mentor 1)

During the ‘Consolidation’ stage, the pre-service teacher has developed clear expectations about their role in the routine of the ECE service and is ready to move beyond situational learning to develop deeper understandings about the role of a professional teacher (Doan, 2013). At this stage, the mentor partners with the preservice teacher in a reciprocal sharing relationship. This occurs when the pre-service teacher develops confidence to actively contribute to both practical teaching responsibilities and shared reflective practice informed by their university learning. One pre-service teacher participant identified the way she reflected on the benefits of learning at university alongside her engagement in her PPP service: During my time at my mentor centre, I did a lot of reflecting with the other educators and my mentor. A lot of that was just through informal chats during the day, and we also had

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regular scheduled meetings where I would take notes in a notebook. Each semester I had a notebook that I would bring to PPP to take notes and anything that I wanted to take back into my assessments. (Pre-service teacher 1)

Another pre-service teacher participant gave an example of how she links her PPP goals with her university studies: I set goals for myself to link my university studies with PPP by relating them to the subjects that I’m doing at university at the time. For example, at the moment I’m doing [a] numeracy subject, so I really try to implement what I’m learning about numeracy and that supports me in my assessment tasks here as well. It just comes together to give me that holistic learning experience. (Pre-service teacher 2)

Such processes support mentors to maintain professional currency and consolidate their own professional identity and knowledge as they explain and facilitate opportunities to extend the pre-service teacher’s understandings and confidence for teaching (Hudson, 2013, 2016; Denmark & Podsen, 2016). The importance of building confidence as well as knowledge is also acknowledged: Anything that we do as a team, they are involved in. If there’s social engagements, they’re invited. If we’re running a fundraiser for the preschool, they’re invited to be part of that. Any project work that involves community, we invite them to be part of that. Not in a tokenistic way, but ask them to, what are their thoughts around that? What would they like to contribute? So, I think making sure that they’re not just someone that turns up every once in a while, but a real part of your team, because that gives them so much depth, that gives them so much knowledge and also builds their confidence as well. (Mentor 1)

The ‘Renewal’ stage occurs when, following extended and regular engagement in PPP mentoring, the pre-service teacher demonstrates increasing competence and confidence as a member of the teaching team at the mentor ECE service. During this stage the PPP mentor supports the pre-service teacher to set professional goals to extend their professional expertise and workforce readiness. As the mentor role progresses from situational learning support to an intentional focus on pre-service teachers’ professional development, mentors benefit from on-the-job professional skills development and learning. They extend beyond their current practice and strengths to determine effective strategies to support the professional learning of colleagues and pre-service teachers (Ambrosetti & Deckers, 2010; Hudson, 2013). Goal setting and reflection were highlighted as important by both mentors: Goals and strategies are a really important baseline to have because if we just come into a space and there’s no real direction, I find pre-service teachers can get a little bit off track. So, we just take the time to develop their personal goals regarding the service and how they would like to work in that service. Also linking goals to the academic process in what’s happening with their assessments and how we can link in with that and support them and just goals as professionals as what they would like to achieve out of the program. We come back to those goals regularly and review them and think about where to next. Do we need to keep or extend that goal? Do we revise a little bit? …. We’re actually helping the pre-service teacher to achieve what they would like to achieve out of the program. (Mentor 1)

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I really get them [pre-service teachers] to think deeper and critically. That’s just the philosophy we have here, basic daily reflection and then deeper reflection and then how we action that later. So, I try and get pre-service teachers to go through our reflective planning cycle, so our pre-service teachers go on that journey with us. They’re part of our teacher reflective meetings, they’re part of our staff meetings, but also our online journal entries that we do as a whole service. (Mentor 2)

Pre-service teachers spoke to the significant role that the mentor and service plays in developing them as professionals: PPP helps me develop my professional knowledge, as I see so much of what I’m learning about here in practice. The educators often reflect what I’m learning about and what they’re doing with the children. I learn a lot from observing them. Also, discussions I have with my mentor and the other educators as well, really help me reflect on what I’m learning. And I can bring my studies to them, and we can discuss that, which really enhances my learning. (Pre-service teacher 2)

During the ‘Maturity’ stage of PPP engagement, pre-service teachers are expected to demonstrate higher levels of confidence, expertise, and professional workforce readiness (Katz, 1995). As pre-service teachers approach graduation from Initial Teacher Education (ITE) they are expected to enact their professional knowledge, practice, and engagement at the graduate teacher standard (NSW Education Standards Authority, 2018). The role of pre-service teachers in the PPP service is fully integrated and they actively contribute to teaching and service delivery, with a sense of belonging to a team of professional teachers and educators. The role of mentoring and transitioning a pre-service teacher into the ECE profession is instrumental in developing personal growth, professional leadership, and advocacy skills, as Pre-service teacher 1 reflected: It’s so valuable that you get to experience what it’s like being in the service before you actually go out into a workplace, or you go on your PEX experiences because you don’t have that assessment and you don’t have all the pressure from actually being in the workplace. It’s just a really supportive environment where you can practice all the things that you’re learning at Uni and you can observe the teachers and the educators in the early childhood centre and see how they do it. The mentor program has given me so much confidence in both my personal life and my professional life. I’ve really come out of my shell, and I have just developed such an incredible passion for working with children. That’s what the mentor program has done for me.

The PPP program was positioned by the sector leaders as being important for preparing pre-service teachers for the complex role of the ECT, encompassing both structural and relational components, as Mentor 1 explained: The mentor program is invaluable for the pre-service teachers in that it provides real-life opportunities for them to engage in the daily routines and practices of the early childhood sector. From engaging with children those interactions develop, engaging with colleagues and other professionals in the field that we have come into the service, with families, being part of a team that works and collaborates together and working very much as a team. I think that there is so much to learn regarding their professional growth, in regard to attendance, in regard to even such things as dress code and things like that. And I think generally just being in an everyday service where they’re having to engage is tiring. So, getting used to that as a personal thing for them as well. And one of the other things that is really important

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is taking the time for themselves to actually see and develop themselves as a professional in our spaces.

An Ongoing Process of Reflection and Evaluation Reflective and evaluative practices are inherent and important aspects of the PPP program. Embedding a mentoring model in the EY degree at UOW has provided notable and beneficial institutional connections and partnerships across the EY sector. The connections have been founded on reciprocal relationships over time, the experiences from which have presented significant key learnings and recommendations for future practice, as are discussed below.

Bi-directional Growth and Development The PPP program affords many opportunities for bi-directional growth and professional development across the university and ECE sectors. The strength of the institutional partnerships fostered within the context of the program drives positive outcomes for pre-service teachers, the sector, and the university, and has the potential to be replicated across different educational settings and in an international landscape. The PPP experience is unique and differentiates from other traditional practicum experiences in meaningful and important ways: its flexibility in design; potential for differentiation across pre-service teachers and services; longevity of experience (access to the same service across the entirety of the degree); and opportunities for sustainable connections with ECE staff, families, and children. These aspects allow for an organic process of learning and application to evolve, built on strong and meaningful foundations that have the potential to afford effective learning opportunities. A strength of this design is that it promotes greater insight and learning for pre-service teachers and mentors alike. Despite widespread benefits, there are also key considerations when designing mentoring relationships to ensure potential risks are managed and the process is beneficial and sustainable for all partners. Developing a process that is relevant, responsive, and founded on reciprocity is paramount.

Frameworks for Practice Effective programs such as these are underpinned by clear frameworks of practice, expectations, and ways of working. A commitment to initial training and ongoing professional support for pre-service teachers and mentors is essential if we are to create a sustained, high quality, and connected workforce. The training modules linked with the PPP program were seen to be an essential component of the program and instrumental to ensuring each member of the mentor relationship understood key responsibilities and expectations. The online modules were important for creating

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triadic connections between the university, pre-service teachers, and ECE services and ensured learning was transparent, reciprocal, and situated within an applied context. Establishing shared expectations provided a strong foundation for growth and reflective practice where continuous ‘on the job’ learning was prioritised. The provision of online modules for training and ongoing support is an effective way of maximising engagement in a time-poor context while affording participants greater autonomy over their learning. An online learning platform is also becoming a popular and equitable learning tool, providing a resource that can be re-visited as required (Ch & Popuri, 2013)—an important feature of the PPP program.

Flexible and Responsive Approach An approach that is flexible and responsive to the complex and diverse needs of participants is necessary, offering a situation that promotes individualism and differential growth and engagement. Having a structure where expectations are shared, and regularity of attendance and mentor conversations are prioritised, will lead to positive outcomes framed by a process of continuous reflection and growth: University can get busy and it’s difficult to juggle PPP attendance with my studies, work, and everything else. But it’s an investment into my future and I learn so much every time I’m here. So, I really try to prioritise it even when it is a bit busy. (Pre-service teacher 2)

The flexible and individualised approach that is a strength of the program is however not without inherent challenges: As PPP Coordinator, my role is to maintain an awareness of the relationships that are developing to ensure an equitable process, but also for additional guidance if needed. This often involves having conversations with pre-service teachers and/or mentors, as challenges do occur.... Situations in which the pre-service teacher has not maintained regular contact and has become dis-engaged, at other times there has been a breakdown in communication, or the relationship has been challenged. At times, high levels of educator attrition in services have also presented continuity challenges for [pre-service teachers] and so I am available to provide support to re-establish expectations and a positive working relationship. (PPP Coordinator)

Strengths-Based Approach The process of partnering pre-service teachers and mentors is a considered one, however at times the situation may not be ideal for the relationship to flourish. These challenging situations are framed as an opportunity for professional development and the strengthening of skills and resilience—valuable learning opportunities for working in a diverse and complex setting. Hadley et al. (2023) view these processes through a ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ framework, which can be a stimulus for growth. Pre-service teachers, mentors and academics are encouraged to approach such discomforts as opportunities for growth rather than as barriers. A proactive approach is warranted and adopted, one in which a strengths-based approach is encouraged:

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One of the challenges faced is where the mentor is no longer able to support the pre-service teacher, often due to the mentor changing roles or moving between services. In these cases, I engage with the pre-service teacher and service, with the intention to establish a new mentor relationship within the existing service. This support promotes a transition that is as smooth and seamless as possible and the development of shared understanding, goals, and expectations needed to continue the partnership. (PPP Coordinator)

Situated Learning Situated learning that allows for an authentic intersection of pre-service teacher experiences, enriched as awareness of their own backgrounds and values develop, is central in preparing pre-service teachers for the workforce (Hadley et al., 2023). Specifically, the expectation that connections will be made between assessment tasks and PPP activities is necessary to create conditions that support the integration of knowledge, skills, and understandings, as well as developing self-awareness as a professional. This process promotes learning that is visible and transferable, with depth of understanding and reflection, linking theory and practice. Providing such opportunities for situated learning is becoming increasingly relevant in a constantly changing work environment, and it is more important than ever before for graduates who can adapt to complex work environments having the potential to increase commitment and longevity in the ECE profession (Seow et al., 2019). A notable element of the ECE context is the expertise of educators, and just as educators are skilled at working in partnership with children, this also translates into and aligns closely with their role as a mentor. The mentoring process needs to be embedded in a relationship that respects the strengths and emerging skills of participants. It is undeniable that pre-service teachers enter university with diverse experiences and viewpoints—some have worked in the sector while others are new to the early childhood field. The PPP program, through individualised mentorship, caters and responds to this variance allowing for differentiated support and individualised learning trajectories, an approach that aligns with high quality ECE practice and pedagogy (Siraj et al., 2018). Developing an understanding not just of pre-service teacher needs but also mentor priorities at different times is essential as there may be fluidity between stages for all participants during the process, increasing the need for attention in specific areas of learning, understanding, and development of professional identity at various times. Growth for all partners is best supported through reflective processes including observation and analysis, mentor conversations, and a willingness to grow and learn together. Determinants of a successful PPP program align closely with the Australian National Quality Standards (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022), which identify key ECE attributes and principles including but not limited to reciprocal relationships, respect for diversity, high expectations, equity, inclusion, critical reflection, and ongoing professional learning and continuity of learning. Similarly, these same attributes and principles frame the PPP program, embedding the program within an authentic ECE context.

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Self-awareness and Critical Reflection Effective mentor relationships are an ideal platform for pre-service teachers to develop a sense of self-confidence, resilience, and increased professional responsibility, however there are also notable benefits for mentors. The PPP program fosters a dynamic and symbiotic environment that integrates mentoring and academic experiences, leading to opportunities for professional growth and development. Mentoring has been shown to develop a greater self-awareness and critical reflection in educators, key mindsets that will benefit their own practice and pedagogy (Simsar & Jones, 2021). The mentoring process enables a close and detailed examination of their own roles and teaching practices through the process of working closely with future teachers. Engaging in discussion that provoke insight into practices is valuable and an opportunity for educators to articulate and reflect deeply on these experiences: As a Teacher and Leader, I have found that mentoring has played a crucial role in shaping my own growth and development. Through engaging in thought-provoking discussions with my pre-service teachers and reflecting on my own experiences, I have gained a greater level of self-awareness that has allowed me to become more critical of my own teaching practices. This critical reflection has provided me with invaluable insights and opportunities to improve and refine my pedagogy, making me a more effective educator for my pre-service teachers. Mentoring has been a transformative experience that has not only enhanced my own skills but has also provided me with the tools to help my pre-service teachers reach their full potential. (Mentor 2)

Connections The triadic relationship that develops not only supports pre-service teachers but also provides valuable connections between ECE services and academics. This has been demonstrated in the EY program at UOW with services and mentors sharing their experiences in the academic program, allowing a rich learning experience for all preservice teachers, as well as experience for the mentors. Opportunities for services to engage in professional development facilitated by academics and researchers has also been valuable to the sector: The program’s effectiveness was exemplified by opportunities for knowledge sharing, such as presenting on sector-relevant experience to pre-service teachers within a university tutorial session and the presentation of research by Early Years academics to our parents and local preschool community through both online modules and face-to-face seminars. (Mentor 2)

For academics, the PPP program affords essential relationships to be fostered between the sector and the University. This is significant as it provides an informed and current understanding of the ECE landscape which can be translated into teaching and research, strengthening foundations that support development of the whole sector. It is imperative when working within a complex and dynamic sector, such as ECE, that teaching is informed by research and best practice and so creating a nexus that is current and active is profound. The triadic partnership that has developed due to PPP is testament to this:

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In the EY program we pride ourselves on the strength of our networks and relationship with the sector. Maintaining regular contact with services and educators is key to this, allowing our team to respond to the current and dynamic sector context. The PPP program is testament to the connections we have with services and is a real asset to our teaching and research programs. (PPP Coordinator)

Professional Identity An undisputable strength of the PPP program is that pre-service teachers have an opportunity to develop a sense of belonging to the profession early in their career, building a professional identity that is nurtured over time. Our PPP graduates complete their degree ‘workplace ready’, entering the workforce with an established a sense of advocacy, rapport, and a reputation within the sector. The PPP program allows pre-service teachers the opportunity to develop an appreciation and ability to be critical and selective in ECE settings that are compatible with their developing philosophy and work ethic.

Conclusion Developing institutional partnerships through an embedded mentoring model, the PPP program in the EY degree at UOW has proven to be highly effective for supporting meaningful WIL experiences in ECE contexts. Like other educational settings, the ECE sector is complex and faces many challenges impacting workforce preparedness, quality, and retention. The triadic partnership between the EY degree, pre-service teachers, and the ECE sector promoted by the PPP program is enhanced through ongoing reflective practice and evaluation. The model of situated learning within sustained ECE sector partnerships affords a sense of identity, professional growth, workplace readiness, and an investment in future education graduates. The PPP model brings to life a nexus between knowledge, skills, and practice for pre-service teachers and mentors alike. This chapter has provided an embedded model for practice which can be applied and modified across different educational contexts within a global environment. It is to be acknowledged that it is a continually improving and evolving program that responds to sector changes and challenges, while supported and sustained by institutional partnerships. Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge the work of Dr Jillian Trezise (previous Academic Program Director of the EY program at UOW, founder and visionary of the PPP program); Judy Daunt (previous Academic Program Director of the EY program at UOW, and PPP Coordinator); Dr Gai Lindsay (PPP Coordinator); mentors, organisations, ECE services, and contributors that have been integral to the development and continued success of the PPP program.

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References Ambrosetti, A., & Dekkers, J. (2010). The interconnectedness of the roles of mentors and mentees in pre-service teacher education mentoring relationships. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 35(6), 42–55. Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). (2017). Guide to the national quality standard. ACECQA Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). (2021). Shaping our future: A ten-year strategy to ensure a sustainable, high-quality children’s education and care workforce 2022–2031. National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy. Education Services Australia Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). (2022). The 2019 national quality framework review decision regulation impact statement. Education Services Australia Australian Government Department of Education (2022). Belonging, being and becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia (V2.0). Australian Government Department of Education for the Ministerial Council. https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/ EYLF-2022-V2.0.pdf Australian Government. (2022). Report on Government services 2022, early childhood education and care. https://www.pc.gov.au/ongoing/report-on-government-services/2022/child-careeducation-and-training/early-childhood-education-and-care#ecec Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). (2023). Qualifications for centre-based services with children preschool age or under. ACECQA. https://www.acecqa. gov.au/qualifications/requirements/children-preschool-age-or-under Boyd, W., & Newman, L. (2019). Primary+ early childhood= chalk and cheese? Tensions in undertaking an early childhood/primary education degree. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 44(1), 19–31. Ch, S.K., & Popuri, S. (2013). Impact of online education: A study on online learning platforms and edX (pp. 366–370). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. International Conference in MOOC, Innovation and Technology in Education (MITE), Jaipur. https://doi.org/10.1109/ MITE.2013.6756369 Community Early Learning Australia. (2021). Investing in our future: Growing the education and care workforce. https://www.cela.org.au/CELA/Publications/Reports/Investing-in-our-Future25-Nov-2021.pdf Cumming, T., Sumsion, J., & Wong, S. (2015). Rethinking early childhood workforce sustainability in the context of Australia’s early childhood education and care reforms. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 9, 1–15. Denmark, V., & Podsen, I. J. (2016). Coaching and mentoring first-year and student teachers. Taylor & Francis Group Doan, L. K. (2013). Mentoring: A strategy to support novice early childhood educators. Journal of Childhood Studies, 49, 21–24. Education Services Australia (2021). Shaping our future: A ten-year strategy to ensure a sustainable, high-quality children’s education and care workforce 2022–2031. Education Services Australia. https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-10/ShapingOurFu tureChildrensEducationandCareNationalWorkforceStrategy-September2021.pdf Fonsén, E., & Ukkonen-Mikkola, T. (2019). Early childhood education teachers’ professional development towards pedagogical leadership. Educational Research, 61(2), 181–196. Gibbs, L. (2020). “That’s your right as a human isn’t it?” The emergence and development of leading as a socially-just practice in early childhood education. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 45(4), 295–308. Graves, S. (2010). Mentoring pre-service teachers: A case study. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 35(4), 14–20.

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Hadley, F., Hay, I., Andrews, R., & Vale, V. (2023). The mentoring role of professional experience coordinators: Beyond a sink-or-swim discourse. In M. Winslade, T. Loughland, & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Work-integrated learning case studies in teacher education (pp. 183–194). Springer. Harrison, L., Hadley, F., Irvine, S., Davis, B., Barblett, L., Hatzigianni, M., Mulhearn, G., Waniganayake, M., Andrews, R., & Li, P. (2019). Quality improvement research project. Macquarie University Hart, N., Cotton, W., Cook, B., Hegde, S., Knezevic, V., & Lawrence, L. (2023). Developing a sense of community: Working in the third space in ITE. In M. Winslade, T. Loughland, & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Work-integrated learning case studies in teacher education (pp. 209–221). Springer. Heckman, J. (2012). Invest in early childhood development: Reduce deficits, strengthen the economy. The Heckman Equation. Heckman, J. (2017). Research summary: The lifecycle benefits of an influential early childhood program. The Heckman Equation. Hudson, P. (2013). Mentoring as professional development: ‘Growth for both’ mentor and mentee. Professional Development in Education, 39(5), 771–783. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257. 2012.749415 Hudson, P. (2016). Forming the mentor-mentee relationship. Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 24(1), 30–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2016.1163637 Katz, L. G. (1972). Developmental stages of preschool teachers. The Elementary School Journal, 73(1), 50–54. Katz, L.G. (1995). Talks with teachers: A collection. Praeger. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815355 McLaughlin, T., Aspden, K., & Snyder, P. (2016). Intentional teaching as a pathway to equity in early childhood education: Participation, quality, and equity. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 51, 175–195. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2010). The foundations of lifelong health are built in early childhood. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University. https://developin gchild.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Foundations-of-Lifelong-Health.pdf Neilsen-Hewett, C., Lindsay, G., Warren, J., Tonge, K., & Cronin, L. (2022a). Early childhood leadership: Risk and protective factors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 47(3), 219–232. Neilsen-Hewett, C., Lindsay, G., Warren, J., Tonge, K., & Cronin, L. (2022b) A teachable moment: Leadership learning for pre-service teachers through Community of Learners (CoL) sector partnerships. Nolan, A., Taket, A., & Stagnitti, K. (2014). Supporting resilience in early years classrooms: The role of the teacher. Teachers and Teaching, 20(5), 595–608. NSW Education Standards Authority. (2018). Australian professional standards for teachers. https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/teacher-accreditation/meeting-requir ements/the-standards NSW Government. (2022). Early years commitment: The case for change. https://education.nsw. gov.au/early-childhood-education/early-years-commitment/the-case-for-change Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2020). Building a high-quality early childhood education and care workforce: Further results from the starting strong survey 2018. TALIS, OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/b90bba3d-enT Rowe, P.M. (2017). Toward a model of work experience in work-integrated learning. In T. Bowen, & M. Drysdale (Eds.), Work-integrated learning in the 21st century: Global perspectives on the future (Vol. 32, pp. 3–17). Emerald Publishing Limited Seow, P.-H., Pan, G., & Koh, G. (2019). Examining an experiential learning approach to prepare preservice teachers for the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) work environment. The International Journal of Management Education, 62(1), 62–76.

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Simsar, A., & Jones, I. (2021). Field experiences, mentoring, and preservice early childhood teachers’ science teaching self-efficacy beliefs. International Journal on Social and Education Sciences., 3(3), 518–534. Siraj, I., & Kingston, D. (2015). An independent review of the Scottish early learning and childcare (ELC) workforce and out of school care (OSC) workforce. https://www.gov.scot/publications/ independent-review-scottish-early-learning-childcare-elc-workforce-out-school/ Siraj, I., Melhuish, E., Howard, S. J., Neilsen-Hewett, C. M., Kingston, D., de Rosnay, M., Duursma, E., Feng, X., & Luu, B. (2018). Fostering effective early learning (FEEL) study. Final Report. https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/early-childhood-educat ion/whats-happening-in-the-early-childhood-education-sector/media/documents/5854-FeelStudy-VFA4-Accessible.pdf Temple, E., & Emmett, S. (2013). Promoting the development of children’s emotional and social wellbeing in early childhood settings: How can we enhance the capability of educators to fulfil role expectations? Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 38(1), 66–72. Thorpe, K., Jansen, E., Sullivan, V., Irvine, S., McDonald, P., et al. (2020). Identifying predictors of retention and professional wellbeing of the early childhood education workforce in a time of change. Journal of Educational Change, 21, 623–647. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-020-093 82-3 University of Wollongong. (2023a). Our vision and strategy. University of Wollongong. https:// www.uow.edu.au/about/our-vision-strategy University of Wollongong. (2023b). Work integrated learning. University of Wollongong. https://www.uow.edu.au/about/learning-teaching/curriculum-transformation/work-integr ated-learning/ van Ginkel, G., Oolbekkink, H., Meijer, P. C., & Verloop, N. (2016). Adapting mentoring to individual differences in novice teacher learning: The mentor’s viewpoint. Teachers and Teaching, 22(2), 198–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2015.1055438 Winston, R., & Chicot, R. (2016). The importance of early bonding on the long-term mental health and resilience of children. London Journal of Primary Care, 8(1), 12–14. Yoo, J., Pressick-Kilborn, K., Dowling, K., van Vliet, L., & McKay, D. (2023). Mentoring for a positive professional experience: A Sydney primary school and UTS hub school collaboration. In M. Winslade, T. Loughland, & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Work-integrated learning case studies in teacher education (pp. 299–312). Springer.

Dr. Karen Tonge is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong. She teaches in the early childhood program (birth—5 focus) and is the Professional Experience Coordinator. With over 25 years’ experience working in the early childhood sector as a teacher, Director, academic and researcher, she has developed strong connections across the sector. Karen has worked on several collaborative projects with a focus on work-integrated learning opportunities that strengthen pre-service teacher and early childhood education service experiences. Her research interests focus on children’s health and wellbeing, physical environments, and quality educator engagement and interactions. Dr. Gai Lindsay is a Senior Lecturer and coordinator of the Professional Partners in Practice (PPP) mentoring program in the University of Wollongong Early Years (birth—5) degree program. As a teacher, director and advocate in community-based preschools for more than 20 years before entering academia, Gai values community partnerships and their capacity to enhance professional qualities and workforce readiness skills. Her research focuses on the visual arts self-efficacy and pedagogy of early years educators and her professional goal is for all children to experience the joy and satisfaction of meaningful mark-making and quality visual arts learning experiences.

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Dr. Jane Warren is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Head of Students in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong and has been supporting pre-service teachers in the early childhood program (birth—5 focus) since its inception in 2009. Her research focus is on inclusive education for children with disabilities and building capacity in early childhood educators to maximise inclusion in their services. Jane strives to build strong links between theory and practice to ensure our graduates have strong foundations to build upon within their careers in the early childhood sector. Dr. Lynette Cronin is a Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong. She teaches pre-service teachers in the early childhood program (birth—5 focus), and her area of expertise is in early literacy and transitions across educational settings. Lyn’s research career focuses on investigating early learning, in language and literacy development, and more broadly on how young children and families are supported as they transition from prior to school settings into the first year of formal schooling. Professor Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett is a Professor and Director of The Early Years in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong. She brings expertise in pedagogical reform and her work on children’s self-regulation, child assessment and early childhood pedagogy has impacted educational practice, programs and policy both in Australia and internationally. Cathrine works in cross-disciplinary teams and conducts translational work with community and industry partners to support high-quality early childhood education and care practice that enhances outcomes for children.

Chapter 8

The ‘Butterfly Effect’ of Mentoring Practices in School-University Partnerships Amanda Mooney , Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas , and Damian Blake

Introduction The importance of school-university partnerships in supporting teacher professionalism and professional learning has been a hallmark of successive Initial Teacher Education (ITE) reforms in Australia across the past three decades (Mockler, 2013). Notwithstanding critique of the ways in which governments have used teachers’ work and teacher quality as a political lever across this time (Mockler, 2013), there is a prevailing (if not, at times, tenuous) reliance on the provision of partnerships to support school-based supervised teaching practice to address issues of teacher quality. Fundamental to the success of the partnership in supporting pre-service teachers (PSTs) to transcend “boundaries between coursework and the practice of teaching” (Ure et al., 2017, p. 103), is the critical role that mentors play in fostering collaborations that enable sustained development. Across Australian educational jurisdictions, the term mentoring is used to explain the role of a practising teacher who supervises PSTs during their professional experience and those who support early career teachers in their transition to the workforce. Despite mentoring being positioned as “a ubiquitous form of support” (Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), 2023, p. 3) for successful induction, research highlights extreme diversity and variability in mentoring practices, and disparity in experiences of being mentored, which act to undermine and constrain its potential role in supporting teacher development (Ambrosetti, 2014). Against a backdrop of policy objectives focussed on the attraction, retention, and professional growth of

A. Mooney (B) · M. K. E. Thomas · D. Blake Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_8

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‘quality’ teachers, particularly during times of significant teacher workforce shortages (AITSL, 2023), this chapter reports on a large-scale school-university partnership initiative that sought to address challenges in the provision of quality mentoring practices. Informed methodologically by the Theory of Practice Architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014b), we report on findings drawn from semi-structured interviews with school leaders (N = 10) to illustrate the various “sayings, doings [and] relatings” (p. 31) of mentoring practices considered influential in the preparation and development of teacher performance. This was achieved through mentoring professional learning and networking practices across a large-scale school-university partnership that spanned four geographic regions in Victoria and included ~ 130 schools. The active mentoring of teachers seeks to aid and sustain a system-level approach to school reform. Through a relationally driven program, small teacher actions and responses are demonstrated to be the tiny, but significant, start of a larger cycle of change. In this chapter we borrow the concept of the ‘butterfly effect’ as a metaphor, to illustrate the “significance of minute occurrences” (Vernon, 2017, p. 130) to demonstrate how mentoring practices are shaped in a school-university partnership program. Arguably, the more well-known adaptation of this concept was taken up in the 2004 movie, ‘The Butterfly Effect’ (Bress & Gruber, 2004), with Ashton Kutcher’s portrayal of a time-traveller who attempts to change seemingly minor events in his past, to recast his future. The temporal nature of the film’s protagonist prompts our consideration of the uneasy balance of determinism and unpredictability in the everyday complexities of schools, and the challenges associated with mentoring within this dynamic. One such complexity, which we examine, is a planned approach to support mentoring capabilities across a school-university partnership alliances model impacted, and adapted, across the past few years on account of the COVID-19 global pandemic. It prompts us to consider the (potential) effects of change on stakeholders beyond individual schools. The key here is a focus on how the routine practices of teacher mentoring through school-university partnerships can become influential in both intended and unintended ways for school leaders across a large-scale partnership program. As mentioned above, there has been an increased focus on the role of schooluniversity partnerships in enhancing the quality of teacher education programs through the provision of authentic learning opportunities for pre-service teachers (AITSL, 2011; Bradbury & Acquaro, 2022; Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG), 2014). Whilst the broader benefits of school-university partnerships have been heralded for their capacity-building potential for both universities and schools (Burns et al., 2016), a central tenet to this body of work is the value of partnerships in bridging the supposed theory–practice nexus. In a comprehensive systematic literature review of school-university partnerships in Australia that focused on developing PSTs through authentic learning experiences in teacher education, Green et al. (2020) highlighted that more than two-thirds of the sources reviewed acknowledged how the partnership had built a sense of community between and amongst key stakeholders—PSTs, in-service teachers, and teacher educators alike. Following calls for research that moves beyond surface-level investigations of the structure and benefits

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of school-university partnerships (Green et al., 2020), here we shift attention from what teachers do, to what school leaders enable. This is examined across four largescale school-university partnerships in Victoria, Australia to consider what is enabled or constrained through mentoring practices within school-university partnerships. Whilst school leaders were not the initial intended audience for this specific partnership initiative, drawing out mentoring as a rendering of Practice Architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014b) provides a vehicle to interrogate the almost insignificant, butterfly-like possibilities within a school-university partnership project. In doing so we articulate cultural-discursive (sayings), material-economic (doings), and social-political (relatings) arrangements influential in shaping mentoring practices. These arrangements are “prefigured (but do not predetermine)” (Olin et al., 2020, p. 152) practice. As stakeholders critical to the success of school-university partnerships, particularly for the role they play in fostering and enabling cultures of mentoring, we return to notions of the butterfly effect to examine the complexities, chaos, and contradictions of school-university partnership practices enacted through a mentoring program. Such reflections suggest significant spoils for those who have a key role in shaping the conditions of its practice moving forward and the potential significance of small shifts to pedagogy in practice. This is heartening that such change remains possible through adaptive and open dialogue in partnership, avoiding what Mockler (2013) terms as a “slippery slope to efficiency” (p. 273).

Mentoring in School-University Partnerships School-university partnerships are most influential in supporting PST development when the expertise of both academics and practising teachers can be harnessed to illustrate how theory is imagined in teacher preparation (Forgasz, 2016). Such partnerships hold rich potential to build capacity through continuing professional development, curriculum and pedagogical innovations, and practice-orientated research (Burns et al., 2016). In Australia, the influential recommendations of the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) report (2014), firmly cement collaborative school-university partnerships as key to improving the quality of graduates. While the broader rhetoric of this is captured in the preamble to this report by the chair of the advisory group, Professor Greg Craven, who advocates for “close partnerships between providers, school systems and schools” (p. v), more pointed implications focused on the role that these partnerships play in ensuring quality professional experiences for PSTs that “include mentoring and support for PSTs to continually reflect on their own practice” (p. xi). Like other parts of the Western world, since 2011 Australia also has been reliant on a national set of teacher standards, the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APSTs) (AITSL, 2011), developed to promote consistency in teacher practices. Notwithstanding critique of the role that standards play in constraining notions of professional expertise and practice (Talbot, 2016), governments justify their investment in standards for their potential in guiding “evidence-informed professional development that promotes

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quality teaching and develops teaching careers using a process of accreditation” (Betlem et al., 2019, p. 327). The APST framework seeks to categorise teacher practices and expertise along a developmental continuum; while pre-service and early career teachers “move through the AITSL accreditation process, there is an expectation that they will receive explicit support in the form of mentoring” (Betlem et al., 2019, p. 327). Inherent in the ‘lead’ teacher standards is a reference to the expectation that teachers at this stage of their career will be “skilled in mentoring teachers and PSTs” (AITSL, 2012, p. 14). Whilst the intent here is for the standards to provide a ladder-like framework to reflect on practice and plan professional learning, more recent iterations of this document position teacher development within an evidence-based cycle of professional learning that “recognises the entitlement of teachers to receive feedback and support” (AITSL, 2022, p. 6). Whilst mentoring practices occur through formally structured programs and informal (sometimes incidental) encounters with colleagues and peers, we consider it unhelpful to constrain the concept of mentoring to the bounds of a single supervisor-mentee beginning teacher relationship. Kemmis et al. (2014a) identify three mentoring archetypes evident in cases from Australia, Finland and Sweden and describe these as (1) mentoring as supervision, (2) mentoring as support, and (3) mentoring as collaborative self-development. Reluctant to rehearse their detailed synthesis here, they reveal a “contestation over how mentoring is understood, how it is enacted, and how it creates different kinds of social relationships that support different kinds of professional identities” (p. 161). These practices need to be understood within the “wider conditions of possibility in the societies and communities in which they exist” (p. 163). It is from this perspective then, that the actions, utterances, and deeds of school leaders become integral to shaping the sociocultural practices which work to enable or constrain effective mentoring practices.

Approaches to Learning About Mentoring Beyond their synthesis of how current and prospective mentors understand their role in the mentoring process, Betlem et al. (2019) note that there is a prevalent view in the literature that practising teachers often assume the role of mentor with little, or no, formal training or professional learning to equip them in their practice of this highly complex role. Bradbury (2010) argues that necessary practices associated with the effective development of teachers as mentors include: defining the various roles of the teacher-mentor and mentee in the mentoring practice; understanding drivers of practice concerning teaching (beliefs); developing explicit strategies for communication and reflection; and broadening pedagogical knowledge through ongoing professional learning and its application in practice. While many advocate the value of mentor professional learning for current teachers (e.g., Ambrosetti, 2014; Betlem et al., 2019; Lang et al., 2022) others suggest this can be impactful during the final years of ITE. Mooney and Gullock (2013) argued that embedding peer-mentoring

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activities prior to graduation can afford PSTs opportunities to apply insights from their own recent experiences of being mentor to build capacity in effective mentoring practice. In the Victorian context, practising teachers can access system-level state-wide approaches to professional learning about mentoring through programs such as the Effective Mentoring Program1 (EMP) offered as a joint initiative between the Victorian Government Department of Education (DE) and the Victorian regulator, Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT). This 2-day professional learning workshop is underpinned by the principles outlined in the Mentoring Capability Framework2 which seeks to describe the expectations and behaviours of mentors and mentees in quality professional learning relationships across six domains of effective mentoring. These are (1) teaching and learning; (2) professional identity; (3) communication and interpersonal skills; (4) collaborative partnerships; (5) professional generosity and empathy; and (6) professional culture and context. Additionally, AITSL provides an online national professional learning program, Supervising Preservice Teachers,3 that seeks to equip prospective mentors with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to effectively supervise PSTs. Specifically, the program covers five key modules: (1) effective partnerships; (2) practice analysis; (3) making judgements; (4) unpacking the Graduate Standards; and (5) Teaching Performance Assessment. Beyond these system-level approaches and enshrined within programmatic standard requirements for the accreditation of ITE programs in Australia, is a requirement for ITE providers to “support, identify, and provide professional learning opportunities for supervising teachers within the school-university partnership that are established for PSTs’ professional experience placements (Standard 5.5)” (Lang et al., 2022, p. 112). The nature of professional learning opportunities enacted in alignment with this requirement is, by nature, wide-ranging in focus and divergent in practice. Some professional learning programs focus on developing mentoring capabilities through transformative approaches, enabled through participatory action (Betlem et al., 2019). Such programs seek to shift the role of mentor teacher from a managerial auditor to a relational nurturer of pastoral relationships to foster pre-service teachers’ reflective practice and growth. Others have focused on specific, contextualised professional learning about elements of teacher practice including evidence-based assessment which support differentiated teaching through digital micro-credentials (Lang et al., 2022). The collective efforts of professional learning ventures to support mentoring in school-university partnerships are integral to the intended aims. Beyond the provision of formal professional learning opportunities to support mentoring, we find ourselves drawn to less prosaic and harder-to-parse practices which capture the complexity, but also, opportunities that exist in the conceptualisation of school-university partnerships “as something greater than a focus on 1

https://www.schools.vic.gov.au/mentor-training-experienced-teachers. https://www.education.vic.gov.au/documents/school/teachers/profdev/mentoringcapabilityframe work.pdf. 3 https://www.aitsl.edu.au/tools-resources/resource/supervising-pre-service-teachers. 2

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its purpose” (Lang et al., 2022, p. 112). Others articulate school-university partnerships as “an enterprise that is jointly created, developed, and sustained amid complex settings to advance educational practice, knowledge, and understanding” (Day et al., 2021, p. 24). In this vein, and consistent with approaches that question the value of top-down, command, and control models of professional learning (Dargusch et al., 2021), here we consider alternative approaches to support teachers, facilitated through effective school-university partnerships. In so doing, we note a “growing need for research that supports the development of contextualised, collaborative models of learning and capacity for teacher growth” (Betlem et al., 2019, p. 330) by considering the impacts of a professional learning mentoring program, adapted through times of COVID-19 impacted practice (Thomas & Whitburn, 2023). We hope to foster small utterances and actions for the tremendous possibilities they might produce.

Partnership Architectures: Theoretical Underpinnings Following Kemmis et al. (2014a), we consider the practice of mentoring as simultaneously a relationship and a process. In this chapter, we draw on a small sample from a broader research project to examine the sayings, doings, and relatings of school leaders to consider how seemingly routine elements of the conceptualised approach to school-university partnerships shaped constructions and practices of PST mentoring. Acknowledging the theoretical origins of this research within the broader terrain of practice theory (Schatzki, 1996), we adopt an analytical approach to the Theory of Practice Architectures to identify how school leaders influence the conditions (or cultures) in which mentoring practices are enacted. More pointedly, we focus on the arrangements that sustain our school-university partnerships and the practices of school leaders who make certain approaches to mentoring “possible and hold them in place” (Mahon et al., 2017, p. 2). The Theory of Practice Architectures offers: A distinctive ontological view of what practice is, how practices are shaped and mediated, and how practices relate to each other… it politicises practice, humanises practice, theorises relationships between practices, is ontologically orientated, and offers insights pertaining to education. (Mahon et al., 2017, p. 2)

Our starting point here is a consideration of mentoring as a ‘practice’. This can be understood as a “cooperative human activity involving utterances and forms of understanding (sayings), modes of action (doings), and ways in which people relate to one another and the world (relatings) that ‘hang together’ in characteristic ways in a distinctive ‘project’” (Mahon et al., 2017, p. 8). As such the project of mentoring practices encapsulates the intention, or aim, that drives the practice; the actions (which includes enmeshed sayings, doings, and relatings) deployed through enactments of the practice; and the goals or aims that are hoped to be achieved with this practice.

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As a social phenomenon, mentoring practices are circumstances or conditions (cultural contexts) that operate in specific locations (in physical space–time) and historical points. As Mahon et al. (2017) argue, Being social and situated, practices are not just shaped by the experience, intentions, dispositions, habitus and actions of individuals … they are also shaped and prefigured intersubjectively by arrangements that exist in or are brought to, particular sites of practice. (p. 9, emphasis in original)

These three arrangements—cultural-discursive, material-economic, and socialpolitical—fluctuate to enable and constrain what is possible for teachers. From this theoretical perspective then, we offer an analytic framework to analyse the sayings, doings, and relatings of school leaders to understand the influence of formal interventions and expansive learning opportunities through specific practices, e.g., assessment circles (explained below), on notions of effective mentoring within a school-university partnership model.

Methods The inductive research design which follows is illustrative of the lead mentor teachers’ insights about key learnings, adapted from their active participation across the school-university partnership and its most recent state-wide initiative, the mentoring program. To do so we utilised reflective commentary enabled through semi-structured interviews of lead teachers and school principals from across four distinct school-university partnerships, managed by one university. Semi-structured interviews are a means of eliciting rich data (Bearman, 2019). Through the capacity for research participants to speak freely as if in conversation, it transcends the study of a broad phenomenon and supplants it with the individual perspectives and narratives that are focussed whilst providing the researcher with the “autonomy to explore pertinent ideas” (Varpio et al., 2020, p. 1360). The voices of the participants in this research have been anonymised and given a pseudonym. A broader program of research examining the affordances, barriers, and enablers of school-university partnerships through the aperture of Activity Theory is in process. This related study is a large-scale mixed-method investigation of a formative intervention, namely a multi-level professional learning program to support mentoring practices across over one hundred schools arranged in fourteen geographic school clusters termed ‘alliances’ across Victoria, Australia. Following granted ethical approval, participants from partner schools involved in the mentoring professional learning were invited to complete an anonymous survey about their reflections of learning about mentoring through the program, with an option to participate in a follow up interview. In this chapter, we articulate the voices of ten formative school leaders from partner schools involved in the mentoring program. Each participant was drawn from a pool of highly engaged partnership contributors comprised of experienced

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school leaders and principals. Each school leader maintains an established role in early childhood, primary, and secondary schools across urban and rural Victoria. These ten participants’ semi-structured interview reflections were analysed as social practices, specifically aligned to the specific cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements that oscillate within a site (shaped by inside and outside influences) that act to enable and constrain a practice. We argue that it is these “arrangements that make the practice possible” (Kemmis et al., 2014a, p. 155), and from this attention can then be drawn to “the identification of local conditions that foster the particular kinds of mentoring practices that are in the ascendant in a given society at some particular historical moment” (p. 155).

An Alliance Model for School-University Partnerships The theoretical underpinnings of our school-university partnership as adopted within our institution have been noted elsewhere (Bradbury et al., 2022; Toe et al., 2020). We acknowledge the origins of the Alliance model as theoretically drawing from Activity Theory (Engeström, 2015) which offers a broad conceptual framework to inform responses to social problems that require effective collaboration between multiple human activity systems, understood as multiple geographically disparate, but integrated, alliances. These alliances build stronger, sustainable school-university partnerships, strengthen theory–practice links, and improve the measure of PST readiness. These challenges require universities and schools to better understand the contradictory motives that often arise between each of the partners (also understood as Activity Systems) in the provision of ITE. Initial planning for the Alliance model commenced in 2014 following funding support from the Victorian Government through the Teaching Academics Partnerships Program (TAPP) initiative. This included seed funding to employ a Site Director whose primary role was to enable and sustain the school-university partnership through a boundary-crossing role. As boundary crossers, they “negotiate languages, philosophical perspectives, and competing views” (Andreasen, 2023, p. 5) forging an in-between space. Site Directors provide support to PSTs and their mentors during placements within a specific geographic region, through a concentrated alliance of ~ 10–12 early childhood, primary, and secondary schools. This model of school-university partnerships has evolved significantly beyond its original intention, remit, and funding envelope. Within one university, the current iteration of the University Alliance model now meaningfully supports four geographically constructed alliances including over 130 early childhood, primary, and secondary alliance schools/centres within the structure of the four teaching academies. Collectively these alliances support ~ 31% of the 6500 PST school placements secured by one university annually across Australia. Current iterations of the school-university partnership model are focused on harnessing, refining, and shaping effective professional experiences for the betterment of the education profession. This is enabled

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primarily through boundary crossers capable of working across human activity systems with geographic clusters of schools. Site Directors themselves are boundary crossing agents who enable the collective identification of discontinuities and contradictions across systems, and subsequently facilitate a formative intervention aimed at transforming the collective activities of initial teacher education. Such activity includes mentoring, and the aim is to forge expansive learning that is enabled across school-university partnership as a networked system. This is achieved most effectively through collaborative partnership practices, such as assessment circles, which act to transform collective understandings of ITE, being and becoming learners, and enhancing professional practice coupled with authentic opportunities for formative development. Whilst other contributions have outlined the structure and benefits of this approach to school-university partnerships for PSTs (Toe et al., 2020), and the affordances of the Site Director as a boundary crosser within a single alliance school-university partnership (Bradbury et al., 2022), in this chapter we focus on formative interventions that support mentoring practices, namely a multi-level, large scale mentoring professional learning program, and the affordances of assessment circles which produced both intended and unintended learnings for school leaders (see Fig. 8.1).

Assessment Circles as an Expansive Learning Opportunity Site Directors are responsible for the conduct of assessment circles in each alliance to support the provision of formative feedback for PSTs during their professional experience placements. Through assessment circles, PSTs are encouraged to draw out examples (artefacts) of their as evidence of progress towards achieving the APSTs for graduate teachers. This occurs through critical dialogue between PSTs and “a circle of school mentors [and leaders] …university academic staff and the Site Director” (Toe et al., 2020, p. 106). It is the skilful unpacking of the artefact, subsequent contestation, and the shared narrative that supports its use as evidence of achievement against the APSTs, that creates expansive learning and facilitates rich dialogue from all participants. This dialogue stimulates shared reflections about the interpretations of standards and practice. As a practice, assessment circles within schooluniversity partnerships hold significant potential to support expansive learning within and between partners across various activity systems and are key to their transformative role in shaping pedagogical practices. Yet to achieve this laudable aim, the role a mentor plays in supporting PSTs to prepare for participation in an assessment circle becomes critical. As PSTs make decisions about the selection of artefacts and practice-based examples that evidence achievement against the standards, mentors become important sounding-boards in this curation. As such, establishing shared understandings of the role of the mentor in assessment and feedback practices that support PST development necessitates mentor professional learning to support this in practice across the diverse school contexts that comprise the four geographical alliances.

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Fig. 8.1 An alliance model for an integrated school-university partnership

Mentoring Professional Learning as a Formative Intervention Our formative intervention took the shape of a state-wide, multi-stage mentoring project co-developed in partnership with school-identified lead mentors and Site Directors. The work of the intervention aimed to explore the complex interplay of professional experience as it occurs across a network of schools and the academic program of work which supports students’ readiness to teach. This includes the ongoing sensemaking derived from assessment circles in schools but adds a program of training for school mentors within the school-university partnership.

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The intervention itself was premised on the initial training of two lead mentors from each school. Typically, a member of the leadership team and the student–teacher coordinator were identified. This program aimed to build a shared vision of quality teacher education, establish more effective and consistent approaches to mentoring practices, and target the needs of both emergent and experienced mentors. Before commencement, within the school-university partnership, two identified needs arose: (1) the support and capacity building for emerging mentors to increase the pool of available mentors, and (2) the enrichment of experienced mentor capacity as a source of professional learning. To address these identified needs, an initial set of five modules was created. These modules comprised professional learning about specific elements of mentoring practice: (1) Creating a Vision for Mentoring, (2) Connection and Commitment, (3) Communication, (4) Coaching and feedback conversations, and (5) Critical Reflection. These were followed by the development of two advanced mentoring modules: (1) Strengths-based mentoring, and (2) Powerful conversations. Phase 1 involved immersion in the initial five modules, Phase 2 incorporated a conference and widened the pool of potential lead mentors, and Phase 3 involved the adaptation of these now seven modules to individual schools’ professional development programs, adapted and facilitated in conjunction with their local Site Director (see Fig. 8.2). This three-phase model aimed to ensure local contextual fidelity, mapping what was needed, and delivering to whole school staff teams across diverse and differing

Fig. 8.2 A model for School-university partnership mentoring

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contexts in the school-university partnership. This transformative intervention was designed to build a shared vision of quality teacher education. This occurred by establishing more effective and consistent approaches to mentoring practices and simultaneously developing the needs of both emergent and experienced mentors. By extension, and in conjunction with the practice of assessment circles, both PSTs and mentors were affected by a large-scale process of systemic improvement.

What Can a Butterfly Affect? The Influence of School Leaders in Shaping Mentoring Practice/s Returning to our central metaphor, we consider what affect can these butterfly moments effect. To understand the complex systems of schools, often what appears as chaos and random happenstance can be articulated as sensitivity to a “dependence on initial conditions” (Bishop, 2020, p. 519). Put another way, school-universities partnerships are often treated as linear cause and effect, that is, I teach, you learn; I pay, you get results. However, they might be better understood as non-linear systems, wherein the wider network of people, children, schools, and universities are instead chaotic, dynamic, and variable. This model promotes agency and possibility, it rejects causal approaches in educational settings, and instead opens the possibility for variability drawing on “extreme sensitivity to the smallest changes in initial states” (Bishop, 2020, p. 519). Such a model is illustrative of the relational impact of schooluniversity partnerships as a primary driver for sustained change over any form of direct routinised system which is not genuinely open to the voices and input of all partners in the enabling effect of mentoring practices. A school is not a factory, a lesson is not a circuit. Great plans do not always make for grand outcomes. What follows are the voices of school leaders from across four distinct schooluniversity partnerships supported by one university. This collage of voices is cast against their sayings, doings, and relatings that provide insight about the ways in which notions of effective mentoring become contextualised in a geographically aligned set of schools (an alliance) and how these are then enabled or constrained in practice through cultural-discursive, material-economic, and socio-political arrangements.

Cultural-Discursive Arrangements: Sayings Existing mentoring programs (e.g., provided by AITSL, VIT) engage as systemlevel interventions providing professional learning opportunities for mentors to develop their mentoring capacity. However, being able to contextualise these learnings with unique and varied PSTs, specific school contexts and cultures, various

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school priorities, or strategic imperatives create the conditions that muddy much of the translational work of this opportunity for growth. This adaptation absence from the screen to a person is most evident in the improved knowledge of what constitutes effective mentoring (e.g., reliability, strengths-based, adaptive, resilience). One mentor, Queenie, reflected the program had encouraged her to reflect deeply: “You’re forced to reflect on every element of how you come to teach”. Indeed, Kate reflects, “you question what might follow your classroom decisions”. Another leader, Rabi, suggested that “the process of mentoring forces teachers to engage in worthwhile questions including what do I need to keep or change about my practice?” and perhaps most potently, school principal Greta offered, “What can I learn from my PST and how could I apply that here?”. These insights evidence the non-determinative and democratic exchange of learning to teach through open mentoring. In analysing these ‘sayings’ there is a sense that cultural-discursive arrangements across these various school contexts become influential in framing mentors as reflective learners alongside their PST. Rabi’s semantic choices of asking ‘worthwhile’ questions reflects what others have highlighted as collaborative selfdevelopment (Kemmis et al., 2014a) that can be enabled when safe environments for mentors to reflect on their own practice are provided. Further, some consequences are unintended when mentors become attuned to the notion that teachers do not always learn, see, hear, or respond in the same ways as they might do. Alice identifies that “sometimes we need to be brave enough to be learners ourselves again, particularly in conversations with PSTs and our university colleagues”. She goes further, explaining that when learning to teach or lead “we make the rookie mistake of believing that everyone sees the world as we do”. To arrive at this point of recognition as a highly accomplished teacher that perhaps what works for them might not work for their PSTs, or that explanatory, emotional, or practical adaptations might be needed, is revelatory. This is as true for the mentor– mentee dynamic as it is for the process of helping a mentee find their pedagogical signature or style. Rabi reminded us that some interactions with mentees can be motivating and unmotivating simultaneously. He offers: “They are just visitors in the school, they don’t see it, they see a postcard, a fleeting glimpse of the everyday”. He goes further, “It’s the mechanics which make it hard, but sometimes they create opportunity as well, especially when you get to hear how others might have approached that situation. We have to identify what we have to unlearn as well”. Here Rabi explores the incongruence of school systems as they rub against the expectations of learning to teach, and the challenges of negotiating advice and feedback from multiple perspectives. Inadvertently, he touches on our central metaphor of the butterfly effect, acknowledging the possibilities that are always inherent when framed in this way.

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Material-Economic Arrangements: Doings Building a generative understanding that is cognisant of teacher development across their career stages is vital to support career growth within a developmental continuum of teacher capacity. Through the mentoring program, this came in the form of career guidance and the impact of how tales from the chalkface come to shape emergent teachers in their careers through impactful advice on impressionable emergent early career teachers. John commented that “teaching only seems like an individual pursuit”’, i.e., one teacher against the world. However, principals across the schooluniversity partnership were unanimous that this was a falsehood. Drew intimated, “Embrace being part of something bigger than you,” suggesting new teachers would find both a calling and a career in the collective of the school, to be swept up in a kind of butterfly effect. School leader Kerri-Anne reflected on the value of having PSTs as a school mentor forced her to confront questions about her professional practice: “I’m wondering why you did that”; for her, it was the process of reflection, explanation, and discussion which “actually helped me to refine what I do as a teacher.” However, this is neither constraint nor challenge-free. Mentor teachers noted the significant emotional toll of navigating teachers who are becoming experts, system complexities, and trauma in practice. On reflection, Anya suggested, “You just get good at compartmentalising and dealing with one situation at a time”, suggesting that with experience comes a sense of stillness and an understanding that the project of teaching is always and forever in process. A further way in which the material-economic arrangements were evidenced is through the assessment circles process. The process of taking part in an assessment circle sets both PSTs and mentors up for a future of continuous improvement. PSTs move from being a passenger in their learning to actively seeking, giving, and responding to feedback. The assessment circle process promotes a generative understanding of where people have come from and where they are going. As Joseph offered it creates a space where “you can’t help but grow and improve”. In addition, it creates a democratic space where experienced and new teachers sit in critical supportive discussions. Assessment circles engagement offers a way to see practice differently, build a shared language, and understand school culture, the mentoring relationship and the connections between teaching and learning effectively.

Social-Political Arrangements: Relatings Our attention now turns to how power is understood in, and across, school-university partnerships and in that process, considers how knowledge about effective teaching practice and mentoring is reframed. Through this, we come to an enhanced understanding of who has power and what this enables or constrains in educational relationships including legitimising PSTs’ (emergent) notions of expertise and different

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perspectives applied to school cultures and contexts with strong commitments to ways of working. This was evidenced in Kate’s reflection on the nature of being a pre-service teacher—“It can be a really hard gig,” she quipped. We were drawn to the ‘relatings’ that a PST must negotiate, the minutia of social politics they are inadvertently and immediately enmeshed within. Queenie acknowledged, “Sometimes I can be a lot”, reminding us that alongside the experience which mentors bring to the role, they remain human, susceptible to the everyday ups and downs of life. John offers to his mentees that “it’s best to let it all wash over you, without trying to jump in” in reference to the wider system of the schooling environment. Alice reflected on a former student teacher who reported being quite despondent at his outsider status. Alice challenged the mentee, “Well, it’s not a hotel, it is a workplace, and it just takes time to learn the ropes”. This underscores the tricky terrain of educational environments and the challenges of being a guest, attempting to understand what it may be like to be a permanent fixture in that school. Reflective here is an acknowledgement by leaders that it does take time to understand the socio-political arrangements that shape relationships within individual school contexts and in turn, how these relationships influence experiences of being mentored.

The Butterfly Effect of Enabling Mentoring Cultures: Implications and Conclusions Against a backdrop of intense political scrutiny and multiple reforms that have sought to enhance the ‘classroom readiness’ of graduate teachers (Alexander & Bourke, 2021), the role of school-university partnerships as integral to effective ITE through the provision of authentic teaching practice is a well-rehearsed argument. Central here is the significance of quality mentors in supporting teacher development and professional induction, particularly during times of increased teacher workforce shortage. This chapter has sought to contribute to the broader literature on school-university partnerships beyond what others have called a focus on structure and benefits of partnerships approach (Green et al., 2020) to elicit a focus on the seemingly small but impactful insights that school leaders develop through effective partnerships that shape cultures of mentoring within their school contexts. Instead of returning to a focus on the mechanics of mentoring within school-university partnerships, we have chosen instead to make visible broader sayings, doings, and relatings of leaders that shift conceptions of mentoring enabled through the activities of this partnership model. This then has drawn attention to the seemingly more routine but influential instances where (re)framing conceptions of PST learning, self-learning through reflective practice, or intentional formative interventions such as participation in assessment circles hold rich potential for changed practice/s in mentoring. Returning to the metaphor of the butterfly effect, in much the same way that the film’s central character sought to recast seemingly minor events in his past to reshape his future, in our account of sayings, doings, and relatings of school leaders about

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mentoring practices we draw attention to the extreme sensitivity that even the smallest changes in initial states might elicit. What we have aimed to highlight are the ways in which a partnership approach to working authentically promotes reflective accounts of actions that support teachers and school leaders to acknowledge the transformative capacity they hold within school-university partnerships. These democratic practices manifest in school-level change, creating a butterfly effect demonstrating teachers’ sensitive and relational dependence on initial conditions. Reflective accounts of mentors’ pedagogical practices, school frameworks, and interpersonal leadership belie a complex interdependent system in which small changes lead to unity and change across a school region. The butterfly effect is evinced through the project’s production of effects beyond its initial remit. We tender that small actions of individuals and conversations in a school-university partnership reshape the conditions that make effective practices of mentoring possible. These actions evoke small changes and create possibilities in schools as we have sought to highlight through the possibilities of a co-designed partnership formative intervention to support mentoring. Professional experience is a challenging issue in ITE. This contestation is increasingly being influenced by national and international discourses on standardisation (Allen et al., 2020) and temporal acceleration (Thomas & Whitburn, 2023), as are the mentoring practices that support its effective implementation. Mentor training and development seeks to systematise a dynamic system, comprised as if in an ordered manner the unpredictable nature or chaos of human growth and development. Put simply, it is often the small unintended actions that have a lasting effect on our learners. The metaphoric flap of a mentor’s wings is inherent in how they greet their mentee every day or in the subtleties of being regularly on time or engaged in a meeting. Grandiose gestures and the most well-planned lessons, whilst impressive, are often fleeting. The memory which remains is the personal, connected moments in which an authentic connection is forged between a committed educator and a connected learner. This research reports on an early synthesis of working in partnership across a school-university partnership through an innovative future-focussed mentoring program. Mentoring was understood to be the outcome of purposeful action. School leaders demonstrated through reflection that even in the wake of an extreme teacher shortage when the need for effective mentoring has never been greater, there is value and power in partnerships. Indeed, school mentors, through the trust enabled by the school-university partnership, understood the mandate to re-examine and reflect. Many mentors elected to overhaul their existing in-school mentoring and leadership models because of their engagement in the modules and wider partnership discussions. Their leadership heralds the democratic possibilities of participation coupled with small changes that alter the trajectory of educational possibility between chaos and order. We are eternally grateful for the openness of the schoolteachers who embrace what might be possible, even in the smallest of guises. In returning to the contribution this chapter might make to the broader field of school-university partnership literature, we reflect on the sayings, doings, and relatings of school leaders as examples of the ways in which authentic partnerships act to ‘feed’ everyone. In her discussion of the ‘coalition’ approach to school-university

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partnerships in New South Wales, Mockler (2013) argued that regardless of work contexts, participants, and the roles they hold, those involved in the partnership were ‘fed’ in that all were able “to both contribute and take learning away” (p. 285). Importantly, and as Mockler (2013) has argued, these learnings need to be contextualised in “local concerns and issues” (p. 286) and provide opportunity for the “active development of trust and reciprocity” (p. 286). Building a generative understanding that is cognisant of teacher development across their career stages is vital to support career growth within a development continuum and through the examples of the mentoring professional learning and participation in assessment circles (the doings) we see evidence of the impact of the partnership through a focus on processes rather than only the provision of particular content through professional learning activities about mentoring. This supports what Mockler (2013) argues is a partnership need to support teacher autonomy and responsibility across all career stages. Finally, we are cognisant of the cautionary tale that authentic partnerships take time (Mockler, 2013). As argued, based on the time invested by individuals in building the partnership project, “there is an ‘opportunity cost’ to being involved” (Mockler, 2013, p. 286) which inadvertently leads to declines in participation over time. While this has been explained elsewhere “as part of the natural ‘ebb and flow’ of a network such as this” (Mockler, 2013, p. 286), the metaphor of the butterfly effect draws attention to what is enabled through “valuing dialogue over the ‘quick fix’” (Mockler, 2013, p. 287) approach to effective mentoring practices. We contend that the success and sustainability of school-university partnership endeavours to support mentoring practices in schools are reliant on the processes that are established and enabled in the name of the partnership, rather than the actors or partners themselves. Acknowledgements We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which this writing was conducted in places across time. We pay our deep respect to the Ancestors and Elders of Wadawurrung Country, Eastern Maar Country, and Wurundjeri Country, and pay respect to their Elders past, and present. Funding The funding provided by the Department of Education and Training (Victoria) to support the school-university partnerships is gratefully acknowledged.

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Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2011). Australia professional standards for teachers. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/standards Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2012). Australian teacher performance and development framework. http://www.aitsl.edu.au/verve/_resources/Australian_Teac her_Performance_and_Development_Framework.pdf Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2022). Australian teacher performance and development framework. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/nat ional-policy-framework/australian-teacher-performance-and-development-framework.pdf?sfv rsn=4a7fff3c_10 Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2023). Environmental scan of mentoring programs: Informing the development of teaching practice through a scan of international and Australian mentoring programs. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/tools-resources/res ource/environmental-scan-of-mentoring-programs Bearman, M. (2019). Eliciting rich data: A practical approach to writing semi-structured interview schedules. Focus on Health Professional Education: A Multi-Disciplinary Journal, 20(3), 1–11. Betlem, E., Clary, D., & Jones, M. (2019). Mentoring the Mentor: Professional development through a school-university partnership. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 47(4), 327–346. Bishop, R. (2020). What could be worse than the Butterfly Effect? Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 38(4), 519–547. Bradbury, O., & Acquaro, D. (2022). School-university partnerships: Innovation in initial teacher education. Springer. Bradbury, L. (2010). Educative mentoring: Promoting reform-based science teaching through mentoring relationships. Science Education, 94(6), 1049–1071. Bradbury, O., Moore, B., Arnold, J., Brown, J., & Eyers, A. (2022). Perspectives from academia and school leadership boundary crossing roles in one alliance school-University partnership. In O. Bradbury & D. Acquaro (Eds.), School-university partnerships: Innovation in initial teacher education (pp. 129–148). Springer. Bress, E., & Gruber, J. (2004). The butterfly effect [Film]. New Line Cinema. Burns, R. W., Jacobs, J., Baker, W., & Donahue, D. (2016). Making muffins: Identifying core ingredients of school-university partnerships. School-University Partnerships, 9(3), 81–95. Dargusch, J., Ambrosetti, A., & Busch, G. (2021). GTPA as enabler: Review, Renewal and evidence of preservice teachers’ assessment practices. In C. Wyatt-Smith, L. Adie, & J. Nuttall (Eds.), Teaching performance assessments as a cultural disruptor in initial teacher education: Standards, evidence and collaboration (pp. 129–148). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-98116-3705-6_8 Day, C., Gu, Q., Townsend, A., & Holdich, C. (2021). School-university partnerships in action: The promise of change. Routledge. Engeström, Y. (2015). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research (2nd ed). Cambridge University Press. Forgasz, R. (2016). Rethinking the observation placement: A community/cohort approach to early professional experiences. In R. Brandenburg, S. McDonough, J. Burke, & S. White (Eds.), Teacher education: Innovation, intervention and impact (pp. 99–116). Springer. Green, C., Tindall-Ford, S., & Eady, M. (2020). School-university partnerships in Australia: A systematic literature review. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 48(4), 403–435. Kemmis, S., Hekkinen, H., Fransson, G., Aspfors, J., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2014a). Mentoring of new teachers as a contested practice: Supervision, support and collaborative self-development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 43, 154–164. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014b). Changing education, changing practices. Springer. Lang, J., Acquaro, D., Anderson, M., Mandouit, L., Wilson, E., Favero, E., & Marlow, E. (2022). Value of mentor professional learning through a digital microcredential in a school-university partnership. In O. Bradbury & D. Acquaro (Eds.), School-university partnerships: Innovation in initial teacher education (pp. 109–128). Springer.

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Amanda Mooney is the Associate Dean, Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University and co-leader of the Innovating Teacher Education research group in Deakin’s School of Education. Amanda has held a number of leadership roles in teaching and learning across the secondary and tertiary sectors with a particular interest in assessment, curriculum and pedagogy in higher education and teacher education. With a discipline background in Health and Physical Education, much of my research work focuses on wellbeing, professional practice and pedagogies as it relates to teachers’ work. Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas is a Senior Lecturer in Education (Pedagogy and Curriculum) at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the Academic Director of Professional Practice. In addition, he works internationally leading humanitarian projects through global immersion programs. He is a former schoolteacher with a background in leadership, strategy, and negotiation. Matthew’s major research interests include initial teacher education and the sociology of education. His research engages with the implications of time as a structuring force in learning, human rights in schooling and relationality in initial teacher education. Damian Blake is the Head of School of Education and has led the development of schooluniversity partnerships for 20 years, including the establishment of partnership-based initial

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teacher education programs and Deakin University’s unique Alliances model. His research includes the application of partnership-based approaches to applied learning in schools and universities to strengthen outcomes for learners and has undertaken multiple related research projects.

Chapter 9

Using a Networked Professional Learning Community to Prepare Pre-service Teachers Selina L. Bartels

and Benjamin Boche

Introduction Inspiration of the Project We have spent the past several years redesigning our elementary education program (see Boche et al., 2021) to form integrated methods coursework and practicum experiences instead of a disjointed university pre-service teaching experience where pre-service teachers are left to piece together knowledge and expertise themselves (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Labaree, 2006) despite being the least experienced member of the education community (Bain & Moje, 2012). While we are still striving towards having our pre-service teachers teach integrated lessons all of the time (integrating two or more content areas in one lesson to support the teaching of social studies and science in the elementary classroom), the best preparation can be for naught if practicum experience and student teaching placements, mentor teachers, and school curriculum do not support nor model integrated teaching. Like many departments or colleges of education at universities, we seek out strong school-university partnerships for a variety of reasons, one of which is to serve the needs of the university in providing placements for required practicum work (Burroughs et al., 2020). However, studies support that these practicum-based partnerships can be mutually beneficial for both the cooperating and the pre-service teacher (Yuan, 2016), specifically in the area of professional development. Walters et al. (2020) argue that the mentoring relationship needs to move beyond cooperating teachers merely supporting pre-service teachers and toward a true learning partnership. Through this partnership, cooperating teachers can learn current research-based

S. L. Bartels (B) · B. Boche Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_9

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practices being taught in the university and provide opportunities for reflective practice. As we looked to support our pre-service teachers to teach integrated lessons in practicum, we saw an opportunity to support both new and experienced teachers in examining integrated content in the curriculum, hosting meetings that provide space and time for content integration, specifically communicating that pre-service teachers will be looking for and teaching integrated lessons in practicum work, and asking cooperating teachers to work with pre-service teachers to identify what they are thinking of, planning for, and delivering integrated lessons. Stanulis et al. (2019) similarly defines this idea. They describe an educative mentor as one who takes the stance of a co-learner while creating rich growth opportunities for a pre-service teacher. Willegems et al. (2017) assert that cooperating and preservice teachers should collaborate as a team and engage in teacher research to encourage reflective practice. The goal of our study was to create a space whereby our pre-service teachers could closely collaborate with practicum experience cooperating teachers to examine and teach evidence-based practices in classrooms to integrate and teach current social studies and science topics along with teaching literacy and mathematics (Syofyan et al., 2019).

Integrated Teaching In the teaching profession, there is no officially agreed upon definition of integrated teaching (Venville et al., 1998), although several have been proposed. Some research has been conducted about integrated teaching with few empirical studies supporting integration. The research noted that this approach is, “frequently embedded into other reforms, such as block scheduling and multi-age grouping” (Czerniak et al., 1999, p. 423). Interest in curricular connections with science, mathematics, and engineering dates back to the 1870s, when Calvin Woodward—a mathematics professor—began employing manual training methods with mathematics and engineering students. This early integrated teaching approach explored teaching and learning between and among two or more of the subject areas, and/or between a subject and one or more subjects. There is a perception that all content areas must be included to be an integrated lesson. One research team (Sanders, 2008) argued instead that the subjects should be presented in such a way that students can easily see the connections between them rather than considering them as standalone fields. Similarly, expanding on Woodward’s work, Stoddart et al. (2002) examined ways to deliver an integrated curriculum. They came up with three approaches to teaching integrated content areas, and for the purpose of this study, the third domain is the focus of an integrated approach, which emphasizes balancing two or more content domains.

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Immersive Practicum Experience for Pre-service Teachers Immersive practicum experiences are important to pre-service teachers’ efficacy about teaching as well as their delivery of the content embedded lessons. Practicum experiences need to occur at the same time as methods courses which builds up pre-service teachers’ confidence in delivering lessons in the various content areas (McDonnough & Matkins, 2010). Repeated teaching experiences prior to student teaching allow for pre-service teachers to move their instructional methods away from teacher centered lesson delivery to a research based, student-centered instructional approach across all content areas (Chiu, 2017). An immersive practicum experience allows for pre-service teachers to put theory from their methods coursework into practice along with witnessing their cooperating teachers deliver lessons (Kazempour et al., 2020). Along with research-based practice of increasing pre-service teachers’ pedagogy and efficacy, embedded practicum increases retention in the teaching field. Having repeated embedded experiences exposes pre-service teachers to real classrooms and helps them get comfortable teaching and understanding the profession which allows pre-service teachers to persist through teaching programs and into the classroom (Strand & Johnson, 1990). An immersive practicum experience also prepares pre-service teachers for the capstone semester of student teaching. The intensive practicum experience shows pre-service teachers what daily life looks like for elementary classroom teachers far before their last semester when it may be too late to change their major. This in turn increases retention for cooperating teachers. Additionally, pre-service teachers who engage in extensive pre-service teaching practicum experiences have more time to observe best practices in cooperating teachers and build more meaningful relationships with both their cooperating teachers as well as the students in the classroom (Brown et al., 2015). Pre-service teachers who participate in extensive immersive practicum experiences before student teaching are also more confident in their instruction and approaches to behavior management (Conaway & Mitchell, 2004).

Networked Professional Learning Communities DuFour and Eaker (1998) first coined the phrase Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and intentionally focused on the words professional (expected to remain current), learning (ongoing action), and community (group linked by common interest). PLCs are driven by three main ideas: (1) a focus on learning, (2) a collaborative culture and collective responsibility, and (3) a results orientation (DuFour et al., 2016). While most PLCs occur within grade levels within schools, the growing need for system-wide change requires system-wide collaboration and networking (Harris & Jones, 2010), and the latest research on PLCs focuses on networked PLCs. Networked PLCs (NPLC) function like regular PLCs in that teachers still

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share knowledge and practices, but NPLCs have the advantage of obtaining knowledge and practices from others to implement in their unique settings (Prenger et al., 2019; Riggins & Knowles, 2020). According to Chapman and Muijs (2014), NPLCs create ways to plug structural gaps in teachers’ own expertise and skills, and without NPLCs, teachers stay more isolated, improvement stagnates, and expertise stays limited (Thompson et al., 2019). NPLCs have been shown to create positive perceptions of teacher professional learning (Prenger et al., 2019), spread classroom practices and tools from school to school faster (Thompson et al., 2019), and have a positive impact on student outcomes, especially when networking teachers are from schools in challenging contexts (Chapman & Muijs, 2014). The ultimate goal of schools is to create literate citizens who can participate in communities and make informed decisions about their own lives (Bebell & Stemler, 2013). Education systems have roughly 13 years to accomplish this goal and the foundation of this work is laid in elementary schools. In order to become practicing members of society, students need to have working understandings of several content areas such as mathematics, science, literacy, and social studies. The teaching of these content areas is crucial to the holistic development of the students. Due to reforms in the United States, teachers feel pressure from several outside forces to focus on mathematics and literacy teaching, leaving social studies and science behind (Engel et al., 2021). The focus of this study is bringing together two significantly different school systems to support and prepare pre-service teachers to teach in an integrated method to prepare students for the world they are going to live in and to intentionally use a NPLC to work with cooperating teachers to support pre-service teachers to deliver integrated lessons. The NPLC also strives to teach cooperating teachers about integration while creating a pipeline between university and schools which is often neglected beyond just sites for placements. This collaborative, reflective NPLC aimed to strengthen the relationship among all the constituents involved, while working towards the ultimate goal of implementing and utilizing research-based practices in elementary classrooms.

Research Questions This chapter will focus on two questions: How does a NPLC impact pre-service teachers’ practicum experiences, and what are the experiences of cooperating teachers within a NPLC?

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Methodology Sample The sample was made up of three groups of participants: cooperating teachers, preservice teachers, and university faculty and staff. The recruitment of cooperating teachers was focused on two school districts that were near the university. One school district was rural and the other urban. The selection of the school districts was purposeful to bridge a gap between two different school settings. One intention of the NPLC was to bring together these distinctive groups to work together to potentially find commonalities in teaching although the demographics of their students and communities may be perceived as vastly different. Between July and August 2021 cooperating teachers were recruited from the two school districts. Teachers could be self-nominated or nominated by a peer or administrator. A group of 21 cooperating teachers were selected for this project. The cooperating teachers who were invited to participate all had been in the field for over five years. All identified as female with two out of the 21 identifying as a person of color. There were 11 third-year undergraduate elementary education majors who were the pre-service teachers in this project. All but one of the pre-service teachers were traditional university students who entered undergraduate after the completion of high school. One of the pre-service teachers was a non-traditional student who obtained a community college degree before transferring to the university. Two out of the 11 preservice teachers identified as non-white. All of the pre-service teachers had completed the foundational coursework in the education program including content coursework: mathematics, literacy, science, educational psychology, history of education, educational technology, and classroom management. Other participants were five university faculty/staff members which included three professors, one field placement director, and a school university partnership liaison. All of the university faculty had PhDs in their respective fields (mathematics, science, and literacy) and the university staff had master’s degrees in education. Between the five university participants, there was over 50 years of K-6 teaching experience.

Timeline Cooperating Teachers This study took place over the course of one academic year (August 2021–May 2022) in the Midwest of the US. Cooperating teachers were recruited prior to the start of the academic year. The cooperating teachers and university faculty/staff met for monthly professional development seminars throughout the academic year. The first seminar focused on a deep dive into standardized test scores and identification

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of academic goals as well as feedback on the university’s lesson plan template and rubric. In the second seminar, the cooperating teachers met the pre-service teachers and developed a plan for practicum together. The third seminar focused on reflection on the three-week full day practicum. Seminar four incorporated meeting another preservice teacher from the group and setting second semester goals. The fifth seminar was used as a debriefing session of the second semester practicum. Finally, the sixth seminar encouraged reflection on the NPLC in its entirety.

Pre-service Teachers The 11 pre-service teachers in this study were in their third year of study in a fouryear program. The focus of this program was to teach in an integrated fashion across all the content areas in an elementary school. To move towards a more integrated approach, the researchers designed a program where practicum experiences were three immersive weeks during the semester where pre-service teachers were in an elementary classroom every day for a full day with opportunities to teach multiple subject areas and learn how to integrate content. The methods courses included foundations of literacy, social studies, mathematics, science, physical education, fine arts, children’s literature, and literacy in the elementary grades. See Table 9.1 for the order of coursework. In this integrated pre-service elementary education program, content methods courses were taught in tandem, and pre-service teachers made connections between content areas both at the university classroom and during the immersive practicum experience. For example, the “Foundations of Literacy” course is taught the same semester as the “Social Studies Methods” course. These courses focus on the links between literacy and social studies lessons and included observations of high-quality teachers delivering lessons in the classroom. Each methods block class included an immersive practicum in which pre-service teachers were placed in a classroom to participate in and support a full elementary school day. The first semester immersive practicum placed pre-service teachers in kindergarten through second grade classrooms to provide experiences of teaching early elementary grades. In the second semester practicum, pre-service teachers were placed in grades three through five. Thus, pre-service teachers had at least one placement in each of the two grade bands (early and intermediate) before their capstone student teaching semester. This Table 9.1 Course alignment with methods blocks Methods block one (K-2 placement)

Methods block two (3–5 placement)

Foundations of literacy

Literacy in the elementary grades

Social studies methods

Science methods

Fine arts methods

Math methods Physical education methods

3-week embedded practicum

3-week embedded practicum

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sequencing also allows professors to build pre-service teachers’ understandings of key pedagogical items throughout the entire year including lesson planning, assessment, child development, and classroom management, where it is hoped that knowledge will be directly transferred from the university to the classroom during practicum and student teaching opportunities. For the purposes of this study the pre-service teachers were engaged with two immersive practicum experiences each for three weeks. One of these experiences was during methods block one and the other methods block two and both occurred within one academic year. The cooperating teachers in this sample mentored the pre-service teachers for one three-week experience and their time was split over the two different experiences with a total of 21 cooperating teachers in the study and 11 pre-service teachers in the study.

Data Sources and Data Analysis The research questions for this study were: 1. How does a school-university NPLC impact pre-service teachers’ practicum experience? 2. What are the experiences of cooperating teachers within a NPLC? The two large variables in this study are the NPLC and the immersive practicum experience. The engagement in these experiences looked at two groups of teachers: cooperating and pre-service. The aim of immersive practicum experience increases three aspects of pre-service teachers: retention, pedagogy, and efficacy (Brown et al., 2015; Conaway & Mitchell, 2004; Strand & Johnson, 1990). NPLC research states that it removes feelings of isolation, plugs gaps in knowledge, increases expertise, and has a positive impact on students (Chapman & Muijs, 2014; Prenger et al., 2019; Riggins & Knowles, 2020; Thompson et al., 2019). To analyze the outcomes of the university and school NPLC program, a mixed methods approach was employed to expand and compile findings from a variety of data sources (Tashakkori et al., 1998). The artifacts collected to answer the research questions were: lesson plans of pre-service teachers, lesson plan peer reflections (after planning and after teaching), audio recordings of conversations with cooperating teachers, surveys of pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers, and interviews with pre-service teachers after the two practicum experiences. Prior to the launch of this project, the Internal Review Board process was undertaken at the university where the study took place and the proposal was deemed appropriate and within the guidelines of human subjects’ research. To determine the pre-service teachers’ pedagogy, the lesson plans and peer reflections were utilized as they indicate what the pre-service teachers planned for and delivered in the practicum classroom. In order to examine the efficacy and confidence of the pre-service teachers, the surveys and interviews were used to elicit pre-service teachers’ feedback throughout the academic year. In order to determine

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the cooperating teachers’ takeaways from the NPLC, the surveys of both the NPLC in general and the immersive practicum were collected. All of the surveys were designed by the university faculty/staff in a group setting. Aspects from the literature were pulled from to dial into the various aspects of immersive practicum experiences as well as a NPLC. All surveys were administered via Google Classroom utilizing the Google forms feature.

Lesson Plans A total of 15 lesson plans were written by each of the pre-service teachers in the study across two semesters and five methods courses. The lesson plans were written using the university’s template in line with the national and state requirements for teacher preparation in the US. The lesson plans include: state standards, scripting of a full lesson, materials, individualized needs of students with diverse learning, and other various aspects. The design of the lesson plan is vetted and redesigned annually with stakeholders and faculty members. Frequency data was utilized with the coding of the lesson plans. Four specific aspects were needed for a lesson plan to be coded as integrated: two or more standards from different content areas, two differing content area objectives, an assessment that measures aspects of each content area, and the intentional teaching of the differing content areas in the body of the lesson plan (Stoddart et al., 2002). All pre-service teachers’ lesson plans were coded as either integrated or non-integrated based on the aforementioned areas. If one of the aspects was absent the lesson plan was coded as “non-integrated.” The pre-service teachers’ pre/post data were compared against the same question to determine if there were differences. There were 165 lesson plans collected for this study, 15 per pre-service teacher. Each lesson plan was coded for integration based on standards, objectives, assessment, and teaching. In the first practicum pre-service teachers were asked to plan six lessons (literacy and social studies) and in the second practicum they planned nine lessons (mathematics, science, and literacy). During the first practicum all 11 teachers (100%) planned at least one integrated lesson, and thirty- seven out of 66 total lessons were integrated (56% of the lessons). In the second practicum six out of 11 students wrote at least one integrated lesson (54%) and 16 out of 99 lessons were integrated (16%). Literacy lessons that were phonics based did not have integration.

Lesson Plan Peer Reflections Pre-service teachers had discussions throughout the academic year about their lesson plans with other pre-service teachers within their cohort. The cyclical process included lesson planning, peer feedback, revisions, lesson delivery, and then watching of peers’ videos of teaching. Discussions were had after the initial planning where pre-service teachers then had an opportunity to revise their lesson plans before they taught them. Then pre-service teachers also reflected on the delivery of each other’s

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lessons. Each lesson taught was video recorded and then reflected on by a peer preservice teacher. Then the peers discussed their feedback with each other, and their conversations were audio recorded. Pre-service teachers completed two lesson plan reflections about lessons that were delivered during practicum experiences. Pre-service teachers worked in pairs and read each other’s lesson plans and watched the delivery of the lesson. Preservice teachers provided specific areas of growth and strengths for each lesson. After identifying these areas, each pre-service teacher wrote a goal for their future teaching. For the analysis of the conversations, the researchers meet together to code pre-service teachers’ conversations using the constant comparative method (Kolb, 2012). After codes were developed, an interrater-reliability of 80% or greater was established. There were 11 pre-service teachers in the study with two reflections each. The goals were coded to determine how pre-service teachers intend to grow in the future after practicum.

Surveys and Interviews of Pre-service Teachers After each immersive practicum, pre-service teachers completed a survey evaluating their overall practicum experience as well as their cooperating teacher. Pre-service teachers were required to score their overall practicum experience on a scale from one to three. Along with Likert scale of strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree scoring the practicum experience, pre-service teachers were asked to supply comments concerning the practicum and its ability to impact their development in teaching areas such as lesson planning, classroom management, professional collaboration, and daily school routines. Frequency data was used to code the pre-service teachers’ surveys. We conflated the categories of strongly agree and agree, and strongly disagree and disagree, to create a three-system code of agree, neutral, and disagree. All pre-service teachers were interviewed at the conclusion of the second semester practicum experience (after they had participated in two practicum experiences). Interviews were conducted by a student researcher and audio recorded. We used the constant comparative method (Kolb, 2012) to develop codes for the interview. The following example codes emerged from the data: university coursework, communication between university and schools, and responsibilities of the pre-service teachers.

Surveys of Cooperating Teachers After the immersive practicum, cooperating teachers were asked to complete an evaluative survey of their pre-service teachers. This survey focused on both the dispositions of the pre-service teachers as well as their pedagogy. Seventeen of the 21 NPLC participants completed an exit survey after pre-service teachers completed the three-week practicum experience. Questions examined topics such as pre-service

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teacher knowledge of differentiating lessons, subject content, assessments, teaching strategies, university support, and communication. Frequency data was used to code cooperating teachers’ surveys. We conflated the categories of strongly agree and agree, and strongly disagree and disagree, to create a three-system code of agree, neutral, and disagree.

Survey of Cooperating Teachers About the NPLC The cooperating teachers in the NPLC were surveyed twice during the academic year—once in December at the halfway point of the NPLC, and then again in May at the conclusion of the NPLC. As part of the evaluation, we asked cooperating teachers to discuss what was most beneficial about the NPLC, what improvements could be made, how comfortable they felt collaborating with others, and any other additional thoughts. Frequency data was used to code the cooperating teachers’ surveys. We conflated the categories of strongly agree and agree, and strongly disagree and disagree, to create a three-system code of agree, neutral, and disagree.

Findings Research Question One The first research question asked, how does a NPLC impact pre-service teachers’ practicum experiences? In order to answer this question, the following data sources were analyzed: lesson plans, lesson plan reflections, pre/post surveys, and interviews. From the lesson plan data it was found that all 11 teachers could plan an integrated lesson but constraints of the practicum school impacted their integration lesson planning such as the curriculum utilized in the school for literacy and science lessons. During the first practicum experience when the pre-service teachers had only two content areas to teach, they were more likely to integrate than during the second practicum where they were focusing on three content areas: mathematics, science, and literacy. In the lesson plan reflections, the most frequent aspect that pre-service teachers identified as a growth opportunity was generic pedagogical aspects such as asking questions, connecting to previous knowledge, connecting to students’ personal experiences, and including student to student interactions. In one example of a preservice teacher’s reflection on questioning, they wrote, “I will ask questions about students’ observations and then follow up with another question asking students to give an example of why this observation connects to the science investigation.” This pedagogical aspect is a specific teaching technique of asking questions. The next frequent area identified as a growth opportunity by the pre-service teachers was pedagogical content knowledge such as utilizing math manipulatives

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and highlighting consonant digraphs in a read aloud. The least noted area of growth opportunity was generic classroom behavior such as classroom management strategies. One pre-service teacher noted that their goal was to “keep students on task.” This represented a generic teaching strategy, not content-driven. From the pre-service teachers’ surveys, it was found that the pre-service teachers grew in confidence in the following areas after spending three weeks in the classrooms. None of the pre-service teachers felt confident in lesson planning prior to the first practicum experience, and this improved to 27% agreed that they felt confident in lesson planning after the practicum experience. None of the pre-service teachers felt confident about classroom management prior to the practicum experience, and this improved to 45% at the close of practicum. Another aspect of teaching surveyed was feeling comfortable teaching for a full elementary school day. Nine percent of the pre-service teachers agreed with this at the start of practicum, and this improved to 81% at the close of the practicum experience. 18% felt that they could teach engaging lessons prior to the practicum experiences compared to 27% at the close of practicum. There was no decline in any aspects of teaching from the start of practicum to the close of practicum which may show that the embedded practicum experience increased pre-service teachers’ confidence in the classroom. From the pre-service teacher interviews, it was found that pre-service teachers felt that the expectations of the university coursework (lesson planning and video recording lessons) were overwhelming during the practicum experience. The expectations they specifically found overwhelming was the amount of lesson plans (nine in one practicum) they needed to create. In addition to the amount of lesson plans needed to be written and delivered in the field, the pre-service teachers also said the communication between the university and the cooperating teachers was lacking. One pre-service teacher said, “she [cooperating teacher] doesn’t know anything about our program or about our expectations.” Another pre-service teacher said, “I was kind of surprised in a way because she really didn’t know all the requirements we had to do.” A third pre-service teacher also said, “She [cooperating teacher] still didn’t really understand the expectations of them even though she had the same sheet of requirements we all had.” It seems that the pre-service teachers were concerned about their own responsibilities (lesson planning/delivery) and did not think the cooperating teachers understood the requirements.

Research Question Two The second research question in this study looked at the experiences of cooperating teachers within a NPLC. The surveys of the cooperating teachers (17 out of the 21 cooperating teachers completed the survey) found that 15 out of 17 said preservice teachers were prepared or well prepared in content knowledge and connecting content to learner experiences. 13 out 17 said pre-service teachers were prepared or well prepared in assessment knowledge. 11 out of 17 said pre-service teachers were prepared or well prepared to differentiate. 17 out of 17 said pre-service teachers

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were prepared or well prepared to teach using a variety of teaching strategies. 15 out of 17 agreed that the university provided adequate support to cooperating teachers and pre-service teachers. Finally, 13 out of 17 participants agreed that practicum expectations were clearly communicated. In the survey that solicited the cooperating teachers’ views on the NPLC that was conducted at both the mid and final evaluation, cooperating teachers showed the most beneficial aspect of the NPLC was collaborating with teachers at other schools and having a pre-service teacher in their classroom. For improvements, it was noted in both surveys that they wanted more time to meet with the pre-service teacher ahead of the practicum experience and that there should be clearer expectations of how cooperating teachers should mentor and support the pre-service teachers. All the cooperating teachers agreed or strongly agreed that they felt comfortable asking help from other NPLC members at the midterm evaluation, and this stayed consistent for the final evaluation noting that all the cooperating teachers agreed or strongly agreed they felt comfortable asking for help from other NPLC members. Overall, the additional thoughts from cooperating teachers mentioned how much they enjoyed the program, how much they learned from all the NPLC participants, and how much they enjoyed having pre-service teachers in the classroom.

Discussion This study sought to answer two questions; how does a NPLC impact pre-service teachers’ practicum experiences, and what are the experiences of cooperating teachers within a NPLC? The main stakeholders in this study were pre-service and cooperating teachers utilizing the school-university partnership to work towards the ultimate goal of high-quality education in elementary schools. There are two separate ideas permeating the pre-service teachers’ reflection on NPLC impact on pre-service teachers’ teaching. The first idea was that of actual pre-service teacher growth versus perceived experiences in the practicum. The preservice teacher interviews revealed that the pre-service teachers did not understand the role of the NPLC and how it connected to the pre-service teachers’ program. The pre-service teachers knew that the cooperating teachers and the university interacted but did not understand how that impacted their own classroom experiences. The pre-service teachers also felt that there was a lack of communication between the cooperating teachers and the university, despite there being two meetings where all three parties were together learning about curriculum and intentionally discussing timelines and expectations of each of the practicum experiences. The pre/post surveys from the practicum experience indicated that the pre-service teachers had grown in confidence, yet they are most concerned about classroom management (8 pre-service teachers were concerned about this in the pre survey which grew to 11 in the post survey). Although the lesson plans were not integrated across content areas, the preservice teachers became more sophisticated in their reflections and began focusing on

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pedagogical aspects of teaching such as questioning, connecting to students personally, and student to student interactions. Furthermore, pre-service teachers reflected on their pedagogical content knowledge such as determining which math manipulatives fit best while teaching. This is a shift from thinking about controlling students’ behavior to truly teaching students. The NPLC supported the pre-service teachers to become better teachers in every area from lesson planning to classroom management. The NPLC allowed pre-service teachers to write lesson plans and to reflect on their own teaching practices through video watching, peer reflection, and cooperating teacher mentoring. As pre-service teachers participated in practicum experiences across two semesters, their reflections on teaching became more nuanced where they began to think more critically about pedagogy and pedagogical content knowledge versus generic classroom experiences such as management. Although the pre-service teachers did not understand or value the NPLC, they benefited from its support significantly. The cooperating teachers enjoyed the NPLC overwhelmingly. In contrast to the pre-service teachers who did not understand the role of the NPLC, the cooperating teachers valued the time spent with the other school district and the space provided to reflect on their own teaching practices as well as becoming a mentor. The cooperating teachers enjoyed having the pre-service teachers in their classrooms and all asked for the experience to be longer (4 weeks). Cooperating teachers of the NPLC found value in being together monthly and enjoyed talking about issues that permeate both rural and urban school districts. They found solidarity in these areas of commonality as well as mutually mentoring the pre-service teachers.

Implications There were three main stakeholders in this research study: pre-service teachers, cooperating teachers in the networked professional learning community, and the university faculty/staff. The following paragraphs below will unpack the implications from this study for each of those stakeholders.

University Faculty/Staff Research in the area of connecting universities to schools shows that there is a divide between what is learned in university pre-service teaching programs and the actual practice of teaching in K-12 schools (Burroughs et al., 2020; Tigchelaar & Korthagen, 2004). This study has found that a NPLC allowed a university to shift from being evaluators of K-12 schools to being partners while working together to help strengthen cooperating teachers’ pedagogy while also preparing future teachers. This study worked towards defining what a true learning partnership is in a NPLC. The components of this partnership rest on finding curriculum connections and striking

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a balance. Integrating the curricula used in K-12 partner schools into the pre-service teacher program is key so that the pre-service teachers are ready to go in the schools prepared to teach what they are required to teach in the four content areas taught in elementary classrooms: social studies, literacy, mathematics, and science. A balance needs to be struck between the realities of schools versus the requirements of teacher licensure. Layered into the realities of teacher licensure is the added pressure to teach towards research-based practices. Elementary school teachers in the US are tasked with teaching the four content areas (math, science, social studies, and literacy) on a daily basis, but this is far from reality, and pre-service teachers need to be cognizant of how to integrate content areas together to achieve this goal.

Cooperating Teachers from the Networked Professional Learning Community This study found that the cooperating teachers enjoyed and benefited from working across two school districts along with the university. However, the cooperating teachers needed more specific support on mentoring pre-service teachers in their classroom. This study found that being in the same space and communicating expectations is a small part of mentoring. Cooperating teachers are often called on to be mentors but there is little support for the mentors on specifically how to support pre-service teachers in the practicum experience (Orland-Barak & Wang, 2021). Therefore, the university should provide specific mentoring training to cooperating teachers that host pre-service teachers in addition to connecting cooperating teachers from other schools and districts together around a common goal (Walters et al., 2020).

Pre-service Teachers This study showed that a NPLC with an immersive practicum experience supported pre-service teachers to grow in experience and confidence within the classroom. Preservice teachers are not aware of the impact of the NPLC but it did increase not only their confidence but also the quality of their lessons and the reflection they had on their own teaching. The NPLC allowed the pre-service teachers to dive deeper into their teaching practice, thinking about both pedagogy and pedagogical content knowledge versus day-to-day survival in the classroom. The university needs to be more transparent about the intentions of the NPLC and how it impacts cooperating teachers as well as pre-service teachers. This study showed that the pre-service teachers thought this relationship served only to house the practicum experience instead of supporting not only the cooperating teachers, but also the pre-service teachers and to strengthen the connections between schools and universities.

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Future Research Frequently, cooperating teachers are called upon to mentor new faculty members at their school, practicum pre-service teachers, and student teachers, but there is often no formal support for these endeavors. Cooperating teachers are considered experts in pedagogy and content, but that does not mean they have been equipped with skills and strategies to support and mentor pre-service teachers and new teachers. Future research will consider how to best support cooperating teachers in mentoring the preservice teachers that come into their classrooms in a variety of ways along with how school-university partnerships can craft a learning community around this important work.

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Harris, A., & Jones, M. (2010). Professional learning communities and system improvement. Improving Schools, 13(2), 172–181. Kazempour, M., Amirshokoohi, A., & Blamey, K. (2020). Putting theory to practice: Teaching the 5E learning cycle through immersive experiences for pre-service teachers. European Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 8(1), 67–75. Kolb, S. M. (2012). Grounded theory and the constant comparative method: Valid research strategies for educators. Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies, 3(1), 83–86. Labaree, D. F. (2006). The trouble with ed schools. Yale University Press. McDonnough, J. T., & Matkins, J. J. (2010). The role of field experience in elementary preservice teachers’ self-efficacy and ability to connect research to practice. School Science and Mathematics, 110(1), 13–23. Orland-Barak, L., & Wang, J. (2021). Teacher mentoring in service of preservice teachers’ learning to teach: Conceptual bases, characteristics, and challenges for teacher education reform. Journal of Teacher Education, 72(1), 86–99. Prenger, R., Poortman, C. L., & Handelzalts, A. (2019). The effects of networked professional learning communities. Journal of Teacher Education, 70(5), 441–452. Riggins, C., & Knowles, D. (2020). Caught in the trap of PLC Lite: Essential steps needed for implementation of a true professional learning community. Education, 141(1), 46–54. Sanders, M. E. (2008). STEM, STEM education, STEM mania. The Technology Teacher, 68(4), 20–26. Stanulis, R. N., Wexler, L. J., Pylman, S., Guenther, A., Farver, S., Ward, A., Croel-Perrien, A., & White, K. (2019). Mentoring as more than “cheerleading”: Looking at educative mentoring practices through mentors’ eyes. Journal of Teacher Education, 70(5), 567–580. Stoddart, T., Pinal, A., Latzke, M., & Canaday, D. (2002). Integrating inquiry science and language development for English language learners. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39(8), 664–687. Strand, B. N., & Johnson, M. (1990). The pre-student teaching practicum: Don’t leave it to chance. Physical Educator, 47(4), 197–204. Syofyan, H., Asti, Z., & Sumantri, M. S. (2019). Proceedings of the 1st international conference on technology and educational science. Semantic Scholar. Tashakkori, A., Teddlie, C., & Teddlie, C. B. (1998). Mixed methodology: Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches (Vol. 46). Sage. Thompson, J., Richards, J., Shim, S. Y., Lohwasser, K., Von Esch, K. S., Chew, C., Sjoberg, B., & Morris, A. (2019). Launching networked PLCs: Footholds into creating and improving knowledge of ambitious and equitable teaching practices in an RPP. AERA Open, 5(3), 2332858419875718. Tigchelaar, A., & Korthagen, F. (2004). Deepening the exchange of student teaching experiences: Implications for the pedagogy of teacher education of recent insights into teacher behaviour. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(7), 665–679. Venville, G., Wallace, J., Rennie, L. J., & Malone, J. (1998). The integration of science, mathematics, and technology in a discipline-based culture. School Science and Mathematics, 98(6), 294–302. Walters, W., Robinson, D. B., & Walters, J. (2020). Mentoring as meaningful professional development: The influence of mentoring on in-service teachers’ identity and practice. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 9(1), 21–36. Willegems, V., Consuegra, E., Struyven, K., & Engels, N. (2017). Teachers and pre-service teachers as partners in collaborative teacher research: A systematic literature review. Teaching and Teacher Education, 64, 230–245. Yuan, E. R. (2016). The dark side of mentoring on pre-service language teachers’ identity formation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 55, 188–197.

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Selina L. Bartels is an Associate Professor of Education at Valparaiso University with a focus in Science and STEM education. Her P-12 teaching experiences took place in Chicago Public Schools where she taught various grades and content areas (science, language arts, and social studies). Her research interests lie in Scientific Literacy. Her most recent publication looked at Elementary Students’ understandings of science, scientists and how they do their work. Other research interests are looking at pre-service teacher’s understandings and lesson plan development of STEM activities as well as university and school partnerships to support pre-service teachers through embedded practica experiences. Benjamin Boche is an Associate Professor of Education at Valparaiso University with a focus in Literacy Education. His K-8 teaching experiences took place in Lutheran schools where he taught literacy classes and served as a reading specialist. His research interests include literacy education, specifically multiliteracies education. Multiliteracies recognizes the new text forms from multiple communicative technologies and the need for teachers and students to become proficient with these different technological tools. He is also interested in pre-service and in-service teacher education and ways to help multiliteracies and traditional literacies work together naturally in classrooms.

Part III

Dynamic Partnerships that Change Over Time

Chapter 10

School-University Partnerships on the Edge of Possibility: Expansive Learning and Practice Transformation Across Australia, Nepal, and Bhutan Nick Hopwood , Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn , Binod Prasad Pant , Parbat Dhungana , Drishty Shrestha, Rina Shahi, Sonam Dorji W, Tandin Khorlo Wangchuk, Thinley Wangchuk, Tshering Zangmo, and Sonam Choden

N. Hopwood (B) · K. Pressick-Kilborn · S. Dorji W University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia e-mail: [email protected] N. Hopwood Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa K. Pressick-Kilborn Trinity Grammar School, Sydney, Australia B. P. Pant · P. Dhungana Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, Nepal P. Dhungana The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China D. Shrestha · R. Shahi Creative Academy, Kirtipur, Nepal S. Dorji W · T. K. Wangchuk · T. Wangchuk Paro College, Paro, Bhutan T. Zangmo Taju Primary School, Paro, Bhutan S. Choden Lamgong Higher Secondary School, Paro, Bhutan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_10

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Introduction How can school-university partnerships lead to change that might not otherwise have been deemed possible? This chapter explores school-university partnerships across Australia, Nepal, and Bhutan from a distinctive perspective that foregrounds conflicting and emerging motives, and how such partnerships can produce new actionable knowledge that underpins positive, lasting change in education settings. This makes school-university partnerships a matter of expansive learning—learning something that is not yet there (Engeström, 2016). This is not about the exchange of pre-existing knowledge between partners, but collectively producing knowledge that enables new practices, moving towards the viable unheard of (Liberali, 2019). This positions school-university partnerships at the edge of possibility, driving change in ways that individuals or organisations alone could not accomplish. The partnerships enabled participants to define the difference between the status quo and what they felt ought to be, and to concretely pursue steps towards that preferred future. This simultaneous historical-and-future-oriented characteristic was produced by adopting a formative approach called a Change Laboratory (Engeström, 2007; Engeström et al., 2014), based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (Engeström & Sannino, 2021). We analyse the life-cycle of these partnerships in terms of how new cultural artefacts, linked to new motives, were produced, and in terms of the changing relationships partners had with those artefacts (Botha, 2017). The partnerships involved a two-week intensive visit to the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) by teacher educators and in-service teachers from Nepal and Bhutan. Key developments in this phase are conveyed through two vignettes. After the visit, relationships between the Australian university, the universities in Nepal and Bhutan, and schools in Nepal and Bhutan developed along different trajectories, conveyed through vignettes presented later in the chapter. In Nepal, teacher educators supported teachers from a nearby school (who had not been part of the initial visit) to implement MicroProjects across the curriculum (Vignette 3). Bhutanese teachers who had visited UTS implemented game-based learning in mathematics in their schools, supported by local teacher educators, and pre-service teachers from UTS (Vignette 4). We analyse the life-cycle of the partnerships in terms of the cycle of expansive learning, a cornerstone of CHAT. This looks less at the relationships themselves, and more at how the partnerships enabled progression from questioning and analysis to the creation, implementation, refinement, and embedding of new models in practice. Our focus is on how new knowledge is jointly created and taken up in practice as relationships between partners evolved. The partnerships unfolded along paths that were not determined or anticipated in advance. The intention was to provide ‘interruptions’ to ways of working and relationships to create contexts for innovation and transformation (Bernay et al., 2020; Grundy et al., 2001; Jones et al., 2016). The Australian hosts were mindful of their partners from the global South, a term denoting largely low-income, politically marginalised countries in regions outside Europe, North America, and Australasia

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(Dados & Connell, 2012). UTS participants were conscious not to reproduce colonialist impositions or assumptions of deficits from a Western worldview. Instead, the process was designed to surface and pursue concrete alternatives that were derived through collaboration within and across cultural contexts. The partnerships operated as an opportunity to create conditions for conversations, questioning, envisioning, and practical experimentation that would not otherwise happen. The Australian hosts had an asymmetrical role in presenting facilitative prompts during partners’ time in Sydney, but the substantive results of this were co-produced by the visiting partners, and the directions they took upon return to Nepal or Bhutan were determined by those who would be driving change in those local contexts, with UTS partners continuing in a supportive and research-focused role. While the various projects that emerged through the partnerships do not reverse long standing legacies of colonialism and inequalities impacting the global South, we do suggest that they were decolonising in some regards in that they involved locally-generated alternatives that broke out of difficulties which can be traced to these historical features. We begin by outlining the collaboration context and methods of data collection linked to it. We then introduce relevant aspects of the Nepali and Bhutanese contexts, before explaining key aspects of CHAT as a conceptual foundation for the analysis. Four vignettes are then presented, with commentaries on them revealing how the partnerships unfolded in different ways as expansive learning resulted in different motives, models, and artefacts. We conclude by reflecting on these partnerships in light of the broader themes and questions of this book, and the lessons our analysis offers for others hoping to build school-university partnerships that operate at the edge of what is possible in classrooms.

Collaboration Context The school-university partnerships considered here resulted from a grant from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2017. Funding supported a visit to Sydney by a group of eleven teacher educators and two teachers from Nepal and Bhutan. Specifically: . five teacher educators from Kathmandu University School of Education (KUSOED), a self-funded, autonomous non-for-profit university in Nepal; . two teacher educators from Tribhuvan University, a public university with campuses across Nepal; . four teacher educators from the Royal University of Bhutan (two from Paro College of Education, which specialises in primary teacher education, and two from Samtse College of Education, which specialises in secondary teacher education); . two school teachers from Paro, Bhutan (one from Taju, a primary school, and one from Khangkhu, a middle secondary school).

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Fig. 10.1 Phases of the school-university partnerships

A fourteenth participant was a representative of an educational NGO based in Nepal, called the Sunrise Education Foundation, who supported dissemination activity through magazines distributed to teachers, news features, and online video features. Additional partners became involved after participants returned home, in particular Creative Academy, a low-fee private school in Kathmandu, offering education from Kindergarten to late secondary school. The contributors from UTS included teacher educators with specialisms in primary and secondary school levels, as well as researchers with expertise in professional learning and practice change. Research data were collected throughout the partnerships. Participants were surveyed prior to visiting Sydney, capturing their experiences, frustrations and wishes as educators. Observation notes were taken during collaborative workshops held across the 2-week visit to Sydney, and all artefacts created during this time (shared documents, notes added to flipcharts, whiteboards, etc.) were collected as data. Pedagogical resources created in Nepal and Bhutan, as well as examples of students’ work, were added to the dataset as the projects unfolded in-country, supplemented by email dialogue capturing participants’ experiences and evidencing practice change in the longer term. Figure 10.1 represents the phases of the partnerships.

Educational Context: Nepal and Bhutan Nepal and Bhutan have distinct educational histories, and while their contemporary school and university systems have marked differences, there are also common challenges. Nepal has government schools alongside a large (both low-fee and elite) private sector. Nepal’s relationship with India has strongly shaped its education system, syllabus, assessment, and other resources. Although never formally colonised by the West, Nganga et al. (2020) argue Nepal was ‘ideologically colonised’; aspects of its education system have been influenced by a system that functioned to perpetuate colonial ruling structures in neighbouring India (Fagg, 2006; Shrestha, 2017). The continued use of English as a medium of instruction reflects this. In moves to decolonise education in Nepal, scholars have critiqued ‘culturally decontextualised’ education, particularly in subjects such as mathematics (Luitel, 2013). Historically, education in Nepal has been highly centralised leaving teachers little power to decide what and how to teach. At the time of study, however, this was ostensibly changing through a new federal system, in which the school curriculum

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was designed by the federal government, leaving pedagogic practices and responsibility for hiring, supervising, and developing teachers to local government (Kunwar, 2020; Neupane, 2020). However, Hamal (2020) regards decentralisation as dubious rhetoric, expecting centralised control to remain the norm. As with many countries in the global South, access to education and quality of education remain key challenges in Nepal. The Nepal Education Policy (Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, 2076[2019] in the Western or Gregorian calendar) enshrines universal compulsory and free basic education. It highlights the need for inclusiveness and quality teaching–learning experiences. Gender disparities in enrolment attendance and school outcomes are significant, linked to financial barriers and girls’ domestic workloads. Inequities relating to ethnicity, caste, and students with disabilities are also a matter of concern (Carney & Rappleye, 2011; Neupane, 2020; Nganga et al., 2020). In Bhutan, education was solely monastic (related to the country’s Buddhist foundations) until the 1960s. Now Bhutan has a system of over 700 schools, 24 tertiary institutes, and near universal enrolment—95% in primary, 85% in secondary (Ministry of Education, 2014; Phuntsho, 2000; Tobden & Ham, 2022). Most students attend free government schools, with only a small private sector, concentrated around the capital, Thimphu, and Paro, a major town nearby. Features of Bhutanese education reflect the country’s distinctive approach to governance (based on Gross National Happiness), Buddhist heritage, and managed engagement with the outside world. Having borrowed curriculum—and at times teachers—from India (again, colonial influences without formal colonisation), the government has developed its own curriculum, creating culturally specific textbooks and manuals (Childs et al., 2012; Rinchen, 2014; Royal Education Council, 2021). The Bhutan Education Blueprint 2014–2024 (Ministry of Education, 2014) identifies priorities for educational improvement, including: upskilling teacher competencies, strengthening STEM education, diversifying offerings in secondary education, increasing access to tertiary education, and enhanced education for children with special needs. This is all under a broader aspiration of “education that inculcates an awareness of the nation’s unique cultural heritage and ethical values as well as universal values that develop the capacity of the young people” (Ministry of Education, 2014, p. 10). Despite historical and contemporary differences between education in Nepal and Bhutan, they have many challenges in common—and indeed shared with other countries in the global South (e.g., Dhendup & Sherab, 2023; Faikhamta et al., 2018; McDonald & Tufue-Dolgoy, 2013). These include limited resources in the classroom, large class sizes, varied practice in inclusive education, access to learning technologies, and teachers’ experience of pressure to cover curricular content within a limited time. These became key points of departure in the partnerships and are discussed in Vignette 1 below. Before this, the conceptual framework of CHAT will be outlined.

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Theoretical Framework and Change Laboratory In this chapter we draw on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (Engeström, 2007, 2016; Engeström & Sannino, 2021; Engeström et al., 2014). CHAT’s focus on collective efforts is well-suited to exploring school-university partnerships. A still-evolving theory that has its roots in the work of Vygotsky and his colleague Leont’ev, CHAT promotes research that is activist and committed to positive change (Engeström & Sannino, 2021). CHAT has been used to understand collaboration between schools and universities in initial teacher education (Jakhelln & Postholm, 2022), and has been used as a basis for intervention research where university researchers have worked with teachers to change practices in schools (Engeström et al., 2023). The school-university partnerships in the present research, across three countries, represent a different formation and geographical location from those previously studied from this perspective. CHAT offers the distinct concept of expansive learning. This involves people learning what is not yet there, rather than an exchange of existing ideas (Engeström, 2016). The term expansion relates to the object of collective activity—the problem that is being worked on, towards which actions are directed. The object is linked to motives, what matters to people in activity, why they expend effort, what they care about. The object in this case involved particular pedagogic practices, linked to a shared motive to radically change teaching and learning in the classroom. Expansive learning does not replace old understandings with new ones, but rather the object becomes understood in increasingly rich and complex ways, producing new practices, artefacts, and concepts (Engeström, 2022). In looking for evidence of expansive learning in school-university partnerships, we look for the way participants interpreted the object in new ways, developed new possibilities for action, and enriched the resources that might support those actions (Edwards & Mackenzie, 2005). School-university partnerships are understood not purely in terms of institutional relationships, nor in terms of relationships between individuals, but rather in terms of changes that involve and co-implicate particular people and the systems of which they are part (Engeström, 2022). In CHAT, such changes are driven by recognising and addressing contradictions in an activity system. The system is understood in terms of the subject, object, tools or artefacts, rules or norms, community, and division of labour (Engeström, 2016). We were thus interested in how participants could recognise contradictions that stood in the way of what they wanted to achieve, and the learning that unfolded as they collectively figured out how to resolve those contradictions. This is theorised in terms of double stimulation. The first stimulus is that which highlights a problem that connects to participants’ motives, while the second (or auxiliary) stimulus refers to the means used to solve the problem (Engeström et al., 2014). A second stimulus is an artefact (idea or resource) that provides a platform for transformative action, the use of which is linked to new motives (Sannino, 2015). The second stimulus works by being attached to motives that provide a new basis for action, especially when people might be torn between wanting to do one thing and

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feeling they have to do another (Sannino, 2015), as was the case for participants in this project. The notion of expansive learning offers a means to understand the life-cycle of school-university partnerships in a distinctive way. CHAT specifies learning actions that form an expansive cycle: questioning, analysing, modelling, examining/testing the model, implementing, reflecting, and consolidating (Engeström et al., 2014). Figure 10.2 represents this cycle with details relating specifically to this project. Applying this idea directs our attention less to how partnerships begin, evolve, and end, and more to how learning actions progress through a cycle that results in new insights, new resources, and new practices. A key means to trigger movement through such a cycle is referred to as a Change Laboratory, an interventionist research approach grounded in workshops in which participants are supported to recognise problems (contradictions, conflicts of motives), collaboratively develop and test new models, and buttress their sustained use in practice (Engeström, 2007). This hinges on participants gaining reflective distance from current practices in order to recognise problems with the status quo and then develop visions for alternatives (Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013). The initial survey sent to participants provoked such reflective distancing, and the workshops

Fig. 10.2 Cycle of expansive learning as applied in the project

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in Australia drew on Change Laboratory principles, including use of activity system representations, and various ‘surfaces’—whiteboards and projections—reflecting past, present and future as second stimuli. In what follows, we present four vignettes from the workshops and from what happened subsequently when participants returned to Nepal and Bhutan. Each is accompanied by an interpretive commentary, highlighting the expansive learning that unfolded through dynamic school-university partnerships. The vignettes are composites that draw on diverse data sources, including recordings of workshops, artefacts created during them, and testimonials provided by participants post-visit. They were drafted by the first two authors and revised as a result of comments provided by the remaining authors. The first two vignettes focus on the UTS visit, while the third and fourth highlight different trajectories that unfolded post-visit (see Fig. 10.1).

Vignette 1 Beginnings: Collective Reflective Distance Participants are examining their collective answers to questions about their own experiences of schooling, times they have been excited by things they have seen in the classroom, typical classroom practices in their context, and things that they would like to change (from the pre-visit phase, see Fig. 10.1). Reading each other’s responses, they draw out key ideas and add them to whiteboards under ‘Past’, ‘Present’, and ‘Future’. Echoes from the past include experiences of not talking in class even though they had something to say. The present is characterised by phases such as ‘chalk and talk’ or ‘lecture method’, alongside ideas that school is generally ‘not joyful for students’ and that student talk is often dominated by boys, especially those seen as high achievers. Early outlines of the future highlight active learning, enjoyment, interest, and engagement, and more equitable contributions from all learners, who would also be realising their full potential, rather than confined by expectations based on judgements as to being high or low achievers. The group analyses why there is such a gap between the present and the desired future. They discuss how the pedagogies that teacher education encourages persist in the aims and values of teachers as they work in schools. However, the conditions of that work make enacting these pedagogies difficult. Some challenges relating to cultural norms for example around gender and caste—the latter in Nepal specifically—are considered. However, participants keep coming back to the same issue: The teaching is highly focused on content delivery to make sure that they cover everything. This severely limits the teachers’ capacity to apply different learner centred approaches in the classroom. In both Nepal and Bhutan, curriculum demands are often associated with time pressures that leave teachers feeling they had no choice but to plough through content, rather than enacting more inclusive, engaging pedagogies.

The Australian university facilitators played a role in prompting participants to gain reflective distance from their own practices to create space for renewal and reinvention (Bernay et al., 2020; Jones et al., 2016; Perry et al., 2002). Consistent with Change Laboratory methods (Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013), this was done through the generation and collective examination of mirror data, using the survey to capture aspects of lived experience and envisioned futures. The group identified a problem (in CHAT terms, a first stimulus), and recognised the need for change.

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They moved from this first step in the expansive learning cycle (see Fig. 10.2) to the second, which involved more detailed analysis. The analysis led to the idea that while teachers often wanted to teach differently, they felt trapped in didactic methods because of pressures to cover content. This was understood as a contradiction between the ‘rules’ (the requirements of the curriculum) and the ‘object’ (pedagogies that engage, involve, and support all learners). Their understanding shifted from one of a critical conflict (feeling guilty for not teaching in the desired way) to a double bind (being trapped by opposing motives) (Engeström & Sannino, 2011). Not covering the content posed unacceptable risks, but the status quo was critiqued as unacceptable, too. A new purpose for the school-university partnerships emerged: working together to find ways to escape this bind. The jointness of this effort was strongly grounded in the questioning and analysis that was done together, in which participants saw themselves both in the problematic status quo, and as part of the solution towards a more desirable alternative future.

Vignette 2 Expanding the Object Participants begin exploring new models by discussing gender, inclusion, and theories of change. They visit several schools around Sydney, meeting students, talking with school leaders, and observing lessons. The teachers and teacher educators identify two foundations of their model. The first is that ‘teachers can make a difference’, countering common feelings that change depended on others ‘further up’ (education officials, politicians) changing conditions like funding and curriculum. The second is that ‘small things can have big effects’—substantial impacts on outcomes and experiences for students could come from changes that did not involve huge structural upheavals or additional work for teachers. These foundations establish a broad auxiliary motive: to develop tools for time-poor teachers that could engage all students equitably in the classroom. Participants look at notes and displays made during the prior workshops and put forward a range of proposals to expand upon these foundations. Iterating between modelling and refining the model through collective critique (see Fig. 10.2), they arrive at eight principles, as shown in Fig. 10.3. These principles combine established technical ideas (e.g., growth mindset, Dweck, 2006), more general notions (inclusiveness, playfulness, liveliness), and specific ideas developed in situ by the group. The latter includes ‘concrete to abstract’ which refers to frequent movement in lessons between concrete examples that are familiar and relevant to students and abstract thinking in a more conceptual realm. ‘Stories’ refers to helping students narrate aspects of their learning in order to foster reflective capability and to help share things such as when they get stuck, how they solved problems, and so on. ‘Designing for praise and appreciation’ points to practices that would saturate classrooms with opportunities to acknowledge students’ accomplishments, not just for those who completed tasks correctly and quickly (which some participants are critical of in current practices).

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A number of important expansions to the object are evident in Vignette 2. While some of the eight principles involved ideas with which the participants were previously familiar, they were now folded into a system of related concepts that provided a new basis for action, and a new position from which to develop resources for use in practice. Previously, high and equitable levels of engagement were regarded as desirable but impossible aspects of pedagogy (reflecting the contradiction between rules and object given pressures to deliver large volumes of content). The host university’s (UTS)

Fig. 10.3 Eight principles agreed upon by the participants

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role was to create the context in which ideas could be encountered and explored— a context for innovation and transformation (Bernay et al., 2020; Grundy et al., 2001; Jones et al., 2016). Teacher educators from Nepal and Bhutan often drove the expansive discussion of these ideas by drawing on their lived practice of engaging with more theoretical ideas, and as critical friends supporting existing teachers to develop their practice. The school teachers often contributed through stress testing ideas (a crucial expansive learning action, see Fig. 10.2), keeping them grounded in what was feasible amid the constraints and pressures they were so familiar with. This was not a process of sharing ideas, or a cooperation to jointly deliver education for new teachers (Jakhelln & Postholm, 2022), but rather a process of collaboratively developing, challenging, and refining new ideas. The result was that participants, particularly the school teachers, were no longer trapped by a conflict of motives: wanting to do one thing and feeling they had no choice but to do another. The eight principles formed the point of departure for escaping the double bind by being framed around things the participants agreed were within feasible reach and would also make a valuable difference to students’ experiences and outcomes, while also delivering the curriculum. Their expansive learning to this point had identified systemic contradictions and recognised a conflict of motives that had prevented practice change. Questioning, analysis, modelling, and testing (see Fig. 10.2) had created a new set of concepts around which participants could imagine new actions being possible in the classroom. What remained was to use these as a basis to produce new cultural artefacts that could actually be used in practice. The third and fourth vignettes show how this unfolded in Nepal and Bhutan respectively, tracing new features of the school-university partnerships that developed in these contexts.

Vignette 3 MicroProjects in K-12 Education in Nepal Two teacher educators from Kathmandu University School of Education (KUSOED) return to Nepal and establish a partnership with a school called Creative Academy. From this, two primary teachers become lead partners in developing and implementing ‘MicroProjects’, a concrete idea developed by the KUSOED team as a means to implement the eight principles. The teacher educators present a hypothetical example incorporating principles of project-based learning as they are enacted in their own practices at KUSOED: complex tasks; authentic, open-ended questions; real-world links; collaboration; critical thinking; decisionmaking; and opportunities to work autonomously (based on Thomas, 2000). The school teachers implement an adapted version in a Grade 2 mathematics class, asking students in groups of three (mixed gender and ability) to set questions for peers, answer others’ questions, and mark another group’s work. This takes less time than anticipated, and the next iteration is more complex, using items the students had with them (pencils, rubbers etc.), as a basis for constructing graphs and creating questions. Subsequent iterations incorporate greater creative freedom, asking students to draw any item, and using these as a basis for mathematic questions.

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The teachers and teacher educators then develop a MicroProject Design Template, which is given to teachers across the school, breaking down information about grade, focus, group size, duration (from minutes to maximum one lesson), step by step instructions, and reflective questions on ease/challenge of the work. MicroProjects are implemented in mathematics, science, English, ICT, and Art, across Grades 1 to 12. Three months after the workshops in Sydney, 50 MicroProjects have been developed and used in lessons in Nepal. Teachers share their experiences via email, demonstrating that MicroProjects are working as tools for timepoor teachers. Colleagues find them easy to implement in a lesson or less, while creating exciting teaching in which students are highly involved, allowing teachers to better support students needing extra attention. However, they express uncertainty about the difference between MicroProjects and other group-based activities or worksheets. The teachers and teacher educators develop a Helpsheet to clarify this, and a further 50 MicroProjects are implemented across grades and subjects.

The expansive learning cycle (Fig. 10.2) continued in Nepal through a new schooluniversity partnership between KUSOED teacher educators and teachers at Creative Academy. MicroProjects were implemented, reflected on, and consolidated as a tool for time-poor teachers to address the contradictions surrounding curriculum coverage. MicroProjects were acting as a second stimulus, an artefact used to solve the problem, associated with a new motive of enacting the eight principles through project-based learning in a compact timeframe. This partnership drove the cycle of expansive learning forward, now with the purpose of iteratively testing and refining MicroProjects as a feasible approach. This was not simply a ready-made solution handed to the school by the university. Instead, it required ongoing involvement of teachers and teacher educators. At first, the two teachers and two teacher educators worked between themselves to develop more complex versions of MicroProjects, generating the local knowledge and exemplars needed to inform the Design Template. Then the group’s focus shifted to supporting wider implementation across the school before engaging in further reflection in light of other teachers’ uncertainties and the need to clarify MicroProjects in the Helpsheet. UTS collaborators acted as critical friends at these key moments. Throughout this process, the school-university partnership continued joint work to resolve the conflict of motives relating to curriculum coverage, which left teachers feeling they did not have time to teach in ways they thought were desirable. The work between KUSOED and Creative Academy completed the cycle of expansive learning, iteratively moving between implementation, reflection, and consolidation (see Fig. 10.2). This iteration was important—the idea of MicroProjects itself was refined by trying out examples in practice, and feedback from teachers across the school led to clarifications around what constitutes a MicroProject and how it could be differentiated from other classroom activities. This non-linear process drove expansions forward as the notion of MicroProjects was simultaneously enriched, its concrete manifestations diversified, and artefacts surrounding it were created (such as the Template and Helpsheet). In this way, the partnerships initiated in the Australian workshops provided a basis for a new school-university partnership in Nepal, where the seed of an idea was presented by teacher educators, and through sustained, close collaboration, became a feasible reality that moved practices closer to what those involved felt they ought to be. We note that very little resistance was

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encountered in implementing MicroProjects across the school. When asked, teachers involved reported strong support from school leadership, that they had confidence in MicroProjects because of the support from KUSOED and the demonstration of their viability by the lead teachers, and that they felt they addressed an authentic frustration (conflict of motives) that they felt in their daily practice.

Vignette 4 Changing Pedagogies in Primary Mathematics Education in Bhutan Two primary teachers from Bhutan observe games being used to engage students in collaborative learning in differentiated Mathematics lessons during their school visits in Sydney. They decide that they would like to design and implement a sequence of lessons that incorporate maths games on their return. Two participating teacher educators from Paro College of Education offer their support for this teaching innovation. The teachers develop gamesbased lessons to align with the Mathematics syllabus in Bhutan, grouping students within their classes so that they are playing the games with peers of similar ability. Eighteen months later, two teacher educators from UTS travel to Paro with 9 primary preservice teachers to complete an International Professional Experience placement. The UTS pre-service teachers are enrolled in their 3rd year of an undergraduate degree. The pre-service teachers and teacher educators purchase and create materials for sets of Mathematics games for the two schools in Paro, to support the two teachers in continuing to implement gamesbased learning. The materials include dice and task cards for dice games, bingo games, counters, hundred charts, mini-whiteboards and markers, and paddle pop sticks that can be used as counters or grouped in bundles. During their placements, the pre-service teachers design and teach Mathematics lessons that incorporate the games, so that the observing teachers can see how the games might be used (Fig. 10.4). At one of the schools, one UTS teacher educator and some of the pre-service teachers co-design and deliver a professional learning session for the teachers across the school, to demonstrate and engage them in games they could use in the classroom. The resources are given to the schools for teachers to continue to use in their Mathematics lessons once the placement concludes.

Here, the implementation of the eight principles focused on collaborative gamesbased learning within differentiated mathematics classrooms. The use of games in mathematics is increasingly widespread, but not straightforward for teachers, especially in challenging environments (Russo et al., 2021). The idea of using collaborative games functioned as a second stimulus, linked to a motive of finding ways to make games work in Bhutanese classrooms with students working at varied levels in mathematics. The key, in terms of the activity system, lay in selecting and developing appropriate artefacts—games that could function in the Bhutanese setting, and for which resources were available. The collaborative nature of the games also involved changing the division of labour in classrooms: the games involved new roles for the teachers, and new roles for students in groups set up specifically for the games. Just like MicroProjects, the games-based approach was a way of escaping the conflict of motives between what teachers wanted to do, pedagogically, and what they had previously thought was necessary given the demands and constraints they faced.

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Fig. 10.4 Students in Paro, Bhutan engaging in a geometry lesson about properties of 2D shapes taught by pre-service teachers from Sydney, Australia

While games-based learning was not new, it was for those involved, a practice on the edge of possibility. The school-university partnerships had to evolve in order to support this activity. The initial implementation was led by the two school teachers, with colleagues from the nearby university acting as critical friends, helping both to plan the games-based lessons (implementation; see Fig. 10.2), and jointly review what happened (reflection; see Fig. 10.2). Because these university partners had been with the teachers in Sydney, there was a shared understanding of the eight principles that the games-based approach was intended to uphold. Those involved judged that these initial lessons went well and they were keen to expand the implementation of games-based approaches. At this point, UTS took on a new role, engaging pre-service teachers in the production of relevant materials, then trialling them in context during their placements in Bhutan, where their lessons were reviewed critically by a UTS-based teacher educator and the local teachers whose classes they were working in. In this way, further testing, implementation, and reflection led to the final consolidation, where the schools had several sets of resources for mathematical games, and a suite of lessons that had been planned, delivered, and critically considered. Partnership between the schools and UTS was key to this process; what is striking is how different the roles and responsibilities were here, compared to the start. From

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UTS facilitating workshops, provoking questions to secure commitment to futures that were deemed impossible, to schools in Bhutan leading a distinct initiative where classroom practices transgressed established norms. From creating environments in which innovation and transformation could be conceived, UTS’ role shifted to one of supporting implementation of and critical reflection on pedagogical practices that were designed by overseas school and university partners—in the case of Nepal, the practical idea of MicroProjects came from the teacher educators, while in Bhutan, it was school teachers who chose to focus on differentiation and games-based learning.

Conclusion School-university partnerships are widely viewed as positive opportunities for collaboration, mutual benefit, and potential transformation (Bernay et al., 2020; Bradbury & Acquaro, 2022; Green et al., 2020). This chapter has upheld this broader view, offering a distinctive perspective on this mutual benefit not as some kind of reciprocal exchange which offers value to each partner, but rather as one of the joint production of new concepts and artefacts which enable significant changes in pedagogic practices. Rather than understanding partnerships as a particular kind of relationship between institutions or people in them, it framed school-university partnerships as a context for professional learning for all stakeholders—in-service teachers and teacher educators—and creation of new possibilities in practice. The partnerships were not simply joint missions to deliver something that neither party could do alone. Instead, they involved a collaborative intent to transcend the status quo. They were partnerships on the edge of possibility, accomplishing the viable unheard of Liberali (2019). The international partnerships in focus here were complex and dynamic. Responsibilities and roles emerged and shifted, and new partners joined the process. Institutional relationships were not hierarchical, neither were they symmetrical. The Australian hosts (UTS) facilitated participants from school and university partners to gain reflective distance on their practices, a crucial step that led to them imagining alternative futures for practices and committing to making those viable. The participants who joined the process in Australia worked collaboratively but asymmetrically in developing a model that could provide the basis for practices that were desirable but previously deemed impossible. From this model of two foundational ideas (that teachers can make a difference, and small things can have big effects) and eight principles for time-poor teachers (see Fig. 10.3), new possibilities for concrete action became within reach, taken up in distinctive ways in different contexts. In Nepal, university teacher educators established a new partnership with a local school, where pedagogies were radically reshaped by implementing MicroProjects across the curriculum. In Bhutan, teachers from schools led changes in practices, working with their local university partner as a broker offering critical friendship and enabling the original host to take a new role involving initial teacher education students in the production of and experimentation with new resources and practices.

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Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) provided a theoretical basis for the approach to working together, and for analysing the life cycle of the partnerships. The idea of expansive learning (Engeström, 2016) captures how partnerships push the edge of what is possible by enabling those involved to learn what is not yet there. While there is no ‘lead’ partner in a hierarchical sense of control, ownership, or having the answers, this process does depend on responsibility being taken to create conditions in which the learning actions that drive expansions can occur (questioning, analysing, modelling, etc.). This was initiated by the Australian university host, but as the work progressed through the cycle, became increasingly the responsibility of partners (established and newly joined) in an iterative process of implementing ideas and refining them through practical experience. CHAT provides a robust foundation with a clear structure and process which is nonetheless flexible and open to significant changes and developments in the form that school-university partnerships take over time. The life cycle is not understood as an evolving relationship between institutions, but as a process of collaboratively producing culturally new concepts, artefacts, and practices (Engeström, 2022). A CHAT approach also helps us think differently about motives in schooluniversity partnerships. It shifts the focus from why stakeholders from different institutions would be involved in a partnership, to addressing conflicts of motives that hold practice back from positive change, and to the process through which new motives are developed across partners. This is key to partnerships that break away from the status quo. In this case, participants recognised that typical practices were not as they would want them to be, but that there was often no choice but to teach in ways that fell short in terms of engagement, equity, and inclusiveness, due to pressures from the curriculum. CHAT helps to recognise this dilemma for what it really is—not a matter of deficient practitioners, or something to feel guilty about, but a double bind (Engeström & Sannino, 2011) wherein teachers were trapped by opposing motives. The solution lies in developing new motives that escape this impossible framing—for these participants, these centred on motives to enact eight principles in ways that are feasible for time-poor teachers. This solution simultaneously addresses systemic contradictions (in this case between rules of the curriculum and the object of engaging, equitable, and inclusive practice), and thus embodies learning that is not only expansive, but also horizontal—not top down, or bottom up, but system-wide while deeply implicating, relying upon, and changing those involved (Engeström, 2022). Thus, through CHAT, motives in school-university partnerships are not just a matter of ‘Why be involved?’ but are central to what such partnerships can accomplish and how they do this. Motives lie at the heart of partnerships on the edge of possibility. What are the lessons for those wishing to initiate school-university partnerships that operate at the edge of what is possible? The examples in this chapter, informed by CHAT, suggest that it can be helpful to pay attention to several key things. First, stability lies in the foundation of the process (expansive learning), rather than in the roles and responsibilities, or even in the institutions involved (which as we have shown, can change significantly). This does not diminish the importance of clarity about roles, responsibilities, and institutional arrangements, but rather elevates the

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importance of founding the partnerships on commitments to jointly undertake actions of questioning, analysing, modelling, testing, implementing, reflecting, and consolidating—and to following where these lead. This may seem in contrast to views that favour stability in school-university partnerships, where its counter is instability that can lead to loss of shared focus, breakdown, or collapse (Brady, 2002; Farrell, 2023; Green et al., 2020; Handscomb et al., 2014). However, from a CHAT perspective, the value in partnerships lies in their dynamism, their movement through a cycle of expansive learning, because it is this movement (instability) that drives the creation of new ideas, concepts, and artefacts, and that makes new practices possible, which resonates with the notion of ‘generative’ or ‘transformative’ partnerships as discussed by Jones et al. (2016). The second lesson relates to a readiness to confront what is uncomfortable, which is key if partnerships are to transcend the status quo and attain what is actually viable but not typically deemed so. This aligns with the intention that partnerships can stimulate interruptions to ways of working and contexts for innovation and transformation (Bernay et al., 2020; Grundy et al., 2001; Jones et al., 2016). Such confrontation begins with gaining reflective distance on current practices in order to critique them and collectively envision what ought to be. We recognise that feelings of guilt and entrapment can arise as partnerships throw into light why certain ways of doing things have historically been entrenched. This might go against expectations that building trust and secure relationships should focus on more positive or at least neutral ground, especially initially when participants might feel vulnerable in confronting difficult issues and openly criticising their own practices. However, we found that in fact such readiness to share vulnerabilities built trust and fuelled a shared commitment to change. The key was in creating a safe environment in which to do so. In this project, looking for patterns in written reflections shared by participants worked well, enabling them to highlight discomforts they had in common (see Vignette 1). This leads to the third lesson: digging down to understand challenges systemically and in terms of potentially conflicting motives is crucial. Without addressing systemic contradictions, there runs a risk of workarounds that remain within present boundaries of the possible rather than fundamental resolutions that transgress those boundaries. Furthermore, identifying conflicts of motives is important in recognising why practices that participants feel ought to be different are hard to change. In this case, it was a conflict between delivering the curriculum or enacting engaging pedagogies. Recognising the conflict avoids a sense of blame or failure for not doing what should be done. Instead, it points to opposing, equally valid forces that are indeed difficult to resolve. CHAT attaches great significance to conflicts of motives (Sannino, 2015), and crucially tells us the solution lies not in simply persuading people to change the weight they give to particular motives. Instead, it lies outside individuals, in the space between partners, where new motives can arise, linked to new concepts, artefacts, and practices. Finally, encapsulating the spirit of CHAT, we feel it is important to establish and maintain a shared intention and commitment to seeking out and producing novelty, to venture into uncharted territory and take risks. This is not partnership as doing something together in which all parties benefit through reciprocal exchange of resources

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and ideas. It is about creating something new, learning together something that is not yet known, and embracing the uncertainty and unruliness that this involves—but also the truly radical potential of school-university partnerships that can break through the edges of what is possible.

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Nick Hopwood is Professor of Professional Learning at the University of Technology Sydney Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and also Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch Department of Curriculum Studies. Having completed his doctoral research on geography education at the University of Oxford, he has subsequently completed projects on doctoral education, higher education, health professional learning, parenting education, and more recently teacher professional learning and school change. His work engages with contemporary Vygotskian ideas, as well as practice theories, exploring links between learning, agency and change. Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn started her career as a primary teacher. After working as a casual academic, she took up a tenured position at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in 2004. Highlights in Kimberley’s time at UTS include accompanying preservice teachers on international professional experiences and co-leading externally funded research evaluations of science education initiatives. She held external engagement and school partnership roles during her tenure. In 2021, Kimberley returned to the school sector, working as a primary teacher and Deputy Head of Junior School at Newington College before being appointed Director of Research at Trinity Grammar School in 2023. Binod Prasad Pant is an Assistant Professor at the Department of STEAM Education, Kathmandu University, School of Education, Nepal. He earned an M.Ed. and M.Phil. in Mathematics Education from Kathmandu University. He is a Ph.D. scholar in STEAM Education. His research interest is in transformative educational research, participatory action research, mathematics education, STEAM Education and research studies on reflective practices. Parbat Dhungana is a faculty member of Kathmandu University and a postgraduate research student at the Education University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on contextualising education definitions and practices in various global contexts. Mr. Dhungana, primarily a biologist, expanded his interest in pedagogy in science, STEM, and sustainability education. Presently he is working on developing technology-enhanced learning environments in science and sustainability education for developing and under-resourced contexts and is open to collaborating with those interested. Drishty Shrestha is an accomplished and dedicated educator with over a decade of experience teaching students between the ages of 7 and 10. Her commitment to excellence is evident in her innovative teaching methods and her tireless work ethic. Shrestha has worked as a teacher at

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Kamal English Boarding Higher Secondary School and Creative Academy, where she has been employed since 2008, and is now Incharge of Primary Level, overseeing oversees the development and implementation of curricular activities, as well as the training and professional development of other educators. Rina Shahi is an energetic facilitator engaged in the teaching and learning sector for more than a decade. Observing, planning and implementing the teaching–learning strategies based on core skills among the students of age group 6–12 is her passion. She has worked with schools like Creative Academy and Hill Town school. She was a lecturer at Shahid Smarak College located in Kirtipur. She mostly took the lead in facilitating ‘Literature and Creative Writing’ in his professional career. She completed Masters of Arts in English from Tribhuvan University Kirtipur. Currently she is a student at CLT (Centrum voor Levende Talen, Leuven Campus), Belgium and is working with Shangri-La Society School Leuven where the Belgian born Nepali kids are taught Nepali Language incorporated with Nepali history and culture. Sonam Dorji W is an academic of Paro College of Education, Royal University of Bhutan, and is currently pursuing doctoral degree at University of Technology Sydney, NSW, Australia. In his previous role as the Dean of Research and Industrial Linkages, he actively fostered collaborations with international institutions and initiated several projects on teaching and learning. Sonam also has experiences of teaching pre-service teachers for bachelors and masters in education. Tandin Khorlo Wangchuk is a lecturer at Paro College of Education, Royal University of Bhutan. Tandin has experiences of teaching pre-service and in-service teachers for Bachelors and Masters in education in primary and secondary mathematics. He has been teaching more than 30 years. Tandin is committed to applying his expertise and experience in integrating innovative approaches to the classroom, and equipping teachers and student teachers with the necessary tools to ensure effective teaching strategies and to develop a deep appreciation for mathematics. Thinley Wangchuk is a teacher educator at Paro College of Education, Royal University of Bhutan. In the college, he teaches Science education, mentors students, and is responsible for developing modules related to science and ICT education for Bachelor of Education (Primary) and Master of Education (Primary Science). He completed his M.Sc. in Science Education at Curtin University, Australia. Tshering Zangmo started her career as a teacher in the year 2000. After 20 years of service to the nation, she resigned in 2020. She served as a primary teacher, grooming the kids with all interest and dedication. After completion of 3 years LEAD certificate program, her career became focused around the mathematics field. Teaching young children helped Tshering not only excel in her profession but also as a person. Sonam Choden is a teacher and she has been teaching primary grades for almost three decades. Currently, she teaches in Lamgong Higher Secondary School in Paro district of Bhutan, where she has served as the head of department of primary mathematics. Sonam was trained as a primary teacher in the Paro College of Education. Later, she completed her bachelor’s degree in primary education from Samtse College of Education and she also acquired a diploma in teaching primary mathematics from the same institute. She has collaborated with numerous educators, both local and international, to work on professional development skills.

Chapter 11

Dialectic Realities and Loose Coupling in Secondary Teacher Professional Learning in Ireland: The Case of TL21 Anthony Malone

Introduction: TL21 in Context The Teaching and Learning for the twenty-first century (TL21) programme is an Irish workshop-based school-university partnership that prioritises innovative pedagogic practice within professional learning communities. The programme is specifically tailored to secondary teachers and senior school leaders across Ireland and has been running since 2003. It is structured as a partnership model, the chief partners being the university, the participating schools, a network of Education Support Centres, and the Department of Education, Ireland (DoE). The programme invites secondary teacher participants to play an agentic role in shaping and pursuing their own professional learning. In its lifetime to date, the two main aims of the TL21 programme have remained deliberately consistent and intentionally straightforward: (1) to work with teachers to strengthen their capacities as the authors of their own work; and (2) to reimagine pedagogical environments to enable secondary school students to take a more active and responsible role in their own education. These aims have continually guided the practice of the TL21 workshops, and it is here that the far-reaching character of the aims themselves come to be experienced. They bring together almost all aspects of the teachers’ work in a way which keeps the focus continually on the heart of the matter: creative teaching and learning environments. Participants in the programme voluntarily commit to attend a series of professional learning workshops in an Education Support Centre over a 2-year period with the aim of progressively developing their capabilities as innovative practitioners. Workshops are planned as part of a developmental sequence that prioritise ongoing engagement and teacher agency.

A. Malone (B) Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_11

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Longitudinal evaluation data (treated later in this chapter), gathered by the team over the past 20 years of the programme, highlights the importance of adaptive flexibility and the need to work in mutually authentic and democratically dialogic ways, acknowledging the significance of partner agency and the professional context in which schools and teachers work. TL21 has progressively won the enthusiasm and energies of teachers and school leaders in Irish secondary schools, and the support of the main educational partners. Though part-funded and supported by the national Department of Education, this does not alter its character and it remains an exercise in sustained voluntary co-operation primarily between the participating schools, the Education Support Centres, and the university. TL21 is grounded in principles that “simply inserting experiential activities into teaching without providing a consistent experiential pedagogical framework diminishes success for learners” (Blair, 2016, p. 5). Consequently, over the 20 years of the programme, the TL21 has been designed as a developmental sequence of workshops which are deliberately grounded in the needs of the secondary schools and needs of their teachers. This chapter will explore issues salient to developing and sustaining the programme over the 20 years since 2003 including factors that continue to motivate and sustain the involvement of participants within the partnership. It will explore evaluation methods and support structures which have proven significant in its lifespan, in addition to varying challenges that have emerged and how the programme has worked to address these. The chapter will explore the professional and pedagogic benefits of the partnership and show how the programme has responded to varying historical shifts in policy emphasis. Drawing on Weick’s (1976) concept of “loose coupling” the chapter will treat how the programme has worked in loosely coupled ways within tightly framed national policy priorities. Coupling describes the extent to which components of an organisational system are linked to each other and the extent to which changes, imperatives, or actions in one component may affect outcomes in the other (Firestone, 2014). For TL21 this means teachers and schools having proactive ownership and agency of their professional learning needs as distinct from responding in compliant ways to state mandated forms of professional learning. Firestone (2014) has shown how loose couplings “that promote professional community, intrinsic incentives, and teacher learning are more constructive than those that rely on authority and extrinsic incentives to promote compliance” (p. 53). Programme evaluations gathered since 2003 show that working in loosely coupled ways creates opportunities for teachers to exercise agency with greater levels of positivity and capacity for self-critique and reflection. In doing so, they have developed their capacity as resourceful, articulate practitioners, with the confidence to publicly share illuminating and convincing accounts of their professional work. To further support the analysis, the chapter will draw on Zeichner’s (2010) concept of Third Space theory to explore the relational and dialectical nature of the school-university partnership. A priority within the partnership was the need to work together with the aim of contributing to and shaping national teacher learning policy. The chapter will explore the work of the partnership to shape policy with national agencies such as the Teacher Education Section in the DoE and the Teaching Council of Ireland.

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Finally, the chapter will explore the range of challenges experienced over the 20 years of the programme and new dilemmas which continue to emerge. These include the changing role of Education Support Centres and the challenge of sustaining professional and authentic pedagogic communities. The chapter begins with an outline of the varying developmental phases of the TL21 programme over the past 20 years.

Iterative Phases: The TL21 Programme Originally funded by Atlantic Philanthropies (2003–2007) the TL21 programme adopted an iterative developmental approach over the past 20 years, responding to changing system and practitioner priorities. Established in 2003, the project was prompted by a commitment to explore meaningful and authentic professional learning possibilities with schools and to work with teachers and senior leaders to build reflective capacity through action research approaches with the intention to shed new light on what is promising and realistic for pedagogic practice and professional learning policy. The programme was borne out of long-established cultures of professional isolation within Irish secondary schools and the need to prioritise teaching and learning as a key challenge for these schools. These cultures had been consistently highlighted as some of the more stubborn and debilitating factors in Irish secondary schools (Government of Ireland, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2001; Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1991). Over its 20-year lifespan, TL21 has undergone a series of programme adaptations in response to significant changing circumstances. In total there have been four salient phases. These are: . . . .

Phase 1: 2003–2007 (characterised by subject-specific university-led workshops) Phase 2: 2007–2011 (characterised by cross-curricular, regional led workshops) Phase 3: 2011–2017 (characterised by expansion of the leadership team) Phase 4: 2017–2023 (characterised by changing funding models)

Throughout all phases the key features of the programme including the two primary aims remained consistent. The programme is workshop-based with five workshops held each year. Engagement in TL21 is entirely voluntary and selfselecting although participants are required to commit to sustained engagement over a 2-year period. The approach is based on a collaborative, rather than a cooperative, model with opportunity to work together in self-directed and peer-informed ways to transform pedagogic practice for the benefit for all. It is a deliberate way of working together, and aligns well with the concept of “collaborative professionalism” described by Hargreaves and O’Connor (2018): how teachers and other educators transform teaching and learning together to work with all students to develop fulfilling lives of meaning, purpose, and success. It is evidenceinformed, but not data-driven, and involves deep and sometimes demanding dialogue, candid but constructive feedback, and continuous collaborative inquiry. (p. 23)

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The agentic, peer-informed nature of collaboration, where schools individually chose the topic they wish to focus on as part of the workshops, is a significant feature of the programme and has consistently been identified by many participants as a key motivator for their involvement. In 2019, a Department of Education commissioned independent External Evaluation of TL21 reported that: While participants make frequent reference to the capacity fostered by TL21 to engage with mandated processes of change, it is valued highly for not being itself part of such a mandate. Indeed, it may be that TL21 should consciously foster more autonomous or ‘subversive’ initiatives by schools, without reference to national prescriptions. (Granville, 2019, p. 42)

Firestone’s (2014) concept of loose coupling (associated with the work of Weick, 1976) provides a useful lens through which to reflect on the dialectical tension between those forms of professional learning which are centrally mandated and those that are voluntarily sought. Where teachers work in loosely coupled ways and engage in collaborative reviews of their own work (within and across schools) they readily enhance their capabilities for perceptive analysis and constructive practical action. While loosely coupled system may appear largely indeterminate, fragmented, and ambiguous, they offer many benefits and significant levels of clarity and surety around means-ends connections. This chapter will show how working in loosely coupled ways privileges flexibility which has enabled the programme to respond to changing local conditions and changing national policy priorities, for example, a change of team members, altered funding models, and industrial relation issues. TL21 workshops prioritise active participation, clearly defined tasks, purposeful collaboration, continuity, reflective feedback, and teacher agency. At the beginning of the 2-year process school teams identify a teaching and learning dilemma or theme that then becomes the focus of their work for the duration of the 2-year cycle. Schools continue their work between workshops and are supported by varying members within the programme team. This team has gradually expanded over the 20-year life span of the project and details of this, and other matters, are set out below.

Phase 1: 2003–2007 In this first phase programme, workshops were subject specific and focused on the teaching of the Irish language, English, Mathematics, Science, and Information Technologies. Separate workshops were also held for senior school leaders. All workshops were led by a member of the university faculty team and in the initial cycle (2003– 2007) the programme was strictly a school-university partnership with 15 schools involved across three different regions within a one-hundred-kilometre radius of the University. Of these 15 schools, five were urban, five suburban, and five rural.

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Throughout those early years of the programme, extensive consultations took place with the leaders of the Inspectorate1 and with several of the major national agencies in education. The latter included the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, the various school managerial bodies at national level, and the teachers’ unions. The intention of these consultations was to formally recognise the layered and complex process of building professional partnerships and in doing so to contribute to and influence national policy debates relevant to teacher professional learning. Ongoing discussions with these agencies yielded important benefits and insights but also highlighted common critiques of the TL21 programme particularly regarding issues of scalability, sustainability, and effectiveness of the programme. Acknowledging the hierarchical, university-led nature of the initial model, the aim in the second phase of the programme (2007–2011), was to foster more expansive, horizontal, and low-rise ways of working with the aim of building more scalable, sustainable, and meaningful forms of partnership.

Phase 2: 2007–2011 The second phase of the programme (2007–2011) aimed to address the concerns through flattening the hierarchical position of the university and broadening the partnership to include Directors of Education Support Centres. Established in 1972, the Education Support Centres aim to provide more regional and localised spaces for teacher professional learning. Historically these centres have represented an important base for primary school teachers but much less so for secondary school teachers, whose engagement with their regional Education Support Centre was intermittent and limited. The TL21 programme aimed to address that reality through highlighting the strategic importance of these centres for secondary teachers’ professional learning. Broadening the partnership out to include Directors of Education Support Centres, the intention was to create a third neutral space (the Education Support Centres) between the university and schools. Zeichner (2010) describes this kind of third space as a “transformative setting” (p. 92) which is less hierarchical in nature, encouraging working more closely together. The professional space envisaged here was more than just a physical space in which to host workshops but also a symbolic space which recognised the need for more complex forms of partnerships that “require cross-institutional resources, infrastructure, and knowledge sharing to truly support professional learning” (Daza et al., 2021, p. 2). It was also an opportunity to reimagine a more affiliative and venturesome relationship between schools, the university, and the Education Support Centres. Working in this way, the intention was to nurture more adaptive complexity in the professional learning space in ways that would benefit all partners. 1

The Inspectorate is a division in the Department of Education, Ireland, who are responsible for the evaluation of post-primary schools.

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In the first phase of the programme, all workshops were designed and led by a member of the university faculty team. In this second phase all workshops were led by the Director of the centres, with the ongoing support of the university team. Working together in this way, the intention was to prioritise the important role of the Education Support Centres and their directors who traditionally would not have worked with post-primary schools in these ways. The model was positively received, resulting in a 72% growth in the number of schools registering for the programme. This phase signified a significant step in the development of a third space for professional learning beyond the standard school-university binary models. Daza et al. (2021) state: Third space transforms the conception of vertical forms of knowledge in partnerships, challenging traditional teacher education practices. The third space allows the creation of more democratic models of professional practice in which all the voices and knowledge sources are equally valued. … The studies also conceptualise the third space as a transformative opportunity for all participants to discuss issues of practice, enhance spaces of reflection, and integrate academic and practitioner expertise. (p. 11)

The model was however resource intensive and demanding for centre Directors as well as the university team which had been reduced from seven members in phase 1 to just two in phase 2. Building the partnership with Education Support Centres was time consuming and gradual and the programme tended to be more transformative and successful in those centres where the Director was more invested in the programme. This phase highlighted the significant role that such a partnership can play, however it also highlighted significant challenges to the sustainability of the programme given the resource intensive nature of how it was structured and supported. Consequently, the next iteration saw the necessary expansion of the partnership team to include the role of the coordinator who would work alongside the centre Directors.

Phase 3: 2011–2017 The third phase saw the introduction of the role of Coordinator within each of the participating centres. These individuals were tasked with several important functions including the co-ordination of the professional learning workshops in addition to liaising with the Education Support Centre Director, the Principal/Deputy Principal/teachers in the participating schools, and the university. They provided on-going support to schools between workshops and visited schools with a faculty member of the University TL21 team. Coordinators were all experienced facilitators with reputations for leading professional learning at a national level. Over time, the coordinator team has expanded further to now include former participant teachers and school principals. Shifting boundaries, where former participants have come to assume Coordinator and Director roles within the TL21 programme, had significant and direct implications for the sustainability and credibility of the programme.

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Phase 4: 2017–2023 In 2017 two significant policy shifts, along with a change in funding arrangements, surfaced several dialectical issues within the partnership. The two policy shifts related to the role of Education Support Centre Director. Up to that point the position of Education Director was fixed with many Directors in post for 10 years or more. This ensured a degree of stability within the programme especially in terms of sustaining relational closeness between partners. However, a change in the Terms of Employment for the position of Education Support Centre Director resulted in the role becoming somewhat less attractive to highly experienced secondary school personnel. The policy inadvertently incentivized professionals from primary schools rather than the post-primary schools. In effect, the salary of incoming Directors was capped at a lower rate than before, meaning senior leaders from medium size secondary schools (> 300 students) would face a real-time pay cut if they were to seek appointment to the role. This was not the case for experienced primary school leaders because the majority of primary schools have < 300 students. Many of these primary school principals are teaching principals and therefore they would gain a pay rise if appointed to the role of Education Support Centre Director. This change in policy has some important implications not just for post-primary expertise at Director level, but also for diversity in the role of Director. Other changes that occurred at that time also had the potential to pose more challenge, especially given the intentional loose-coupling structure of the TL21 programme. Between 2003 and 2016, funding for the programme was provided by Atlantic Philanthropies. These funds were significant in the early years of the programme but by 2016 these funds were fully depleted. However, given the national profile of the programme and the close consultative relationship the programme team had built with the Department of Education throughout the lifespan of the project, in late 2016 the Department of Education agreed to provide funds to cover the costs of the Coordinators in each Education Support Centres. The Department were highly supportive as partners; however, some of the other partners (teachers, principals, and TL21 coordinators) questioned if this funding might come with unpalatable conditions, which could fundamentally effect a change in the nature of the programme. The reality was the Department of Education sought no such change and TL21 was to continue to function as a loosely coupled programme. It was to remain an exercise in sustained voluntary co-operation between the participating schools, the Education Support Centres, and the university.

Dialectical Tensions: Evaluating Programme Impact Established in 2003, the project was prompted by a commitment to explore meaningful and authentic professional learning possibilities for secondary schools with the intention of shedding new light on what is promising and realistic for teachers’

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professional learning practice and policy. As a research-informed programme, gathering and acting on robust formative and evaluative data has been an essential part of the TL21 experience, enabling the programme to respond in iterative and flexible ways while also promoting relationships within the partnership. This has been a salient factor in ensuring the longevity and sustainability of the programme. Gathering such data is not without challenge, however, particularly given the policy slide towards evidence-based accountability and value-added approaches. Like many Western countries during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, ‘evidencebased’ approaches have become widely embraced within Irish educational policy. In September 2007, the Department of Education and Science (Ireland) published A Value for Money Assessment of Programmes managed by the Teacher Education Section. An emphasis on key performance indicators was introduced based on a Programme Logic Model evaluative framework. Evaluation of teacher professional learning was now framed within a language of quantitative indicators such as attainment of programmatic outcomes, programme effectiveness including data points on programmatic reach, attendance levels, and teacher satisfaction ratings. Focus was towards policy compliance and results-driven accountability with implications for teachers’ professional learning that were far-reaching (Malone, 2022). In-service and professional learning indicators, at state level, were now markedly quantitative in emphasis with terms such as unit cost, value-added, and performance indicators now introduced by way of appraising teachers’ professional learning (AmreinBeardsley & Holloway, 2019). For some, this paradigmatic shift is a development that would appear to offer several key systemic advantages such as concentrating energies on target-setting whilst curtailing nebulous good intentions that fail to translate into clearly specified educational goals. Moreover, for them it might serve to keep evaluations focused on outcomes that can be objectively verified. As an approach it risks disrupting the intentional low-rise structure intended within school-university partnerships with questions as to who has agency and ownership of the evaluative process. A poorly conceived and communicated approach to evaluation can promptly lead to a less than trusting view of the nature and purpose of evaluation and what the data gathered might properly be called upon to do. References to ‘effectiveness’ and ‘outcomes’ prioritise a unidimensional evaluative model that are all too often deficit-focused and represent a fundamental loss as distinct from a gain, and a decline rather than an advance in professional understanding of the lived-out experiences of teaching and learning. Malone and Hogan (2019) highlight: where quality in education becomes mainly associated with the measurement of one- dimensional ‘outcomes’, the question of quality itself tends to become recast as a matter of indexed quantity—of test scores, examination results, merit points and so on. In such circumstances, core questions of quality itself get side-lined, or even drop out of the picture. (p. 3)

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The evaluative approach in TL21 was intentionally different and the programme developed a three-dimensional qualitative model of evaluation based on Guskey’s (2000) five critical levels of professional development evaluation. The aim was to gather a more expansive review of the programme beyond that of quantitative performance indicators. The five levels outlined by Guskey provided opportunity for participants to reflect in graduated ways from low level reactions to the professional learning experience of the TL21 programme (Level 1) to high level reflection on the overall impact of the programme on secondary school students’ learning (Level 5). The five levels identified by Guskey (2000) were: Evaluation level

Typical questions addressed

Level 1

Participants’ reactions

Did participants like it? Was time well spent? Did the material make sense? Will it be useful? Was the presenter knowledgeable? Did the physical conditions of the activity support learning?

Level 2

Participants’ learning

Did participants acquire the intended knowledge or skill?

Level 3

Organization support and change

What was the impact on the organization? Did it affect organizational climate or procedures? Was implementation advocated, facilitated, and supported? Was the support public and overt? Were problems addressed quickly and efficiently? Were sufficient resources made available? Were successes recognised and shared?

Level 4

Participants’ use of new knowledge and skills

Did participants effectively apply the new knowledge and skills?

Level 5

Student learning outcomes

What was the impact on students? Did it affect student performance or achievement? Did it influence students’ physical or emotional wellbeing? Are students more confident as learners? Is student attendance improving? Are dropouts decreasing?

In 2016 the TL21 programme adapted this model to include six levels, which provided opportunity for participant teachers to reflect in graduated ways from low level reactions to the professional learning experience (Level 1) to high level reflection on the overall impact of the programme on secondary students’ learning and their pedagogic capacities as teachers (Levels 5 and 6). The six levels were:

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Typical questions addressed

Level 1

Basics

What centre were you based in? Were the TL21 workshops well organised and carried out?

Level 2

Your professional learning Were the workshops a good professional learning experience—e.g., did they provide some fresh ideas, opportunities for vibrant, professionally relevant exchanges, opportunity to work with colleagues within your school, opportunity to work with colleagues from other schools, etc. …? What was the focus of your school’s TL21 project? What in your opinion were the significant gains and outcomes from your TL21 school project?

Level 3

Application of new approaches and insights

Following your engagement with the TL21 programme to what extent did you implement new approaches and/or insights within your classroom/school: a. in your own teaching? b. in your subject department or the school more widely?

Level 4

Support from the school

How has the school supported your engagement with the TL21 programme?

Level 5

Improvements in students’ To what extent has learning improved among your learning students because of your engagement with the TL21 programme? Specifically in terms of: a. improvements in students’ attitudes to learning. b. improvements in students’ practices of learning

Level 6

Improvements in your capacity as a teacher

To what extent has participation in the TL21 programme enhanced your professional capacity? Specifically in terms of: a. enhancements in your approach to teaching and learning b. enhancements in your practices of teaching and learning

Working in these ways aimed to afford participant teachers greater agency and latitude to reflect on the professional learning process. The intention was to gather insights that captured a wide range of experiences including insights relevant to secondary students’ achievements in learning, attitudes towards learning, and practices of learning. Developing this way of working revealed some differences between partners and especially with the Department of Education, who commissioned an external review of the programme in 2019. This external review served a different purpose to the programme evaluations and was intended to examine the overall impact of the programme considering government priorities. The initial Terms of Reference for the review of TL21, as drafted by the Department, included:

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. The extent to which the aims of TL21 address current Department and national priorities and establish and advise on its efficacy in meeting system priorities and impact on learning and teaching at classroom level. . The effectiveness of the various initiatives implemented by the programme and their effect on enhancing outcomes for students. . How the programme links and responds to international education trends and responded to the outcomes of international tests, for example: – Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) . The impact on the wider school community and the sustainability of the programme in the school following the completion of the 2-year cycle. . The effectiveness of the programme’s governance and implementation. . Advise on the most efficient administrative options for the operation and oversight of TL21. The terms of reference highlighted discrepancies between the priorities of the partners and indeed a discrepancy in understanding as to the overall nature and purpose of the TL21 programme. The repeated references to ‘effectiveness’ and ‘outcomes’ in the Terms of Reference reflected a one-dimensional evaluative model which can all too often miss what is most important in promoting enhanced learning experiences and more vibrant cultures of learning in schools. The accountability agenda, set out in the Terms of Reference, prioritised the needs of the system, but less so the needs of the schools or teachers. Framed in this way these terms had the potential to derail the original objectives of the TL21 programme therein creating conditions for tighter coupling within what was a loosely coupled structure. In follow up discussions with the Department the need to take careful account of ongoing and new developments in the system nationally was acknowledged, but so too were the aims of the TL21 programme which emphasised the needs of the schools and needs of their teachers. There was also concern about how intrusive the external evaluation process might be and what it might demand of busy school leaders, their teachers, and their students. The importance of accountability for the expenditure of all public monies is not disputed; however, there was concern that a few the evaluative criteria in that document were more challenging to deliver upon within the 2-year duration of each cycle. For example: . The extent to which the aims of TL21 address current Department and national priorities and establish and advise on its efficacy in meeting system priorities and impact on learning and teaching at classroom level. . The effectiveness of the various initiatives implemented by the programme and their effect on enhancing outcomes for students. . How the programme links and responds to international education trends and responded to the outcomes of international tests, for example:

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– PISA – TIMSS and PIRLS Acknowledging the challenge of devising a model that would satisfy both parties, the aim was to achieve a balance between the qualitative and quantitative and between what might be deemed the technical and the emancipatory (i.e., a focus on process as well as on product and outcomes). The emphasis in the evaluation had to do justice to process and the kinds of pedagogic benefits and relationships the TL21 programme sought to promote in schools. Working together with Department officials the focus shifted towards gathering robust and rigorous insights that captured the range of experiences and insights. Consequently, the Terms of Reference for the evaluation were amended to include a more three-dimensional evaluative approach focused on the needs of the system, the needs of the schools, and the needs of teachers. The scope of the external review was broadened to include not just feedback on the effectiveness of the programme but also to include feedback on attitudes and practices of teachers’ professional learning. Though contentious at the time, this incident re-established the priority of working in ground up ways across all programme partners (teachers, senior leaders, Department of Education officials, university staff, and Directors of Education Support Centres) to shape professional learning policy through sustained, informed dialogue. The external evaluation report (Granville, 2019) highlighted how important this dialogue was in nurturing and sustaining the partnership across different actors. The final external report stated: The distinction between the bottom-up approach promoted by TL21 and top-down nationally mandated programmes is not one of ‘good’ versus ‘bad.’ Both models of development are not only complementary but symbiotic: a purely school-based and teacher-focused model runs the constant risk of taking safe options and replicating or merely tweaking established practices … a model solely driven by national imperatives tends to foster a resentful and superficial compliance. Where both models co-exist, powerful synergies can be achieved— this is evident in much of the work of TL21—while occasionally and inevitably sparking some clashes and conflicts. (pp. 30–31)

Salient Findings Longitudinal data (see above) was gathered in several ways including through the analysis of participant responses to the three-dimensional qualitative model of evaluation outlined above. These provided a rich source of data from which salient themes were identified and further explored through follow-up individual interviews and focus groups discussions with programme participants. Details of school projects was gathered through attendance at workshops, through in-school visits, and through schools submitting written digests of their programme experience. Data was also gathered from coordinators and directors through regular meetings throughout each year.

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Evaluations gathered over the 20-year duration of the programme has highlighted several significant insights, gains, and challenges. This section highlights a number of these including a focus on teachers and schools in addition to the necessity of an engaged and involved senior leadership team. This section also explores the partnership with the Education Support Centres and how they came to be an important third space in the lifespan of the programme.

Teachers/Schools Taking Ownership of Professional Learning Evaluations gathered over the past 20 years highlight the importance of adaptive flexibility and the need to work in mutually authentic and democratically dialogic ways, acknowledging the significance of teacher agency and the professional context in which schools and teachers work. From the early days of the TL21 programme the decisive evidence gathered from participating teachers is the professional learning workshops they attended enabled them progressively to become their own most discerning and most supportive critics; to take ownership of their work in ways that are sure-footed, original, and most of all fulfilling. Our work with schools has convincingly shown that where teachers regularly engage in collaborative reviews of their own work (within and across schools) they readily enhance their capabilities for perceptive analysis and constructive practical action. In doing so, they build their capacity as resourceful, articulate practitioners, with the confidence to publicly share illuminating and convincing accounts of their work. The OECD (2005) highlighted the necessity of maximising: opportunities for staff to interact and learn from one another, as well as with external sources of research and information, and try to develop ways for learning to be cumulative and more readily accessible to all members of the organisation .... A key strategy is to encourage teachers to become more inquiring, reflective practitioners, and to do so in collaboration with colleagues. (p. 110)

The importance of taking ownership of self-evaluation and professional learning, as an exercise in professional self-enablement more than an exercise in compliance, cannot be strongly enough stressed for the health of the education system. Our evaluations have shown that adopting an agentic rather than a compliance approach helps develop the school’s capacity to speak for itself within the frame of national policy. Findings gathered from qualitative programme evaluations and gathered as part of the external independent review (Granville, 2019), found that teacher participants had opportunity to explicitly talk through possibilities in ways that can reveal embedded pedagogic assumptions. Participant teachers reported how TL21 provided a collaborative, supportive space to constructively and reflectively focus on emergent possibilities that are promising and practicable, but that also hold up well under criticism. The participatory workshops in the TL21 programme have provided a valuable

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opportunity to work in a sustained way with colleagues from other schools, and to establish valuable informal/formal networks. Participant teachers have consistently reported how working in these ways has given them a strong sense of confidence in the work they are doing, as well as greater sense of ownership of that work. A select, representative sample of feedback comments from participant teachers includes the following: . “It has allowed me to grow in confidence as a teacher. It has helped me have more belief in my ability and has allowed me to enhance my responsibilities within the school.” . “Opened up avenues to develop practices within the classroom and also got feedback from other schools.” . “The workshops stimulated me into thinking more about active learning and seeing the lesson from the students’ point of view.” . “It was beneficial to share ideas with other schools / teachers. It was effective to learn new methodologies to promote active learning and engagement.” In several schools, increasing use is being made of innovative pedagogies and there is evidence to show how schools are forging new kinds of relationships where students’ approaches to learning are concerned. For instance, the gathering of data on students’ progress has become more extensive and more systematic. All this has not happened quickly, and some significant difficulties were experienced along the way that called for strong reserves of perseverance, attentive listening, and an ability to adapt the programme in iterative ways, as necessary. The 20-year longevity of the TL21 programme is particularly due to these flexible, iterative ways of working.

The Necessity of an Engaged and Involved Senior Leadership Team Broadening the conversation on teaching and learning to take account of these aspects provides a real opportunity and role for senior school leadership (Principal/ Deputy Principal). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the committed engagement of the Principal/Deputy Principal has consistently been identified as a key indicator to realising whole school beneficial change. Programme evaluations have consistently shown the opportunity for the senior leadership team to work with teachers from across a range of subject disciplines tends to yield productive results for school development. Teacher leadership certainly matters but programme evaluations have consistently shown that in the absence of an engaged senior leadership, levels of success are less assured. In several of our participating schools where senior management showed an initial reluctance to push forward with all their energies, this had a notable and inverse affect in terms of teachers’ commitment to and involvement in the programme. Where energy levels were high among the schools’ leaders there was a correlative energy

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for engagement among teachers. Evaluations from teachers show how the Principal/ Deputy Principal’s leadership emerges as a critically strong influence on teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs. The best advances in our participating schools have taken place where the Principal and Deputy Principal have worked closely together to promote specific initiatives among the teaching staff, to evaluate the success of these initiatives, and to build new practices into the school’s development planning. Where the school’s senior leadership merely facilitated this work but didn’t actively lead it then it tended to quite early on reinforce a notion, among the school’s teachers, that teaching and learning issues were not the key priority of their management teams. Without question, a senior leadership that is physically present is a necessity, but in and of itself it is not merely enough. Rather what is needed is an active, engaged leadership who works to generate and sustain professional conversations that really matter and a leadership that builds dense social networks through tapping into a wide variety of people, talents, skills, and values. That dialogic, community piece is crucial in this most important of tasks. There is a precarity here in terms of leadership roles and identity where more and more is expected and demanded. The broad adjectivization of leadership does not always help here, and the reality is this venture is very much a community endeavour where leadership plays no small or insignificant role.

Sustained and Authentic Partnership with the Education Support Centres Greater gains were made in participant schools where the Directors of the Education Support Centres were more directly involved in programme workshops. Real advances were made where Directors and Coordinators work in progressive ways with schools in their region: organising and co-ordinating the workshops, while also liaising directly with these schools. In the absence of an engaged leadership team of Director and Coordinator, then levels of success are less assured. As stated earlier, Education Support Centres have come to assume an important neutral third space between the university and schools. In those centres where greater gains were made, they became more than just a physical space in which to host workshops but was also a symbolic space which promoted more complex forms of partnership. Working in committed ways over the lifespan of the programme provided opportunity to re-imagine a more affiliative and venturesome relationship between schools, the university, and the Education Support Centres. Historically, there had been limited evidence of such relationships between the partners and secondary teachers’ engagement with their regional Education Centre was intermittent and limited as was directors’ engagement with local secondary schools or the university. In those centres

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where greater gains were made, Education centre Directors built close communicative links with secondary schools in their regions. The role of coordinator has greatly supported the Directors in this work and their expertise and reputation at regional level has enabled it to grow and expand into all parts of Ireland. Addressing the initial hierarchies between partners has been difficult and demanded continued dialogue and reflection between partners in addition to a commitment to ongoing evaluation and adjustment. The development of such partnerships is not linear and the task here is to dialogue and work together in horizontal ways. This is challenging and the reality is these relationships are not fixed and immutable but rather fluid and changing with all kinds of tensions with people moving into and out of roles, and new priorities emerging. This is especially so given the change in Terms of Employment (salary and duration of contract) for newly appointed Education Support Centre Directors which resulted in a more frequent turnover at Director level with notable implications for the stability of the programme. Continuing to work in hopeful, dynamic, and iterative ways has proven necessary and our experience has confirmed the real and tangible necessity of continuing to work in participatory, collaborative, and loosely coupled ways. The 20-year longevity of the TL21 programme is particularly due to these flexible, iterative ways of working.

Flexibility of Programme to Respond to Emerging National Policy Developments In 2012 and 2013 two historically significant policy developments emerged in Irish education. The policy shift towards school self-evaluation (SSE) and reform of the Junior Cycle curriculum (for students aged 12–15 years) have created conditions for schools to exercise greater levels of agency but also required more by way of structured reflection and engagement in evidence informed practice. The TL21 programme has proved highly relevant to both policy developments, and our work with schools has convincingly shown that where teachers regularly engage in collaborative reviews of their own work (within and across schools) they readily enhance their capabilities for perceptive reflective analysis and constructive practical action. A select, representative sample of feedback comments from participants includes the following: . “Renewed my passion and zest and desire to move forward and try new initiatives.” . “A great opportunity to learn, discuss and reflect with other teachers on matters such as Junior cycle reform. Very inspiring—great exchange—very motivating.” . “My attitude has changed. More open minded and willing to try new methodologies.” . “A great way to focus in concrete ways on SSE. It made all the difference for us.”

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Participants identified in the evaluations how they have built their capacity as resourceful, articulate practitioners, with the confidence to publicly share illuminating and convincing accounts of their work, whether to inspectors, students, colleagues, parents, or whoever. Participant teachers have reported how flexible, loose-coupled structure of the TL21 programme has enabled them to respond more confidently to these policy and curricular changes and provided a scaffolded support as they navigate these reforms. More recently The Teaching Council (2016) of Ireland has published their national framework for teachers’ learning, titled Cosán (an Irish word meaning pathway). Central to Cosán is a vision of teachers as professionals who are intrinsically motivated to take ownership of their professional learning and development. Through Cosán, the Teaching Council is seeking to foster a culture of professional learning based on teachers’ active engagement in their own learning, for their benefit and that of their students. Key elements of Cosán are that of reflective practice and collaborating with other teachers. (p. 2)

The Cosán policy is an important national policy for teacher in-career learning and TL21 aligns comfortably with its salient principles which include: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Flexibility of provision. Professional ownership of teaching by teachers themselves. High-quality professional engagement linked to teachers’ daily work. Accessibility that is matched to the timescales of teaching.

TL21 prioritises quality teaching and learning for the benefit of secondary school students, which is one of the standards in Cosán. It is also a space for teachers and schools to take ownership of their learning and drive the agenda which underpin Cosán. It is responsive to teacher and school needs (and therefore in line with the principle of flexibility in Cosán) and is a 2-year programme of learning focused on ongoing, steady progress, which reflects the focus in Cosán on sustained progress over time rather than elusive perfection. TL21 is the only professional learning programme of its kind to be listed in Cosán’s 18-point action plan and the next iteration of the programme will see closer engagement with this.

Conclusion Now in its twentieth year, the TL21 programme continues to have momentum in the system. This is in part due to the loosely coupled structure of the programme, which has deliberately privileged adaptive flexibility and enabled it to respond to changing local conditions and changing national policy priorities. Evaluations gathered over this period have shown how working in loosely coupled ways has created opportunities for teachers to exercise agency with greater levels of positivity and capacity for self-critique and reflection. In doing so, they have developed their capacity as resourceful, articulate practitioners, with the confidence to publicly share

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illuminating and convincing accounts of their professional work. The agentic, peerinformed nature of collaboration is a significant feature of the TL21 programme and has consistently been identified by many participants as a key motivator for their involvement. Despite being part-funded and supported by the national Department of Education, this does not alter its character and it remains an exercise in sustained voluntary co-operation primarily between the participating schools, the Education Support Centres, the Department of Education, and the university. The reality is that building the kinds of professional development experiences that matters is something that takes time, is difficult, often insecure, unpredictable, and full of risks and uncertainties. That calls for a form of shared leadership that is deeply connected and invested in teaching and learning and that works to lead teaching and learning for the benefit of all. Working together, as partners, in mutually authentic and dialogic ways, is the real and enduring strength of the programme.

References Blair, D. J. (2016). Experiential learning for teacher professional development at historic sites. Journal of Experiential Education, 39(2), 130–144. Department of Education and Science. (2007). A value for money assessment of programmes managed by the teacher education section. The Stationery Office. Firestone, W. A. (2014). Teacher evaluation policy and conflicting theories of motivation. Educational Researcher., 43(2), 100–107. Government of Ireland. (1992). Education for a changing world: Green paper on education. The Stationery Office. Government of Ireland. (1994). Report on the national education convention. Government Publications. Government of Ireland. (1998). Education act. Government Publications. Government of Ireland. (2001). Teaching council act. Government Publications. Granville, G. (2019). Partners for progress: A review of teaching and learning for the 21st century (TL21). TES. Guskey, T. (2000). Evaluating professional development. Corwin. Hargreaves, A., & O’Connor, M. T. (2018). Solidarity with solidity: The case for collaborative professionalism. Phi Delta Kappan, 100(1), 20–24. Malone, A. (2022). Post-primary in-career teacher professional development in Ireland. In Education policy in Ireland since 1922. Palgrave Macmillan. Malone, A., & Hogan, P. (2019). Evidence and its consequences in educational research. British Journal of Educational Research, 46(2), 265–280. OECD. (1991). Review of national policies for education: Ireland. OECD. OECD. (2005). Teachers matter: Attracting, retaining and developing teachers. OECD The Teaching Council. (2016) Cosán: The national framework for teaching and learning. Teaching Council. Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly., 21(1), 1–19. Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 89–99.

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Dr. Anthony Malone is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, Maynooth University. He is currently Programme Director for the M.Ed. (Educational Leadership and Management) and the M.Ed. (Innovative Learning) programmes. He is research active in several discrete, inter-related fields relevant to teacher professional learning. His research work on the Teaching and Learning for the twenty-first Century programme (TL21) has been referenced across national policy documents. TL21 is the largest and longest running voluntary professional learning programme with secondary schools in Ireland at present.

Chapter 12

Rooted in Relationships, Building University-School District Partnerships Wendy Mackey , Lisa Lunney Borden , and Shelly MacLean

This chapter describes how a university-school district partnership rooted in respectful relationships grew into a multi-faceted collegial collaboration focused on equity and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). Born out of a shared commitment to enhancing success for Mi’kmaw and Black learners, this partnership involved the St. Francis Xavier University (StFX) Faculty of Education and a large school district in Nova Scotia, Canada, with a primary focus of supporting a district-wide commitment to CRP. Our overarching goal in this chapter is to tell the story of how this partnership began, how it has grown, and how it continues to expand because of the relational way in which we continue to work, walking alongside one another in true partnership. We anticipate that this work will be a model for others as to what it can look like to engage in such ethically relational partnerships. This work draws from Indigenous and decolonizing methodologies (Archibald, 2008; Kovach, 2009) and demonstrates how ideas of relationality are lived out in a practical way in research partnerships. These ideas not only guide the work in all aspects but sustain and grow the partnership.

Why a Commitment to Black and Mi’kmaw Learners The geographical region commonly called Nova Scotia, a province on the east coast of what we currently refer to as Canada, is a place rich in history with much greater diversity than the images of fishing boats and sailing ships that one might typically see. Long before settlers referred to it as Nova Scotia, Acadia, or New France, it was W. Mackey (B) · L. Lunney Borden St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada e-mail: [email protected] S. MacLean Chignecto Central Regional Centre for Education, Truro, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_12

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and remains Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw people who have lived on these lands since time immemorial (Paul, 1993). The region of Mi’kma’ki extended beyond the colonial boundaries of Nova Scotia into parts of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Quebec, and Maine in the United States. It was broken into seven districts, each with their own governing structures who collectively came together in central locations at regular times to consider the governance matters of the entire territory. In the late 1500s and early 1600s when French settlers (eventually known as Acadians) and then British and other settlers first began arriving on these shores, treaties of peace and friendship were signed between settlers and Mi’kmaw people as well as members of other nations within the Wabanaki confederacy who lived in neighbouring territories (Battiste, 2016). These treaties did not involve the surrendering of lands but instead focused on ensuring Mi’kmaw and other Indigenous nations within the confederacy would be able to continue their way of life, living sustainably with the land. Yet these treaties would not be followed by settlers, and Mi’kmaw people would face genocidal policies that would confine them to reserve lands, force them into residential schools, and place them under control of the Indian Act (Joseph, 2018) that forbade the transmission of cultural knowledge (Battiste, 2016). Language, knowledge, and ways of living were erased by colonial policies that treated Mi’kmaw people in dehumanizing ways (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). As settler populations expanded, so did the population of people of African descent. Mathieu da Costa, a Mi’kmaw interpreter for France, is the first recorded Black person to arrive in Nova Scotia in 1605. Unlike Upper Canada, known as the destination for the underground railroad, Nova Scotia’s Black ancestors came as enslaved people, Loyalists who were falsely promised freedom, Maroons from Jamaica, and as refugees (Pachai & Bishop, 2006). As with Mi’kmaw people, settler colonialism stripped African Nova Scotian people of their homeland, Indigenous languages, and epistemologies, forced them into slavery, and brought them to Canada as property of White owners. While Canada is often recognized for the freedom of the underground railroad, and many school children read stories about Harriet Tubman, the truth of slavery in Canada is not widely known. Maynard (2017) reminds us that “Slavery was practiced in Canada for over two hundred years. Yet, the realities of Canadian slavery and the hostilities enacted upon Black populations in Canada are not taught in most Canadian Schools” (p. 18). The fact that many Canadians did not learn about slavery in Canada, and still don’t frequently learn about it today (Mackey, in press), confirms why colonialist ideals and systemic racism permeate the foundations of Canadian society and government agencies, including its school systems (Thobani, 2007). Both Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities have faced racism and oppression on these lands. Mi’kmaw people were placed on reserves with an evershrinking land base, and in the 1930s and 40s, would endure a campaign of centralization to further remove them from their home territories as federal government officials attempted to place them into even fewer isolated and remote reserves (Paul, 1993). While centralization efforts ultimately failed, most Mi’kmaw people continue to live on small sections of reserve land across 13 communities in Nova Scotia.

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African Nova Scotian people were also placed in isolated communities that had low quality land for developing sustainable livelihoods. Several communities have also endured government-led displacement and relocation to make room for highways and landfills (Waldron, 2018). Generations of Black and Mi’kmaw people have had to navigate colonial policies that limited opportunities for learning and living on these lands including residential schools (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015), over representation in the child welfare system (Borden Colley, 2019; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015) and justice system (Cole, 2020), and higher rates of school suspensions (Dei & Howell Rutherford, 2023). The lowered expectations and systemic racism continue to permeate our school systems today (Dei & Howell Rutherford, 2023) and it is in this context that our partnership is seeking to redress these historical wrongs and promote Black and Indigenous futurity rooted in hope and healing. We share this brief historical context to help the reader understand the work we are doing and why it is important. While the impetus for the partnership was born out of concerns about both standardized assessment scores for Black and Mi’kmaw youth and some resistances to meaningful moves toward equity being experienced by educators trying to make changes, the problems of systemic racism emerge from this long history.

A Culture of Partnership: St. Francis Xavier University, Faculty of Education In 1995, facing possible closure, the university’s education department needed to restructure to create a viable new 2-year Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) program for initial teacher education and licensing. At the same time, local Mi’kmaw communities were forming a collective, known as Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey (MK), that would manage new jurisdictional control over Indigenous education at the community level (Paul et al., 2019). In this context, a partnership formed leading to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) where the university committed to developing capacity for education in these Mi’kmaw communities which would lead to a significant increase in Mi’kmaw teachers for MK schools. The same commitment was made to local Black communities. In a spirit of reciprocity stemming from this relationship, the new B.Ed. program would make equity and social justice a key pillar of the program. This would ensure that equity, racial literacy, and justice were foundational values of the initial teacher education program. Additionally, it became common for the university to work with community partners and school districts to provide graduate education for in-service teachers to upgrade their skills. The university worked with partners to build graduate programs designed to be responsive to local needs, particularly as it pertained to creating equitable learning spaces.

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The Faculty of Education built structures to facilitate collaboration with local school districts. One committee, the StFX Teacher Education Advisory Committee (XTEAC), was established and included representatives from local school districts, the Francophone school board, and Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey. The basis of XTEAC was to build common two-way communication and to transparently illustrate our willingness to respond to system needs (Former Dean Jeff Orr, personal communication, March 24, 2023). This committee would meet multiple times a year at StFX to collaborate, eat together, and discuss matters pertaining to teacher education and provide insights into the needs of local school districts. From these ongoing conversations, numerous programs were created to serve both in-service and pre-service education in the province. XTEAC exemplified the deep commitment of StFX to relationality as a means of engaging in educational change. Through relationality, numerous research partnerships were facilitated. One such program was a Master of Education (M.Ed.) degree with a focus in culturally relevant pedagogy, a key component of the partnership described later in this chapter.

Relationality In 1991, Kirkness and Barnhardt introduced the framework of Four Rs—respect, reciprocity, relevance, and responsibility—as advice to Eurocentric institutions like universities who were seeking to engage in more two-way work with Indigenous communities. Overtime, these Rs have been expanded upon by Indigenous scholars like Kovach (2009) and Archibald (2008) to explore ways to create protocols for Indigenous research methodologies. Relationality is central to these Indigenous frameworks. As Kovach (2009) pointed out, “The centrality of relationship within Indigenous research frameworks, and the responsibility that that evokes, manifest themselves in broad strokes throughout research in the form of protocols and ethical considerations” (p. 98). She went on to describe the importance of these relationships in research and argued that “If a pre-existing relationship is not in place, such a process must begin” (p. 98). XTEAC and the MOU with Black and Indigenous communities provided that space for such relationship building. Relationality was central to the work of the StFX faculty as evidenced by their partnership with MK, their ongoing relationship with local school districts, and their commitment to African Nova Scotian communities. Halle-Erby (2022) argued that “Relationality is a fundamental concept for understanding how social systems impact Black and Indigenous communities for whom the state regularly presents care, rehabilitation, and education in order to constrain freedom and reduce self determination” (p. 2). Halle-Erby went on to explain that: This approach refuses the colonial technology of putting knowledge into silos: Indigenous thought here, Black thought there, feminist thought elsewhere. Instead, it demands that we, as thinkers and educators, move beyond the surface-level obfuscations and wrestle with the profundity of the concepts that guide our work across time and place. (p. 2)

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In a similar manner, Donald (2012) argued that we oppose colonial logics by employing ethical relationality. He stated, “Ethical relationality is an ecological understanding of human relationality that does not deny difference, but rather seeks to understand more deeply how our different histories and experiences position us in relation to each other” (p. 535). Relationality does not shy away from the hard truths of colonialism but instead draws from the productive tensions and centres the humanity of all involved. In this way we can face one another as humans and learn from one another in ways that value ethical relationships. Such an approach is central to the idea of mawikinutimatimk (Lunney Borden & Wagner, 2013), a Mi’kmaw word meaning coming together to learn together, which recognizes that everyone involved has things they can contribute and things they can learn. It disrupts the idea of expert and novice and instead situates participants in circle, each sharing, each learning, making meaning together. Similar concepts exist within Black cultural concepts that recognize how relational knowledge “draws its expertise from deep community connections and movement histories, and it is also a key part of Black rhetorical traditions” (Tetreault, 2022). These are the approaches we bring into the work we are engaged in together.

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy One strategy for addressing the hard truths of colonialism is to implement culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). Research has shown that the implementation of CRP does improve academic success for Black and other non-White students (Bishop et al., 2010; Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Mackey, 2018). As Ladson-Billings (2021) described, CRP’s purpose is to make sure students are culturally competent and critically aware, and student learning has occurred. For teachers to prepare students to be culturally competent and critically conscious, they must be afforded the opportunity to learn how to be that way themselves. Critically conscious and competent educators understand and acknowledge that schools are built upon colonial ideals, and systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices that uphold White supremacy (James & Parekh, 2021). Racism is a genuine reality in public schooling. Interrupting systemic racism and improving education for Black and Indigenous students includes a “disruption of the very belief system one has come to know” (Absolon, 2019, p. 17). This is a decolonizing process and the starting point for the implementation of CRP which the school district had a mandate to do and came to the university for support.

How This Partnership Began Like with many M.Ed. programs, a Superintendent of a school district in Nova Scotia, Peter, reached out with the university to help with the development of culturally relevant educators and leaders. The Chair of the Master of Education program, the Dean

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of the Faculty, the district Superintendent, and several professors collaboratively crafted a 12-course program that would be delivered on a part-time basis over a twoand-a-half-year period. Six specialized courses were developed for this cohort and included courses in: culturally relevant pedagogy, Mi’kmaw education and treaty education, and historical and contemporary issues affecting African Nova Scotian education. The instructors for this specialized cohort were carefully selected for their experience and scholarship in this curriculum area. Two instructors were African Nova Scotian, one instructor was a Mi’kmaw educator, and a third was from the Métis Nation. Over half of the courses (7/12) were taught by African Nova Scotian or Indigenous scholars. For most of the graduate students in the cohort, this was the first time in their educational careers they were taught by non-White instructors.

Situating Ourselves and the Work The district Superintendent, Peter, and Author 1, Wendy, had worked together previously. Their work journeys followed similar paths in a different school district before Peter became Superintendent of the district discussed in this chapter. Wendy and Peter were both music teachers who transitioned into school administration and then school supervision. Both worked well together for several years and continued to engage in conversations because of their mutual commitment to address issues of inequity in education. Their many conversations about CRP ignited Peter to work towards having a Master of Education program dedicated to CRP. In addition to the CRP cohort, Peter and Wendy decided together that it would be advantageous to work with a school to model what it looks like to implement CRP broadly. Together, they decided to work with a principal that was part of the M.Ed. program and was working in a school that served Black and Mi’kmaw children. That principal was Author 3, Shelly. Wendy and Shelly are two Black women educators who have worked their entire careers in service of transforming education for Black youth, as well as Mi’kmaw youth. Wendy, now a university professor, has been a teacher, vice-principal, principal, school supervisor, and district equity advisor. Shelly grew up in one of the 52 historical Black communities in Nova Scotia and later returned to her community to teach. She felt an incredible responsibility to give back to her community as an educator and school leader. She has been a teacher, principal, and district consultant. The partnership between Wendy and Shelly was beneficial to both and was strengthened because of the relationality between the two Black women. As stated by Hooks (1994) “Again and again, [B]lack women find our efforts to speak, to break silence and engage in radical progressive political debates, opposed” (p. 68). Shelly, at the beginning of our partnership, was the only Black principal in her district. Her school was built in 2005 in a historical Black community and attracted many students from the nearby Mi’kmaw community, yet these students were still not well-served. With Wendy’s support, Shelly aimed to lead her staff toward changing practices to be

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more culturally relevant. It was an amazing opportunity for these two Black female educational leaders to work together to create culturally relevant environments to ensure the success of Black and Mi’kmaw students. Shelly often described this as a once in a lifetime opportunity, believing she was positioned for change that would impact Black and Mi’kmaw learners who attended her community school. Lisa, Author 2, is of settler descent but has relational ties in both the Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities and more than 30 years of experience working alongside these communities on educational and outreach initiatives. Like Wendy and Shelly, she seeks to bring decolonizing frameworks from community into her work, believing in the importance of centering relationality in research and professional learning. In her work with Mi’kmaw communities, she employs the idea of mawikinutimatimk, described previously, and sees herself always as a learner within her teaching and research relationships. We bring these ways of being to the partnership work to disrupt coloniality and begin, instead, in frameworks rooted in the communities we seek to serve. Wendy and Lisa are fortunate to work in an institution that was born out of this relational approach to serving educational partners; its historical roots value these relationships. The following year, Shelly transitioned into a more senior role in her district. As Coordinator of African Canadian Education Services, she was responsible for leading the district’s efforts in implementing culturally relevant practices. This prompted her to bring the successful learning her school staff experienced to the entire district. Both Wendy and Shelly collaborated to build learning sessions about CRP which included learning about the history of Black and Indigenous peoples of Nova Scotia, systemic racism, deficit thinking, and cultural competence. These sessions were then delivered by Shelly and her team to Senior Leadership, and school principals. In this way, a benefit of the partnership was capacity building. The collaborative sessions also included current data on how Black and Indigenous students were performing academically across the district. For Shelly, this work was imperative to ensure all those in leadership roles received the same message about the work of being culturally relevant to improve student achievement and well-being for students, specifically Black and Indigenous students who have been identified as a priority. As the partnership expanded, Wendy and Shelly were particularly concerned with challenging deficit thinking, which is still prominent in many classrooms. They also wanted to provide educators at various levels within the district with the tools and strategies to support more equity-focused practices. To this end, sessions were created that engaged specifically with naming and challenging deficit thinking.

Pushing Back Against Deficit Thinking As Nieto (1998) posited, “The very view of diversity as a deficit needs to be reframed if educational reformers are serious about affording all students an equal opportunity to learn” (emphasis in original, pp. 430–431). Deficit thinking is a model of thinking which views Black and Indigenous students as less than and incapable of succeeding

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academically, compared to their White counterparts. It is imperative that educators challenge their thinking and beliefs and realize that deficit thinking is rooted in colonial thought. Hale (2001) and Kuykendall (2004) demonstrated that Black students do not begin their school careers at a disadvantage; however, “they leave school disadvantaged” (Hale, 2001, p. 46). This has led to stereotypes and low expectations of students and is the root of the achievement gap. Low expectations due to deficit thinking are evident in student achievement data across the United States and the province of Nova Scotia (Bohrnstedt et al., 2015; Province of Nova Scotia, 2016). When looking at the true cause of lowered academic achievement scores for Black and Indigenous learners, educational leaders must understand the issues are due to systemic racism and that they “are an outgrowth of colonialism and racism [and] are difficult to discuss. These are highly sensitive matters for educators” (Hilliard, 1978, p. 119). This requires deep learning to address these issues. Deep learning, or secondorder change, will be outlined as benefits of university-school district partnerships further in the chapter. To combat deficit thinking, one critical question for educational leaders includes: What are we doing that is perpetuating the existing achievement gap for non-White students? The word to focus on in the above question is “we”. This inward reflective step has not been normalized because the tendency is to look outward for the root of the problem. The landing place is usually about fixing perceived problems with nonWhite students. Hilliard (2009) demonstrated that programs that are typically put in place to target the results of achievement gap data usually miss the target because they are based on deficit thinking and low expectations of non-White students. Therefore, interventions come in the form of “standardized, minimum-competency programs” (p. xxi). Critical examination of how educators’ culture impacts student achievement and an in-depth understanding of deficit thinking are crucial steps for the implementation of CRP. Four areas in which educators must have a deep understanding to begin pushing back on deficit thinking are: (a) an understanding of the concept of culture; (b) that there are varying cultures and linguistic styles; (c) that each person sees the world through their own perceptual lens and each one’s reality differs from others; and (d) that forcing students to adapt to a culture other than their own is an aggressive act (Hilliard, 1978). Pushing back and combating deficit thinking are all part of the unlearning process. This process is instrumental in decolonizing educational spaces. Decolonizing one’s beliefs involves “understanding and unpacking the central assumptions of domination, patriarchy, racism and ethnocentrisms that continue to glue the academy’s privileges in place” (Battiste et al., 2002, p. 84). Educators have come to the realization that students are not the problem; instead, it is the educators who must do the work to unlearn ingrained assumptions that uphold the hegemonic state of education.

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Deep Level Learning for Deep Level Change One benefit of a university-school district partnership is the opportunity to provide deep learning for deep change. As stated, the key area of attention the district wanted to address is the inequality and injustices for Black and Indigenous peoples. The issues of race and racism in schools have been explored in research and governmentcommissioned reports (Battiste, 2013; Black Learners Advisory Committee, 1994; Dei & Howell Rutherford, 2023; Hilliard, 1978; Lee, 2009; Maynard, 2017). Reform efforts targeted at the improvement of academic achievement for Black and Indigenous students have involved a revolving door of interventions, and yet with a few exceptions, the issues of educational inequity persist. Professional learning throughout a school district can take many forms. Glickman et al. (2014) described the following as effective models: district-wide, school-based, and individual professional growth. All three require time, resources, and money (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010). Glickman et al. (2014) argued that the reason the common forms of teacher professional development (PD) tend to fail is that after giving teachers the introductory workshop on the topic to be learned, “teachers are left to fend for themselves” (p. 290). Workshops at the district and school levels are usually scheduled for an entire day or several sessions throughout the day. Though possible, it is challenging to schedule effective professional development for schoolbased staff because of the large amount of time that would be required. In particular, in Nova Scotia, no more than eight days can be used for PD (Nova Scotia Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, 2019). The most common forms of professional development yield, at best, first-order changes. First-order changes are those changes that can occur without interrupting the status quo of an organization (Cuban, 1998; Watzlawick et al., 1974). Reform efforts that consist of implementing prepackaged curricular programs, creating procedures that do not change the culture of instruction, or policies that do not change the way educators view or perform their responsibilities to students are all first-order changes (Bartunek & Moch, 1987; Cuban, 1998; Fullan & Stielgelbauer, 1991; Kezar, 2011; Levy, 1986; Waks, 2007). First-order changes can be made quickly because they fit “into the program’s existing values and structure” (Kezar, 2011, p. 32) and typically include one-day workshops without follow-up or monitoring that often fail to interrupt existing structures (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010). As the nature of first-order reform dictates, schools remain the same (Cuban, 1998; Kezar, 2011). Whereas first-order change “does not change the organization’s core” (Kezar, 2011, p. 32), second-order change is transformational. Kezar (2011) showed that second-order change is an example of a paradigmatic shift. It requires changes in “beliefs, values, structures, policies, and operations that characterize an organization” (p. 33). This cannot happen in a one-day workshop, rather second-order change is essential for the decolonizing process. The district members that participated in the M.Ed. cohort were given time and opportunity to reflect on their beliefs, values, and education philosophies to make the changes required within their district, thus facilitating second-order change. This is the power of a university-school district partnership.

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Cohort Learning The cohort-approach within the M.Ed. gave participants the opportunity to examine their own culture and race. These opportunities led participants through a process where they were able to internalize what the impact of their beliefs on Black and Indigenous children had been. This process was intentional and deliberate. As stated by St. Dennis and Schick (2003), “teachers are not necessarily interested in hearing the difficult things that need to be said or doing the difficult analysis of unpacking their assumptions about inequality” (p. 55). One day workshops on culturally relevant pedagogy and racism will not accomplish this. It is a true process in which critical examination of how an individual’s and organization’s culture impacts student achievement, and an in-depth understanding of colonialism, is crucial. The process of decolonizing is emotional and personal. We often experience initial resistance from both pre-service and in-service teachers when engaging in such processes. Stanfield (2008) argues that “This is because truth telling in the study of race leads to asking uncomfortable questions not only about a population, an institution, a community, or a society but also about ourselves as academics who are products of this race-drenched society” (p. 278). From our own experience as educators who have been leading this work for decades, we note that this is especially true when educators teaching Black and Indigenous students are mostly White. Without including a decolonizing process when implementing CRP, it will have little effect on change efforts aimed at improving educational experiences for non-White learners (Mackey, 2021). In Wendy’s doctoral research (Mackey, 2020) she noted that once educators realize why efforts to date have not resulted in change for Black and Indigenous learners, then they are ready to act. This realization drives the actions for CRP and only occurs when critical issues of race are faced.

University-School District Partnerships University faculties of education make for logical partnerships with school districts because both are responsible for improving educational leadership and teaching to improve student achievement. Master of Education classes at the university are designed to provide teachers and school administrators opportunities to increase their knowledge and skills in all areas of education by providing them with time, guidance, and opportunities to process their learning. Universities can provide the necessary time for learning that is required for the deep learning of second-order change, which school districts are usually unable to provide (Seller & Hannay, 2010). University professors in education faculties are committed to research for schools and educators, improving teaching practices and continued research in education. University-school district partnerships can offer many opportunities to develop deep learning for their teachers. For instance, university faculties can work with school

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districts to develop learning plans for individual schools, groups of schools, and leadership teams. Through such a partnership, school districts would also have access to research and the researchers themselves (Glickman et al., 2014). The benefits of university partnerships also extend to the universities; researchers have access to schools, classrooms, and other aspects of education that create sites for their research (Seller & Hannay, 2010). University-school district partnerships can provide scaffolding for entire schools to develop and use evidence-based approaches as part of school improvement projects. Such projects can use inquiry projects at the school level to link evidence collection with decisions supporting wider system improvement initiatives (Hansen & Wasson, 2016; Vanari et al., 2020). In our partnership, the university researchers were able to support the implementation of CRP and bring current research perspectives to the ongoing process, and the school district provided a context in which educators and researchers could work together to build new understandings of research in practice, demonstrating this mutual benefit. University faculties of education can also offer a focused concentration of courses to a specific cohort of students, as we did with the CRP M.Ed. Through this M.Ed., the teachers from the district, who were students in the cohort, spent the duration of the program learning about CRP and educational leadership. This ongoing focus on one main area of learning is a stark difference from the professional development models that the district alone was able to offer. Such an approach allowed teachers to develop a sense of ownership of their learning, learn from each other, and have opportunities to practice and reflect on what they have learned (Kearns et al., 2018; Maher, 2005; Murray-Orr & Munroe, 2018; Norris & Barnett, 1994). Murray-Orr and Munroe’s (2018) study concluded that an overall result of university cohort learning was that teachers felt more “confident and empowered to critically assess aspects of their own classroom” (p. 299). A similar finding was found by Kearns et al. (2018) in their study on an Indigenous leadership cohort. The decolonizing effect for participants resulted in teachers developing confidence in the material, which led them to be advocates for Indigenous learners as well as opening participants to leadership positions. Such confidence was also noted in the educators from the district who had participated in the CRP cohort.

Beyond the Cohort While the M.Ed. cohort formed the beginning point for this partnership, the relationship continued beyond the end of the cohort. With Shelly now at the district level, Wendy and Shelly expanded the work they had done in Shelly’s school, creating opportunities for all principals in the district to attend a series of workshops to support the implementation of CRP across the district. These workshops were led by Shelly and two school supervisors and took place throughout the year during principal meetings to ensure the ongoing learning opportunities that would help lead to second order change. Additionally, Shelly and her team worked with Wendy to support the

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capacity development of the team to work in classrooms supporting teachers to implement CRP. Shelly also reached out to Lisa to work with the district’s mathematics team creating a subject specific focused on CRP. Lisa had already been interested in working with the district having existing relationships with the mathematics leaders, so this became a natural outflow of the overall partnership.

A Shared Vision for Mathematics As with the M.Ed. in CRP, Lisa had worked with the district previously first offering an M.Ed. in Middle years mathematics, and later in a Certificate in Elementary Mathematics Pedagogy (CEMP) at StFX that had been delivered several times in the district. The CEMP program had been developed relationally with partners including MK and various school districts. The program had a thread of equity and justice running through it as well as specific courses that focused on asset-based thinking and culturally relevant pedagogy. Several members of the district’s mathematics leadership team had either studied in an M.Ed. or the CEMP with StFX. Thus, working with the math leadership team built from existing relationships as well. Additionally, Lisa has a research chair that is focused on supporting Mi’kmaw and Black youth in mathematics and had already submitted an ethics request to the district to work with teachers on a project called Moving Achievement Together Holistically (MATH). This project aimed to work with classroom teachers to implement mathematical pedagogy. Drawing from earlier research, it focused on the significance of spatial reasoning and verbing mathematics teaching and learning (Lunney Borden, 2011). The original plan was to work with classroom teachers and their students, working collaboratively to develop and implement lessons and examine their impact. Lisa intended to work with three additional mathematics education colleagues to ensure they could serve numerous classrooms. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lisa and colleagues were unable to work in schools and had to adapt the MATH project to fit the new normal. It was then that Shelly reached out to Wendy to ask about working with the district’s mathematics team. The district’s mathematics team includes a mathematics coordinator, a consultant, mathematics coaches for elementary and secondary levels, and mathematics intervention teachers. Initially, Lisa met with the consultant and the coordinator to discuss what might be possible. The group agreed to meet virtually once a month. Lisa led the sessions but in the spirit of relationality and mawikinutimatimk, the time also served as a space for the team to ask questions and raise issues they would like to see addressed. Between September of 2020 and June of 2022, the district’s mathematics team met monthly with the StFX mathematics educators, talking together, and learning together. Overall, the math focus was rooted in unlearning and relearning in ways that honoured the decolonizing process described earlier. The math sessions focused on important ideas including the need for asset-based expectations for students, drawing from Elder knowledge or ethnomathematics to begin with stories where

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mathematics can emerge, considering the ethical use of mathematics through social justice investigations, and ensuring the epistemic approach aligned with Mi’kmaw and Black ways of knowing, being, and doing. Specific topics included the need to challenge deficit thinking, work with asset-based lenses, and see children’s strengths. Lisa shared research on culturally based inquiry, social justice mathematics, and the significance of verbing and spatial reasoning, among other topics. She always focused on the central question of supporting Black and Mi’kmaw learners and creating classrooms where they can be fully themselves. The questions and conversations from each session would often influence future sessions. For example, it became apparent that the group would benefit from learning more about trauma, traumainformed practices, and how these impacted mathematics learning, particularly for Black and Mi’kmaw students. One member of the StFX mathematics team does research in this area and was invited to lead a session on this topic. Other members of the StFX team also led monthly sessions on other topics. Additionally, some sessions were allocated to thinking together about our shared learning and our future goals. While the district’s mathematics team were engaged in this learning, they were also working with educators in the district, bringing their new insights to this work. The way information is communicated throughout a school district is a powerful factor in influencing how change is implemented. When thinking of change that permeates all aspects of the district, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that need to be developed from the top of the organization chart throughout the district needs to touch all individuals within the district, no matter their positionality. While the district’s mathematics team was working with Lisa and the StFX team, Shelly continued to work with the leaders of the district’s mathematics team to ensure that the messages of CRP the district had embraced was threaded through all the work. This loop of communication ensured that everything continued to be done in a relational way.

Conclusion The multifaceted collegial collaboration that we have described in this chapter was only possible because of the commitment to building ongoing and sustained relationships rooted in Indigenous and Black ways of being. These relationships were not built for the purpose of a research project, as is often the case, rather, the research emerged out of ongoing connections sustained over time. The people involved, the authors, and many of the educators involved in this partnership had known one another long before the partnership began. They had done what Kovach (2009) suggested and began building relationships. From these relationships, trust was built, and people were able to come together and learn together in a spirit of mawikinutimatimk. This relationality was essential for the success of this collaboration. This school district, like most, faced challenges in addressing systemic racism, particularly as it impacts Black and Indigenous students. This systemic racism is rooted in colonialism that has for far too long shaped the educational experiences of

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Black and Indigenous youth. Efforts to interrupt systemic racism and improve conditions to create equitable learning environments often fail because individual schools and districts are not equipped to provide the deep learning for their educators that results in the kind of second-order change required. Most attempts to address equity are in the form of one-day workshops that cannot substantively address concerns of race and equity. The collaboration we describe moved the district away from these failed approaches through a system-wide commitment supported by the university partnership. The collaboration was not just one intervention, there were multiple parts that came together in a complex and intricate way to bring the multifaceted approach. There were cohorts of graduate students in both CRP and mathematics who were also taking on leadership roles in the district. The communication about the overall goals of CRP and equity was ongoing and involved the senior leadership team of the district, the school principals, the mathematics team who were regularly working in schools, and the university faculty who were involved. Such an approach to communication helped the district to create a consistent and shared message. We believe that to meaningfully interrupt colonial practices in schools, the relational approach employed in this partnership helped to create deep learning and sustainable second-order change. In the true sense of relationality, our work is not finished. We continue to collaborate with the district, renewing our commitments and adjusting our programming to ensure we are supporting their ongoing needs.

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Wendy Mackey is an Assistant Professor of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) and Leadership within the Faculty of Education at St. Francis Xavier University (StFX). She coordinates the CRP Master of Education program and serves as the Chair of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for the Faculty of Education. Her research encompasses educational leadership, educational change, CRP, anti-racist education, and decolonizing education. Her previous roles as an educator include working as the Senior Diversity Advisor for the largest school district in Nova Scotia, serving as Supervisor of Schools, serving as an Elementary School Principal, Elementary and Junior High Vice Principal, and Music teacher. Lisa Lunney Borden is a Professor of mathematics education at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada and holds the John Jerome Paul Chair for Equity in Mathematics Education. Having taught 7–12 mathematics in a Mi’kmaw community, she credits her students and the community for helping her to think differently about mathematics teaching and learning. She is committed to research and outreach that focuses on decolonizing mathematics education through culturally based practices and experiences that are rooted in Indigenous languages and knowledge systems. Lisa teaches courses in mathematics education and Indigenous education. Shelly Maclean is the Director of Programs and Students Services at the Chignecto Central Regional Centre for Education in Nova Scotia, Canada. She is a former Coordinator of African Canadian Education as well as a middle and elementary school administrator with a total of 26 years’ experience. She is committed to changing academic trajectories for historically excluded students through culturally relevant pedagogy with the goal of improving learning for every student. As Director, Shelly continues to set high expectations by promoting culturally relevant practices education policy designed to elevate outcomes specifically for African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaw students.

Chapter 13

The Role of Adaptive Expertise in Sustaining School-University Partnerships in Increasingly Complex Times Amanda McGraw

and Amy Walker

Introduction Adaptive expertise is essential for contemporary teachers, school leaders, and teacher educators, each of whom grapple with increasingly complex professional circumstances (Le Fevre et al., 2020; Soslau, 2012). Adaptive teaching experts self-assess, strategically adjust, and justify plans and decision-making (Soslau, 2012). Adaptive expertise in teaching relies on situational sensitivity and reflection on teachers’ living educational theories and routines (Mannikko & Husu, 2019). While there is a growing body of research into supporting pre-service teachers (PSTs) to develop adaptive expertise (De Arment et al., 2013; Fairbanks et al., 2010; Timperley, 2013; Wetzel et al., 2015), there has been less of a focus on the adaptive expertise of teacher educators and course coordinators, particularly in the context of school-university partnerships. A recent international case study conducted by Brooks (2021) suggests that teacher educators often fail to recognise this expertise and how central it is to dynamic, quality teacher education approaches. This chapter is co-written by Amanda McGraw, a long-term coordinator (17 years) of an Australian Master of Teaching (Secondary) course in a regional university and Amy Walker, an early career academic who lectures in the course. It seeks to examine the nature of adaptive expertise for teacher educators who contend with highly complex and evolving social and educational challenges that impact on schooluniversity partnerships. Recent interrelated challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and teacher workforce shortages have demanded intense levels of problemsolving and responsivity as we shift practices swiftly. In this chapter, we examine how we adapt to construct and embed new partnership possibilities, how we struggle A. McGraw (B) · A. Walker Federation University Australia, Mt Helen, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_13

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to hold tight to what we value in the midst of key challenges, and how we attend to our own tensions, dilemmas, and vulnerabilities. What we learn about our evolving teacher identities as we reposition ourselves is central. We suggest that inquiry practices, including scholarly practitioner research and narrative writing, enable teacher educators to develop and understand adaptive expertise and the role it plays in partnership activity. Finally, we suggest that a discussion about school-university partnerships and sustainability, without a focus on broader contextual factors that impact on education, is limiting. Through the opportunity to write this chapter, we turn to narrative inquiry and autoethnography as tools for becoming metacognitive and giving critical attention to selected school-university partnership incidents and our memories, in the light of what we understand about adaptive expertise. We intentionally use writing as a method for inquiry (Ellis, 2004; Richardson, 1994). Narrative, as “both a mode of reasoning and a mode of representation” (Richardson, 1997, p. 28) enables us to capture the layered, vital experience of working as teacher educators. Through both narrative coherence and dissonance, we find storytelling to be a powerful site for learning and revealing insight (Goodson & Gill, 2011). By representing and juxtaposing our different experiences and perspectives, we draw attention to the emotional and relational aspects of adaptive expertise. By identifying the tensions and “bumping places” (Clandinin, 2013, p. 173) that live between our experiences, we show that strategic adjustment and innovation, in relation to school-university partnership initiatives, is complicated by the evolving social, cultural, and educational contexts we work in. We begin by examining the term adaptive expertise in the context of teacher education. We then describe our school-university partnership context and the innovations that have been embedded in the program until recently. We show, through references to external disruptions, how adaptive expertise in very challenging circumstances enables us to re-imagine partnership initiatives and engage in identity building. As we struggle to sustain quality aspects of our existing partnerships, we also reflect upon the personal and social demands of being responsive to change.

Adaptive Expertise Hatano and Inagaki (1986) first used the term adaptive expertise and contrasted it with routine expertise. They suggested that adaptive expertise is domain-specific because it develops through accumulated experiences and relies upon deep knowledge rather than established patterns of behaviour. What distinguishes adaptive expertise from routine expertise is the capacity to deal in innovative ways with new and unfamiliar problems or situations as they arise (Bohle Carbonell et al., 2014; Bransford et al., 2005). Schwartz et al. (2005) suggest that adaptive experts demonstrate high levels of both efficiency and innovation. They argue that while innovation and adaptability “favour the prepared mind” (p. 30), adaptive experts can move away from what

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is most efficient and resist initial ideas. Overcoming the ‘pull’ of efficiency, while necessary, is no easy task (Schwartz et al., 2005). Adaptive expertise is considered a fundamental aspect of effective teaching and leadership in contemporary education contexts. An OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) publication titled ‘Schooling Redesigned: Towards Innovative Learning Systems’ (2015) argued that “what counts increasingly are the versatilists who are able to apply depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences” (p. 3). Those who adapt well, the report suggests, gain new knowledge, build new relationships, and assume new roles in the process; they learn by positioning and repositioning themselves. Darling-Hammond (2006) too argues that contemporary teachers must be adaptive experts where they “engage in disciplined experimentation, incisive interpretation of complex events, and rigorous reflection to adjust their teaching based on student outcomes” (p. 11). Timperley (2013), in a discussion paper for the Ministry of Education in New Zealand, contended that central to the notion of teacher professionalism is adaptive expertise. Adaptive expertise includes a focus on thinking skills and personal dispositions. Grotzer et al. (2021) suggest that adaptive expertise in workplaces is the ability to be flexible in thinking, to adapt to a range of cultural contexts, and to gain new understandings. They point to six key tendencies demonstrated by adaptive experts: cognitive flexibility, metacognitive self-regulation, seeking future-oriented feedback, building progressive learning paths, gathering information about how human minds work, and a capacity for navigating cultures. In the context of adaptive teaching, Duffy (2002) argues that the modifications and inventions that outstanding teachers make are based on their ‘visioning’—a “conscious sense of self, of one’s work, and of one’s mission” (p. 334). Similarly, Lin et al. (2005) examine the notion of adaptive metacognition which they argue enables successful teaching in unique and highly variable, “deeply social” (p. 246) situations. Their research suggests that metacognition, in teaching contexts where adaption is required, is a useful thinking process for problem finding, setting goals, identity building, and for clarifying values. The ability to make “on the fly adaptions” (Monea et al., 2022, p. 416) and adjustments is regarded as being a core aspect of good teaching practice. De Arment et al. (2013) point to the importance of a preparedness to take risks, a tendency to seek feedback, and to be motivated and curious. In the context of educational leadership, Timperley and Twyford (2022) argue that adaptive expertise also involves the navigation of emotions and vulnerabilities in oneself and others, particularly as people respond collectively and individually to change and uncertainty. They suggest that new learning and change are likely to be embedded if emotional responses are given attention.

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School-University Partnerships in Our Context School-university partnerships that collectively draw upon the expertise and experience of teacher educators, teachers and school leaders enhance theory/practice connections for PSTs (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Forgasz, 2016; Green et al., 2020). While effective partnerships are regarded as being mutually beneficial (Parsons et al., 2016) and as a significant collaboration for ensuring the ‘classroom readiness’ of PSTs (Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, 2014), research also suggests that beneficial collaborations rely on partners having complex understandings of the differences that exist in the organisational cultures of both schools and universities (Miller, 2007). The benefits for both universities and schools of inhabiting a ‘third space’ (Zeichner, 2010), where traditional boundaries are crossed and academic and practitioner knowledge are regarded in less hierarchical ways, are rich and diverse. Through the development of collaborative learning communities, new opportunities for teaching and learning arise (Green et al., 2020). As teacher educators in a regional Australian university in Victoria, our community of partners has involved regional and rural schools. On average, the Master of Teaching (Secondary) course has approximately 60 commencing full-time PSTs who complete an accelerated course over 1.5 years. Until recently, PSTs have largely come from regional and rural communities. While the course has a part-time online stream completed by PSTs who mainly work in other careers while studying, most PSTs prior to 2020 completed the course face-to-face at a regional campus. A formal partnership agreement with a local three-campus government secondary school began 20 years ago. At that time, Amanda, one of the authors of this chapter, was jointly employed by the school and university. She worked as an Assistant Principal responsible for teaching and learning in the school and as a teacher educator in the university. Significantly, a central responsibility of the jointly shared role was to create formal partnership initiatives between the two institutions. Some of those initiatives included: . school students collaborating in inquiry communities with PSTs where the focus was on interrogating school experiences from students’ perspectives; . partnering PSTs and school students together to engage in negotiated special interest projects; . aligning PSTs as mentors to disadvantaged school students; . PSTs designing full day learning events for year 9 students called Dynamite for the Mind; . scheduling university classes in the schools and involving experienced teachers in demonstrations, focused discussion groups, and artefact sharing; and . placing PSTs in small learning communities with experienced teachers for professional placements.

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In her role as a teacher educator in the Master of Teaching (Secondary) course, Amanda saw opportunities to link university assessment tasks to partnership experiences. The experience of mentoring a young person from a disadvantaged background was linked to an examination of research into disadvantage, poverty, literacy learning and educational outcomes (e.g., Comber, 2014; Freire, 1970; Smyth et al., 2010). The experience of observing in classrooms was linked to a narrative inquiry task. The practice of designing workshops for Dynamite for the Mind was linked to a focus on middle years curriculum design. Units that focused on practitioner inquiry could draw upon diverse authentic school experiences to enable the development of an inquiry stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Through formal links to PST assessment, mutual benefits for schools and the university, strong collaborative relationships, and strategic goals and processes developed yearly (Lynch & Smith, 2012), partnership opportunities flourished and were firmly embedded in the course and in school calendars. Annual planning and evaluation meetings, involving school leaders, teacher educators and feedback gathered from PSTs, enabled initiatives to be adapted and enhanced each year. There was no funding associated with partnership initiatives that largely stood outside of professional placements. Relationships were sustained through a stability of people in school leadership roles (largely school principals and assistant principals) who not only saw evidence of mutual benefits but who enjoyed the processes of working together. After three years in the partnership role, Amanda stepped full time into the university. Because of the value she and her colleagues placed on ongoing, direct involvement in schools and participatory research that places a focus on young peoples’ lives and their perspectives on school (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Clandinin et al., 2013; McLeod & Yates, 2006; Smyth & McInerney, 2007), the formal partnership was extended to include other regional and rural schools. Building a cluster of partnership schools meant that the university could capitalise on the diverse cultural and community-based locations of schools to support PSTs to also understand the unique geographic, cultural, educational, and socio-economic features of school communities. The cluster of schools quickly became an active learning community (Smyth & McInerney, 2007) where partners strategically planned and scheduled partnership initiatives each year that took place on-site in diverse schools. The experience of the initial partnership involving one large three-campus school provided a model for the sorts of initiatives that could arise through active partnership work. Other schools, who had heard stories shared through existing networks, recognised the mutual benefit of embedding similar initiatives in their schools. The new cluster of partners included a large regional mainstream government secondary school, a government P-12 rural school, a Specialist School catering for students with disability, a government P-8 Community College (where students, families and carers have access to a full range of health facilities onsite in the school), two regional government primary schools, and two government funded alternative school settings, one in an applied learning context. Key embedded partnership initiatives involving the cluster of schools included the Classroom Intensive where PSTs, experienced teachers from across the cluster, and teacher educators observed in classrooms in a school context over the course of day (McGraw et al., 2016). A protocol was used to

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frame the observation process and to engage in extended dialogue about what was noticed. The non-hierarchical participation of PSTs with experienced teachers aimed to foster an inquiry stance where all participants are intrigued by what is noticed and together engage in wondering and problem posing. Teacher educators and school partners in the cluster soon saw the advantages associated with site-based teacher education. Being on-site in schools enables much more than practice-based education that has a focus on preparing PSTs with professional knowledge and skills (Zeichner, 2012). It can also foster an inquiry stance and the dispositions that enable early career teachers to give critical attention to the complexity of schooling as they move through diverse school spaces, hear divergent voices, and conduct collaborative inquiries into practice (McGraw et al., 2017). All weekly core university unitswere then scheduled in a large mainstream school where a flexible classroom space enabled collaborative learning and the modelling and interrogation of a range of teaching and learning approaches. Based on certain focus areas in our teaching, university classes then moved to other appropriate school sites. For example, when PSTs learned about the development of literacy and numeracy, key classes were held at primary school sites. Learning about disability occurred at the Specialist School, and a focus on community connections and involving parents/ carers in schooling occurred in the P-8 Community School. Together we travelled by bus to the town where our rural partners were situated and spent two whole days observing in classrooms, meeting rural principals, and sharing a special dinner with teachers, prepared by the school’s Food Technology students. We attended the community’s hospital fundraising event, an annual flower show, before boarding the bus to head home. Our financial contribution to the hospital was appreciated and PSTs collaboratively created a floral sculpture which was entered in the show each year. PSTs and teacher educators lunched with local community members and learned about living in rural communities. A valuing of person-centred (Fielding, 2006) approaches in teacher education underpinned these partnership initiatives where learning occurs in social networks of activity (Vygotsky, 1978) and narrative storytelling enables sense-making (Goodson & Gill, 2011; McGraw et al., 2017). These experiences form an orienting framework for the enhancement of PSTs’ personal practical theories that Mannikko and Husu (2019) suggest are an important source for teachers’ adaptive decision-making and behaviours. Our course’s focus on school-university partnerships has seen many twists and turns over time where a clear and determined focus on innovation has enabled adaption and improvement. The adaptions made are fuelled by a valuing of the emergent and responsive nature of teacher education that is relational, sometimes unpredictable, and contingent on people taking agency. This sort of teacher education aims to foster deep understanding of the local and the interconnections to larger, more conceptual educational issues (Cochran-Smith et al., 2014)—what Greene (1995) might refer to as “seeing things small” and “looking at things large” (p. 16). Such school-university partnership initiatives are necessarily flexible in nature as teacher educators respond to the rhythms of schools and the learning of PSTs (Burridge et al., 2016).

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A key feature of our partnerships was the involvement of school leaders in the conceptualisation and re-conceptualisation of the course. During the 17 years that Amanda has coordinated the Master of Teaching (Secondary), the course has been accredited twice by the state accreditation authority, the Victorian Institute of Teaching. We are in the process of preparing for accreditation again in 2024. Accreditation offers an opportunity to re-evaluate courses, adapt teaching and learning approaches to current research, and reflect upon partnership work. The direct involvement of our school partners in accreditation processes has enabled critical thinking and innovation. A key example of this is the development of our focus on dispositions in the course. A framework of selected dispositions central to effective teaching and professional learning originated in a brainstorming session involving teacher educators, school partners, and graduates where the question was posed: What sort of teachers do we want our course to develop? In categorising the ideas that were put forward, we noticed that many of the teacher qualities were dispositional in nature— and that they stood outside of the national framework of teaching standards. We used those emergent ideas to draft the first research-informed framework of dispositions that underpins unit design and assessment criteria. We have examined the activation of the dispositions in school partnership experiences through scholarly research. A recent research project showed the link between the dispositions and teacher resilience in challenging teaching situations for PSTs (McGraw & McDonough, 2019). The relative smallness of our course and the strength of relationships that exist in our regional context contributed to the evolving and sustained nature of our community-based school-university partnerships. With a university-wide focus on the importance of mutually beneficial partnerships and ‘living our values’, our university enabled autonomy and a freedom to pursue partnership initiatives, be responsive to change, and experiment with alternative course structures. While an environment of collaboration enabled a productive and seemingly harmonious basis for adaption, problem solving, and responsivity to flourish, we were unprepared for the level of disruption that recently unsettled our school-university partnerships—and for the level of adaptive expertise required by us.

Experiences of Disruption While the critical disruption of dominant ideologies (Suity, 2019) and personal assumptions (Brookfield, 1995) are considered important in teacher education, the disruption that occurs to teaching and learning in teacher education courses through external forces is an under-theorised area (Panther et al., 2021). In their phenomenological case study, Panther et al. (2021) asked their teacher education students to describe educational disruption. One PST suggested that to define the term in the context of the recent COVID-19 pandemic would minimise the complexity of the experience: “… to say that we could define this word as if that’s going to tell the

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story? No! Not even” (p. 332). Panther et al. (2021) describe disruption, in the context of the pandemic, as having overlapping and intersecting effects. In this chapter we interrogate our responses to two intersecting and external forces that have disrupted our school-university partnerships: the COVID-19 pandemic, and a sudden and urgent government response to mounting workforce challenges in secondary teaching in the state of Victoria in Australia. We interrogate key experiences by taking an inquiry stance. Working from an inquiry stance “involves a continual process of making current arrangements problematic” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 121); of questioning the ways our knowledge and our practice are constructed. Another key aspect of inquiry into practice is to investigate the problems and contexts of practice collaboratively (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). To do this, in this chapter we engage in narrative writing together. Amy is a new academic in teacher education who began teaching core units in the Master of Teaching (Secondary) course in 2020. Prior to this she taught in schools and completed her doctoral studies. In 2019, the school where we taught our university core courses on-site underwent a major building program that meant that the spaces we inhabited were required by the school. Core units therefore returned to the university campus. The intention was that this would be a short-term hiccough in our course and that we would return to on-site teaching and our embedded partnership initiatives the following year. However, due to COVID-19, we were unable to return in 2020 and all classes, out of necessity, pivoted to on-line learning. Challenges related to the pandemic only served to increase the complexity of schooling (Timperley & Twyford, 2022) and looming workforce shortages in secondary teaching were suddenly upon us. Amy had no direct experience of previous partnership experiences when she began teaching in the Master of Teaching (Secondary) course. While she knew that partnership work was central in the course, in the units she taught, she saw little direct evidence of this. Our starting point for narrative writing was to consider our teaching and leadership in the context of challenges to our school-university partnerships due to external forces related to the COVID-19 pandemic and a new partnership with the state government that has a focus on meeting urgent workforce challenges in secondary schools. We each privately selected key incidents to write about in short narrative vignettes. We then pooled our narrative vignettes and looked for interconnections and emerging themes. We purposefully selected four narratives to include here that we examine in the light of our understandings about adaptive expertise. But first, we continue with the broader narrative of our evolving school-university partnership experience to further explore our professional knowledge landscape (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995), that rocky territory where partnerships evolve and are abandoned due to complex temporal, relational, and situational circumstances. In 2020, the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET) called for teacher education providers to put forward innovative solutions to accelerate eligible students’ entry into the secondary school teaching workforce. Acute challenges to workforce supply in rural, regional, and outer-metropolitan locations led to the state government offering attractive funding opportunities to universities, who were invited to put forward new and innovative pathways, and to eligible university students who

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agreed to undertake one of the selected teaching courses. The shortage of staff, further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (Clare, 2022), quickly became real and urgent with nine in 10 school principals who responded to a survey (commissioned by the Australian Education Union in late 2022) suggesting that they may not be able to staff all classes with qualified teachers in 2023 (Carey, 2022). Prior to 2020 our orientation program at the end of February involved three days in partnership schools. The Orientation Week at the end of February enabled us to foreground our school-university partnerships and to orient PSTs into an inquiry mind set. Focus group interviews with school students, conversations with parents, and focused narratives told by teachers and school principals were organised during the orientation program. Key inquiry questions considered on these days included: What is education for? What are the qualities of great teachers? What multiple roles do teachers play in their everyday work? What is the nature of inquiry in the context of teaching? What impact does student voice have on classroom learning? A few days prior to Orientation Week in 2020, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, we made the decision based on government and university advice to cancel our planned three-day experience in schools and to run the orientation program online in a single day. This was the beginning of our disconnect with school partners as each of us bunkered down separately to live from day-to-day and focus on what could be efficiently delivered within constraints. Then, in 2021, the Master of Teaching (Secondary) course was selected to take part in the Victorian government’s response to the workforce shortage. We, and prospective PSTs, were offered lucrative financial stipends to participate and so we adapted the course to make it more flexible and attractive to people living all over the state. Now, PSTs reside in all parts of the state of Victoria. As part of the workforce initiative, PSTs are employed in schools as paraprofessionals in the last six months of the course and we work with the government to suitably match PSTs to schools in their local areas that have staffing needs. Out of necessity and by being responsive to changing educational circumstances, we quickly pivoted to virtual classes to accommodate our changed cliental and to abide by COVID-19 restrictions. In 2022, finding that online learning didn’t allow us to model and examine a full range of teaching and learning approaches or support us to get to know the PSTs in the way we were accustomed, we moved our teaching to newly created connected classrooms. We redesigned our approaches to involve a mix of online self-paced learning and fortnightly classes that were virtual for those at a distance and face-to-face for those close by. Many of our embedded school-university partnership initiatives became problematic and on-site classes in schools were impossible. Wanting to hang on to the value our partners provided our PSTs and us as educators, we further adapted our structural approaches and embedded three two-day intensives located in our partnership schools and required PSTs to stay overnight in our town so that this could occur. We now focus in this chapter on selected narrative vignettes we each wrote separately as we reflected on the disruptions and their impact to our connections with

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schools. As we interpreted our vignettes, we noticed a deep sense of loss and disconnectedness in our storytelling. The move away from schools due to external disruptions highlighted conflicted teacher identities and on Amanda’s behalf, a deep sadness for what was lost. Amy, in the throes of finding herself as a teacher educator, battled with PSTs’ disconnection from school experiences and with the task of making learning meaningful in an online environment. She had to fill spaces in curriculum left open because of the experiential and generative nature of teaching and learning in our partnership contexts and sometimes this felt inauthentic. The move away from a hybridised approach and the collaborative relationships that can fuel innovative teaching and learning approaches based on deep knowledge in the domain created new challenges that seemed to pull us toward adaptions that better enabled efficiency rather than innovation.

Narrative Vignette One: Orienting PSTs on Day One (Amanda) I remember the PSTs’ orientation program in 2020 with a deep sense of loss and dissatisfaction. I was a sole disembodied voice explaining to largely faceless people online our expectations, our working principles, and the key features of the course. As I spoke, I felt ingenuine. Relaying our purpose and beliefs without the substance of life, and moving through quickly modified Power Point slides, I imagined bodies sleepy in half-lit bedrooms and mindless notetaking. I spun through dot points focusing their attention with a smattering of classroom-based stories and a forced sense of optimism and cheer. By the end of the session, I had no idea who they were and what they understood. Alone in my office I pressed ‘leave meeting’ feeling empty and dissatisfied. A bureaucratic version of myself. I lamented the absence of my usual teacherly self: invitational and responsive rather than didactic; giving attention to arising problems, possibilities, insights, personal connections rather than focusing on a disconnected body of information and expectations. I missed getting to know the PSTs through their conversations and observations, that early establishment of relationships. A year later in 2021, I was determined not to repeat that experience. Still forbidden from entering schools, I organised three teachers from three of our different school partners to join us online while we sat in a darkened lecture theatre. The experienced teachers were invited to use the statement ‘Why I teach’ as a focal point. We had used this stimulus before when we gathered groups of teachers into school classrooms in our partner schools in previous orientation sessions. Inevitably, the teachers in the past, in the context of their school, spoke about their values, their relationships with young people, about wanting to make a difference in peoples’ lives, about their curiosities and concerns, about being motivated by daily and unpredictable challenges. In that informal, social space, the PSTs in the past participated actively in the dialogue interweaving their own heartfelt ambitions and concerns about entering the profession. In the context of the darkened lecture theatre, the talk was different. The teachers turned to giving advice about what to do (and not do) on placement, how to apply for jobs, and how best to teach online. One teacher spoke way too much with no dialogue to break and bolster her thoughts.

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Narrative Vignette Two: Conducting a Narrative Inquiry with No Access to Classrooms (Amy) Confused faces framed in little black boxes on the screen. Other boxes, no faces, with two centred initials; sometimes boxes filled with a fuzzy headshot. Noticeably though, a list of names on the side, absent. My head and shoulders trapped in my own small box, nestled in the bottom right-hand corner. I wonder, does my confusion show? I’m not sure if this will work, divorcing the narrative inquiry task from the classroom observations. Student and lecturer frustration mirrored through the screen. Must project confidence. Explore two important teaching and learning experiences through any type of narrative – poem, spoken word, illustrations. Some comply, asking questions, engaging, enthusiastic. Can I do spoken word? Can I use something that happened to me? Others unwilling. But we haven’t been in schools yet. I don’t understand. This type of writing is too hard. Me, now, a negotiator. We have to alter this task. Find inspiration around you. The pandemic. The media. Use your imagination – what’s it like for teachers? For students? A few more adapt, come with me into uncertainty. Some still unwilling to follow, do not trust me. But, the rubric says… How will you mark us? And so it continued. This explanation again and again for students absent, for students unsure, for those needing reassurance. Each time, me growing more confident that this was okay, but knowing – on some level – it wasn’t.

Narrative Vignette Three: Shifting Partner Relationships (Amanda) Suddenly, my conversations with school leaders are focused on the pragmatics of employment. Sometimes I feel like a dating agency. The intricate task of matching a student to a suitable teaching context for employment takes time and there are multiple conversations between school leaders, DET personnel, our Professional Experience team, the Victorian Institute of Teaching who approve Permission to Teach, and of course, the PSTs themselves. Ensuring readiness before the course is completed creates a new sense of urgency, a new

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focus on the practical -perhaps at the expense of the critical, the relational, the complicated connections between theory and practice. The Victorian Department of Education is now our legal partner. We’re formally contracted to ensure readiness quickly. We meet fortnightly to ensure our processes are smooth and efficient. The government broker new conversations between us and schools we have never had contact with. This to and fro of organisational talk takes most of my time. There are mutual benefits for all of us in this evolving arrangement. We support one another and we engage in collaborative problem solving, but the teachers and their school students, who were intertwined in our teacher education experience, are largely absent. I particularly miss our access to young people who can be counted on to push the boundaries of our thinking.

Narrative Vignette Four: Gap Filling with Content (Amy) A trip to a school? Another one? Wow, they had so many visits to schools. As a PST, that would have been beneficial to be in a classroom with students so often. They would have learned so much. More than I can teach them here! I wish that I could have had that experience. Oh, but wait, what does that mean for me now…no content! What do I do? Hmm, I will read through. There’s just a little explanation here, oh, but it’s around unpacking their school experiences and making themes. Group work. This won’t be possible unless they’ve been in a school. We could talk about their own school experiences – but that may trigger some of them. No Moodle Book. No Power Point presentation. It all draws from their observations. I can see how this would work really well – and build into the Narrative Inquiry and Journal assessments. The students would gain so much. But now? Nothing. No direct experience. How am I supposed to make this work? I’m unsure. Ah, I’m frustrated. Maybe if I knew more. I will have to seek advice. I feel embarrassed to know so little. I have to be fair to myself, I’ve just come on board. But I’m unsure how to fill all these gaps. Trying to engage students, keep them motivated and interested, trying to share personal experiences, to “keep it real.” This only works for so long. Students become disinterested with my stories, sharing their experiences, videos. A class that would have normally focused on unpacking situations that PSTs observed in schools becomes focused on content disconnected from experience.

Discussion In pooling our narrative vignettes, we collaboratively looked for interconnections and emerging themes. We purposefully selected four narratives to include in this chapter and now, in the light of our understandings about adaptive expertise, we highlight two key themes.

Losing Our Third Space The idea of collaborative school-university partnerships operating as a ‘third space’ has been used to illustrate how traditional boundaries between school and university are blurred. Soja (1996) suggested that the third space is the ‘lived space’ where

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notions of the real and the ideal can be contested and reimagined (Green et al., 2020); a hybrid, disruptive space of productive instability (Gannon, 2010) where theory/practice and university/school binaries can be reimagined or abandoned in an alternative view of teacher education (Forgasz, 2016; Zeichner, 2010). Gannon (2010) re-examines Soja’s (1996) notions in the context of teacher education and draws attention to the collective creation of a space that is tentative and flexible, where complexity is foregrounded as an interweaving of the social, the historical, and the spatial. In the last four years we have largely lost our third space. Amanda grieves for the dynamic, collaborative opportunities this created for inquiry, connection-making, and critical scrutiny, while Amy feels the impact, as a new academic, of working with curriculum documentation that was designed with boundary crossing in mind. For her, the reliance on her own bank of stories flattens the experience and in time becomes routine. While the pandemic and the focus on workforce shortage are powerful forces that have shifted the course away from on-site teaching, the valuing of what can be achieved through partnerships is still a strong motivation for innovation. Partly this is because of Amanda’s history with the course; her rich memories exist as a motivational force for reviving what once was possible. Scheduling block intensives located in our partner schools is one way to keep our sustained partnerships alive and to step sporadically into a third space. The new partnerships we are developing with government and schools outside of our region may also lead to innovations in time. As we reposition ourselves, we must intentionally ensure, through reflection, dialogue, and conscious decision-making, that new initiatives are fuelled by personal practical theories that value flexibility, creativity, and deep learning (Mannikko & Husu, 2019) in genuine teaching and learning contexts. However, disrupted by complex interrelated forces beyond our control, we understand the fragile nature of the third space that is formed largely through good will and people having the energy, opportunity, and time to come together and think and plan collaboratively and creatively.

Adaptive Expertise in Increasingly Complex Times Do we exhibit adaptive expertise? This question is difficult to answer. Writing this chapter and inquiring into our practice has certainly enabled us to deeply examine the concept in relation to our lived experiences. We can see the need to balance efficiency with innovation (Schwartz et al., 2005) but also understand the ‘pull’ of efficiency and routine when external contextual forces are highly challenging. We see value in being what the OECD (2015) refer to as ‘versatilists’ and yet adaption on its own, without a conscious focus on personal practical theories related to quality teacher education and a working context that values responsivity and partnerships, seems void. Like Grotzer et al. (2021) we see the importance of thinking dispositions to adaptive expertise. Understandings about how human minds work, a capacity to navigate and respect different school cultures, being open minded and metacognitive,

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and designing progressive learning paths that enable change to flourish (Grotzer et al., 2021), are certainly ways of thinking that we aspire to activate. We also value and aim to create working conditions where emotional responses are given value and attention (Timperley & Twyford, 2022). What we have discovered through this narrative inquiry is that, in our context, highly challenging circumstances required decision-making associated with efficiency because the circumstances were highly unpredictable and some of the options for innovation were not available. Innovations in school-university partnerships, for us, have flourished in a time where the variables have not been so complicated, when the wellbeing of stakeholders was not so visibly under threat, and when time was available for partners to build relationships based on trust, respect, and reciprocity (Le Cornu, 2015). It is, therefore, worth examining in greater detail how broader cultural, educational, political, and social factors impact on partnerships and their sustainability. In some circumstances, as teacher educators, we have no choice but to let go.

Conclusion We suggest that opportunities for teacher educators to engage in narrative inquiry should be created and valued so that we grow to understand and appreciate the complexity of our work, particularly as we build and engage in evolving schooluniversity partnerships. Practitioner inquiry and narrative storytelling are embedded learning experiences in our Master of Teaching (Secondary) course. It is vital for us, as teacher educators, to engage in those same processes alongside PSTs; to examine our experiences through writing and to also share and explore our vulnerabilities. While we work to maintain our relationships with local school leaders and teachers and continue to embed school-university partnership initiatives in our course through the two-day intensives scheduled during the year, we sense we are travelling deeper into new territory where external forces will continue to re-shape and challenge what is possible. Key in our thoughts is a desire not to adapt mindlessly as the pull of efficiency bears upon us.

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Suity, M. B. (2019). Teacher preparation as interruption or disruption? Understanding identity (re)construction for critical inclusion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 81, 38–49. Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG). (2014). Action now: Classroom ready teachers. Australian Government Department of Education. Timperley, H. (2013, March). Learning to practise: A paper for discussion. Paper prepared for the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Wellington. Timperley, H., & Twyford, K. (2022). Adaptive expertise in educational leadership: Embracing complexity in leading today’s schools. Australian Educational Leader, 44(1), 8–12. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press. Wetzel, A. P., De Arment, S. T., & Reed, E. (2015). Building teacher candidates’ adaptive expertise: Engaging experienced teachers in prompting reflection. Reflective Practice, 16(4), 546–558. Zeichner, K. M. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 89–99. Zeichner, K. (2012). The turn once again toward practice-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 63, 376–382.

Associate Professor Amanda McGraw is Coordinator of the Master of Teaching (Secondary) course at Federation University Australia. She engages in a range of sustained teacher professional learning projects and is currently the academic advisor for the Victorian Teaching Excellence Program. Her research interests include school-university partnerships, teacher professional learning, dispositions in teaching, and the teaching of English in secondary schools. She is a life member of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English (VATE), serves on the VATE Council, and each year facilitates a Collaborative Inquiry Community of teachers. Dr Amy Walker is an early career researcher currently employed as a Lecturer in Secondary Education in the Institute of Education, Arts and Community at Federation University Australia. Prior to taking on this role, Amy worked a sessional lecturer while completing her Ph.D. Amy has also lectured in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program. Prior to her roles at Federation University, Amy taught English in secondary school.

Chapter 14

Leveraging a School–University Partnership Model Through the Process of Co-design: A Case Study of One Australian School–University Partnership and Its Developmental Stages Melanie Nash , Allison Byth , Emilio Kardaris, Nerinda Hodgson, Angela Fitzgerald , and Simone White

Introduction In recent years, after several reviews into initial teacher education (ITE) (Council of Australia Governments [COAG], 2009; Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group [TEMAG], 2014) Australian policy reform has focused on universities and schools establishing strong partnerships that deliver a collaborative approach to ITE. Indeed, over this time, partnership have moved from being encouraged to being mandated in accreditation. Consequently, the national body that accredits ITE M. Nash (B) · A. Byth · E. Kardaris · A. Fitzgerald · S. White RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Byth e-mail: [email protected] E. Kardaris e-mail: [email protected] A. Fitzgerald e-mail: [email protected] S. White e-mail: [email protected] N. Hodgson Montmorency South Primary School, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_14

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programs in Australia, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL, 2015, 2016, 2019) outlined the development of “partnerships” as one of six key principles for national accreditation, stating that partnerships must involve “shared responsibilities and obligations among teacher education providers, schools, teachers, employers, and teacher regulatory authorities” (AITSL, 2016, p. 1). A principle outcome of this change to accreditation requirements has been recognising the importance of developing collective agency through opportunities for ITE providers and schools to combine knowledge, skills, and resources (AITSL, 2016). In 2015, the State Government of Victoria through the Department of Education and Training (DoET) introduced an initiative called Teaching Academies of Professional Practice (TAPP) as a direct response to both TEMAG and the National Inquiry into Teacher Education findings (Hartsuyker et al., 2007; TEMAG, 2014). The TAPP initiative offered financial grants to promote the development of partnerships between a university ITE provider and a cluster of schools (Grimmett et al., 2018; Victoria State Government Education and Training, 2020). The initial aim of the TAPP was for universities and schools to form collaborative partnerships to facilitate immersive preparation opportunities for pre-service teachers (Grimmett et al., 2018; Victoria State Government Education and Training, 2020). Over time, this has extended to encompass other needs such as providing professional learning for school-based staff, strengthening mentoring practices, and developing collaborative research leading to enhanced course delivery (Nash et al., 2022; Victoria State Government Education and Training, 2020). The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University secured one of the initial grants in 2015 and formed a community of practice called the North Melbourne TAPP with a cluster of 15 local primary schools. The initial funding resulted in the successful development of an authentic and continually evolving partnership between the school partners and the university, where all stakeholders’ voices and opinions have been valued. The longevity of the partnership can be attributed to both school and university teacher educators working relationally (Edwards, 2010) through the collaborative design and shared delivery of a core professional experience course (the term ‘course’ is used to describe an individual subject or unit) within the Bachelor of Primary Education (B.Ed. Prim) degree program. Collaborative design has both underpinned the community of practice which formed between schools and the university and worked to traverse the often-mentioned theory-practice divide. This chapter explores the evolution of the North Melbourne TAPP and the newly funded Ovens Murray TAPP through the voices of four stakeholders who occupy distinct roles within the community. It presents their experiences of engaging within this school–university partnership and uses these to help map the key learnings that have resulted in the TAPP’s evolution to date.

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Literature Review Prominent educational research contends that to develop quality ITE programs strong partnerships need to be leveraged between universities and schools (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Grudnoff et al., 2017). This involves building trust and respect between partners to develop shared understandings and a shared vision in order to prepare future teachers for a career in the school environment (Loughland & Nguyen, 2020). Developing professional learning communities that engage participants with differing expertise to design curriculum and provide support for pre-service teachers is possibly a solution. This brief literature review focuses on four key ideas that underpin the North Melbourne TAPP partnership and help frame the new Ovens Murray project. Namely: . . . .

Professional learning communities; Collaborative design; Relational agency; Coaching.

Professional Learning Communities Professional learning communities (PLCs) provide a powerful framework for educators to share and reflect on their practices, collaborate with their peers, and ultimately improve learning (Hord, 1997; Stoll et al., 2006). These communities are built on the idea that individual and collective capacity is crucial for sustained improvement and growth. By sharing their own knowledge, experiences, and resources, educators can learn from one another and develop a deeper understanding of their professional work. PLCs developed between university and school-based educators have the potential to build personal, interpersonal, and organizational domains (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000), and this occurs through a process of educators deconstructing and reconstructing their professional narratives. This process of reflection and inquiry allows for the development of norms and values, critical analysis, and structures which can lead to improvement in the delivery of initial teacher education (Cochran-Smith, 2003). Central to the concept of PLCs is the community itself, which emphasizes mutually supportive relationships and collective deliberation (Stoll et al., 2006; Wenger et al., 2002). They provide a context where educators can move beyond viewing individual practice as the norm and embrace collaborative conceptualisation and design. This can lead to a greater understanding of each other’s professional work and ways to improve it (Ewing et al., 2020).

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Collaborative Design Collaborative design (co-design) between university and school-based educators is increasingly gaining traction as an approach to enhance the quality of learning experienced by pre-service teachers participating in professional practice placements (Winslade et al., 2022). The co-design process can be used to encourage educators from the two different perspectives of the teacher preparation system to work in tandem to design and develop effective teaching and learning curriculum for preservice teachers. As educators participate in the co-design approach they exchange perspectives, share knowledge, and learn from each other’s expertise (Voogt et al., 2018). Developing a shared vision though a process of co-design can work to dispel the recurring theme in ITE of the theory-practice divide. This is the tension between university-based learning about teaching, which is seen as theoretical, and school-based learning, which is seen as situated practical experience (Baumfield & Butterworth, 2007; Ng et al., 2010; Nguyen & Loughland, 2018). Working together through co-design university and school educators can develop strong professional learning communities, which can help professional learning and growth. Reciprocal sharing in co-design can both transform the learning of an individual and the group (Rogoff, 1994) leading to sense of shared or relational agency.

Relational Agency For co-design to occur in a professional learning community, members must interact regularly and learn in collaboration. Edwards’ (2010) theory of relational agency— that is, the “capacity to align one’s thoughts and actions with those of others in order to interpret problems of practice and to respond to those interpretations” (p. 169)— offers a way to cultivate the community’s co-design process. Her theory explains how strong forms of agency can be developed through collaborations that involve working across boundaries between cultures and practices—for example, university educators, school-based educators, and pre-service teachers working in concert across a school–university partnership (Nash et al., 2022). Relational agency develops as a two-stage process within a constant dynamic that consists of: (i) working with others to expand the “object of activity” or task being worked on by recognising the motives and the resources that others bring to bear as they, too, interpret it; and (ii) aligning one’s own responses to the newly enhanced interpretations with the responses being made by the other professionals while acting on the expanded object. (Edwards, 2010, p. 14)

Edwards (2010) contends that when working with others in response to a complex problem or task, members of a community have the capacity to further their learning and build capability. She considers that a professional learning community can offer

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support and coaching for those who are less confident in their knowledge such as preservice teachers and “is relevant to the work of practitioners who may feel vulnerable when acting responsively and alone without the protection of established protocols” (p. 14).

Coaching Coaching concentrates on instructional support and in education it has developed as an on-the-job professional learning opportunity for both experienced teachers (Ben-Peretz et al., 2018; Desimone & Pak, 2017; Squires, 2019) and early career teachers alike (Shernoff et al., 2015). Coaching is a deliberate and focused learning approach that requires specific knowledge, technique, and skills (MacLennan, 1995). Ideally, coaching occurs within a reciprocal relationship whereby the coach learns with those they coach (MacLennan, 1995), in a manner that results in shared responsibility and distributed expertise (Clifton & Jordan, 2022). Within an initial teacher education context, the coach has been envisaged as a ‘boundary rider’ who, as a hybrid educator, forges connections between school and university’s knowledge and practices (Burns & Baker, 2016; Clifton & Jordan, 2019; Elsden-Clifton & Jordan, 2016). The effectiveness of coaching for teachers’ professional learning was examined by Kraft et al. (2018) in a meta-analysis. Key findings concluded that 90% of coaching models were most effective when paired with at least one professional learning or group training, and when instructional resources and materials were used (Kraft et al., 2018). To be effective, coaching must occur in a high volume and as such it is a resource intensive and costly approach. Cost therefore is a significant consideration and sometimes a barrier to coaching and in response, Kraft et al. (2018) ideate that to mitigate the cost virtual coaching and specific instructional practices should be examined.

Context of the Research As noted earlier, RMIT University’s successful tender to establish the North Melbourne TAPP led to the development of an innovative partnership model that linked a core course within the Bachelor of Primary Education (B.Ed. Prim) degree program with 15 local primary schools. The model, first implemented in August 2015, introduced the core professional experience course taken in the second year of the bachelor’s degree titled ‘Connected classrooms’. This course promoted learning opportunities for pre-service teachers and educators to collaborate, professionally connect, and to interact. This was accomplished through distributed expertise, shared responsibility, interactive learning, and localised and adapted core content (Elsden-Clifton & Jordan, 2015). The course’s overarching

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framework promoted the delivery of a series of workshops for pre-service teachers equally across the two sites—the university and partnership schools’ campuses. This structure enabled the distribution of the course’s theory and practice elements and sought to address the perceived theory to practice divide. The structure also required schools to host a large group of pre-service teachers depending on their school size. Typically, schools host between eight and sixteen pre-service teachers (Nash et al., 2022). Key structures were established within the partnership schools, and community roles were designed to support these structures. One of these roles was that of the school-based coach (SBC), a member of a school’s teaching community who is selected by the school’s principal leadership team to act as a “boundary rider” (Nash et al., 2022) between the university and their school community. The SBC is paid by RMIT as a short-term sessional (temporary) position, and they are the first point of contact in their school for pre-service teachers and mentor teachers alike during the professional experience placement. The SBC also delivers course content by facilitating site-based workshops at their school to connect theory to practice and conduct weekly one-to-one coaching sessions for each pre-service teacher (Nash et al., 2022). The SBCs are usually leading teachers or accomplished teachers within a school. However, some school principals have also used this role as professional learning opportunity to encourage potential leaders to develop their skills within the role, so building capacity within their school. RMIT University host a planning and professional learning day each year which provides SBCs with the opportunity to collaboratively evaluate the previous year’s course and to make changes. Also, to further develop skills in coaching, SBCs participate in professional learning modules covering topics such as—managing difficult conversations and developing non-judgemental classroom observation skills (Kriewaldt et al., 2017). The role of the SBC facilitates a three-way partnership between university educators, school educators and pre-service teachers. Over a period of nine years, RMIT University educators have worked relationally with school-based educators to continually grow and develop the North Melbourne TAPP partnership. The intended focus of this case study was to two-fold: (1) To explore the significant changes that have occurred since 2018, as educators from university and partnership schools have collaboratively reconceptualised and re-designed this core second-year professional experience course, which is now called ‘Using assessment, data and reporting’. (2) To develop a process model of the partnership to illustrate the stages that have occurred since the inception of the partnerships in 2015.

Research Design and Participants In this study we used a qualitative case study methodology (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). To capture the richness of our partnership and the co-design process, a narrative inquiry approach was utilised (Clandinin & Caine, 2013). This methodological

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approach allowed for the construction of narratives from each stakeholder’s separate position and lived experience of the partnership. Stakeholders shared their selfreflective accounts to enable a deeper knowledge and understanding of the TAPP project’s impact on both university and school partners. This approach is sympathetic to the concept of relational agency as it provides participants with a way to share through narrative their professional standpoints, values, and motives for being involved with the project. This in turn expands understanding of the project or “object of activity” (Edwards & Kinti, 2013, p. 136). Each participant constructed their narrative in response to the following questions: 1. What have been your personal experiences of the North Melbourne TAPP partnership journey so far? 2. How has the partnership developed during your involvement? It was anticipated that from these questions we would be able to map a chronological storyline that would move from past to present to future, demonstrating the happenings that have led to successive stages of development of the TAPP (Elliott, 2005; Polkinghorne, 1995). Each narrative was analysed for commonalities of remembrance and identification of such happenings or events, these were used to augment the understanding of the developmental stages of a school-partnership process model that has emerged over a period of nine years. The four participant stakeholders in this research included a school-based coach; course coordinator for the core professional experience course ‘Using assessment data and reporting’; the academic director of professional experience from 2018 to 2022 (ADPX); and broker for the regional partnership. While this research followed university ethical guidelines and was approved by the university ethics committee (#2022-25567-18629), the case study is unique in that four of its authors were also its research participants and therefore readily identifiable. Nerinda is a highly accomplished teacher and school-based coordinator at a primary school and was one of the original school collaborators who participated in establishing the North Melbourne TAPP. She took on the role of school-based coach in 2015 and is enthusiastic about the benefits of hosting preservice teachers within a fully supported partnership model. Allison, a lecturer at RMIT University’s School of Education, began work within the North Melbourne TAPP partnership in 2016. She was employed to support coaches and help them triage any issues that might eventuate while preservice teachers were on placement. The role placed her in a unique position where she worked closely with coaches and mentors and established strong working relationships. In 2018, she was appointed course coordinator for this core professional experience course and, during her time in this role, she has led the changes to the course design and continued to be heavily involved with partnership schools. Melanie joined RMIT’s School of Education in 2018 as the academic director of professional experience (ADPX). In her capacity as ADPX she became involved in the Committee of Management for the TAPP and contributed to professional learning days for coaches. With Allison and the then program manager, she contributed to the re-envisioning of the course and co-design process. Although she is no longer the

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ADPX she is still involved in the management of the North Melbourne TAPP and its evolution to a new regional setting. Emilio is the partnership broker and joined the North Melbourne TAPP in July 2022, with the explicit portfolio of evolving the TAPP into a regional location. He is a qualified teacher and working in ITE at RMIT University.

Emergent Partnership Process Model In 2018 in a quest to continually strengthen the professional experience aspect of ITE for stakeholders and to further develop the partnership, university and school educators introduced a deliberate cycle of reflection, planning, implementation, and adaptation. Figure 14.1 illustrates, in a process model, how our partnership has developed over the years. The process model for the partnership is comprised of four stages the establishment, enhancement, expansion, and evolution, of the TAPP community.

Establish Community Establishment of the community partnership, as previously mentioned, took place in 2015 when 15 schools were invited to join with RMIT University to create a community of practice that would alter the way that schools and universities worked to deliver professional experience placements for pre-service teachers. Instead of sending individual pre-service teachers out to school for their professional experience

Fig. 14.1 Progression of the North Melbourne TAPP. Adapted from Saint-Onge and Wallace (2003)

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placement, we agreed with our 15 school partners to send groups of pre-service teachers to each school based on the size of the school and the available mentor teachers. This resulted in the partnership schools taking between 8 and 10 pre-service teachers depending on the schools’ size. To support the pre-service teachers and mentors in each partnership the school the role of the school-based coach (described previously) was established. The pedagogical content focus of this placement was based on a Victorian DoET priority of the time, to integrate digital technologies in the primary curriculum. Pre-service teachers were aided by individual mentors in their endeavours in the classroom to develop this focus and supported by the SBC.

Enhance Community In 2018 the sub-communities of pre-service teachers and SBCs were invited by university educators to participate in an evaluation of the current iteration of the TAPP. The results of this evaluation identified that while the infrastructure of the TAPP was considered sound, the pedagogic focus and course content needed to undergo a change. At this point educators from the TAPP partnership schools were invited to contribute to redesigning the pedagogical focus and to collaboratively design the course content and assessment materials. Co-design was emphasised as it was important to work in tandem with school partners to priorities aspects of teacher professional learning that would benefit RMIT University’s pre-service teachers during their placement and in their future careers. The direction chosen was again influenced by a Victorian DoET initiative and this was to incorporate PLCs into the course and to focus on evidence informed pedagogies, the existing course was renamed—Using assessment, data and reporting.

Expand Community After the first year of the course ‘Using assessment data and reporting’, a progress review was completed. The sub-communities of the pre-service teachers and SBCs participated this review, feeding back on the new course structure and co-designed modifications. Minor changes were suggested such as altering the lesson plan proforma ensuring that it was in line with the proforma used in schools and adding some video resources. During 2020 and 2021, the TAPP partnership was impacted by COVID-19, and school placements were placed in turmoil as schools in Victoria were closed for lengthy periods of time. As schools began to open, consultation once again began with TAPP partners on how to support the return of pre-service teachers to the classroom. At this juncture it became evident that for placement to resume mentor teachers would need extra support, so leading to the expansion of the TAPP to include the mentor sub-community.

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Evolve Community In 2022, RMIT University were successful in securing further funding from the Victorian DoET to move the TAPP model into a regional area. This evolution of the TAPP has just begun and involves the development of partnerships with primary schools in the Ovens Murray region of Victoria. This region is geographically in the far North of Victoria, close to the border of NSW. It is proposed that this new partnership will link with a third-year professional practice experience course in the Bachelor of Education degree titled ‘Classroom, cultures and communication’. Even at this early stage of development it is evident that variations in the structure of TAPP will be required that support a very different context, community and ‘on country’ experience. While the general features of the partnership remain the same, changes in the approach are being considered, for example, the incorporation of a new ‘pastoral’ role to support the pre-service teachers’ transition from the metropolitan to the regional community setting. The dark grey shading indicates the stages of the model that have already been implemented and the light grey the stage which is currently being cultivated. Throughout the progression of the TAPP school–university partnership ‘check points’ have been employed to ensure that the needs of the stakeholders are being met. These check points have included reflection on partnership processes, adaptation of pedagogical content and practice, and the implementation of new teaching initiatives.

Case Study: 4 Different Perspectives The different perspectives which follow are written as narrative vignettes and provide the rich storylines of the experiences of the four participant stakeholders introduced earlier, as they engaged in the TAPP partnership. In addition, these narratives help illustrate the chronological evolution of the partnership model.

Perspective 1: Nerinda—School Based Coach Prior to 2016, as the pre-service coordinator at my primary school, I felt there was no real connection between the school and the universities. The pre-service teachers would come into the school, complete their placement, and then leave. It felt like we were just ticking boxes to get them through their placement, it was ‘us’ and ‘them’ rather than ‘we’. So, when I was initially approached by RMIT University to participate in the pilot program of the TAPP, I had many hesitations and questions. In theory, the program sounded fabulous but how would it work in the school setting? How would this look for the mentor and the school-based coach in the class? Would

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I be able to bring on board 16 mentors? Would I be able to teach young adults? More importantly how would I as a coach cope with not teaching my class for 4 weeks? These hesitations were short lived once I had my initial professional learning day with RMIT University. Attending the professional learning day hosted by the then RMIT University Academic Director of Professional Experience (ADPX) answered many of my questions. The passion the ADPX had for a new type of partnership certainly came through in her presentation. I left with a feeling of excitement and at this fresh approach to the partnership between Montmorency South Primary School and RMIT University. Having been invited to be involved collaboratively with the writing of the program gave me a sense of ownership and a stronger connection to RMIT University and to the pilot partnership program. I also felt I had the knowledge and passion to bring the classroom teachers at my school on board. In my opinion several things make the partnership successful. Firstly, the threeway collaboration between the pre-service teacher, mentor and school-based coach meant that there has been a high level of support during the placement experience. Secondly, the coursework conducted at university links directly to the placement ideas and so the PSTs are upskilled and supported in their knowledge before they arrive at the school. Thirdly, the role of the school-based coach can offer time for mentor teacher professional learning. For example, helping the mentor to develop their process of providing feedback, being aware of the pre-service teacher requirements, reflecting on their own practice and communication. In fact, I was able to take the professional learning that I had experienced at RMIT University back to my staff to upskill them in being effective mentors. The redesigning of the course in 2018 was well scaffolded, and schools again worked in close consultation with the university staff to shape a new direction and content for the course. And since the new iteration of the course school-based coaches have had greater opportunity to be involved in the ongoing development of the course and the development of assessment materials. In recent years the schoolbased coaches and mentors have had more input into the foundations of the course and how it is delivered in schools. Having a voice in the assessment side of the program has been extremely beneficial to its success, as it allows practicing primary school teachers to have ownership of the course that they are part of. Before the TAPP partnership with RMIT University, pre-service teachers came into the school and had an exclusive relationship with their mentor. The TAPP partnership has changed this and allowed pre-service teachers to observe a variety of teachers and their teaching styles and strategies, to gain a broader range of experiences. It provides the opportunity for pre-service teachers to undertake tasks associated with teaching small groups of children and whole grades, with the assistance of a mentor to guide them in their planning and delivery of teaching tasks using the gradual release model of—‘I do, we do, you do’. This has also allowed the pre-service teachers to gain a greater appreciation of the diverse roles and responsibilities that teachers undertake as a normal part of their job. Since moving to this model, I have found there to be a significant improvement in student achievement and progress, and an increase in the ability for the pre-service teachers to analyse their own lessons.

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Pre-service teachers demonstrate a better understanding of best practices in teaching and learning as well as a wider repertoire of instructional strategies. They appear to have a deeper sense of efficacy and a greater feeling of autonomy. I am excited to continue the partnerships between our school and RMIT University. I feel having been a part of the program from the beginning has made me a better teacher and I have developed a passion for supporting and mentoring beginning teachers in primary education. Over the years the course has evolved, reflecting changes in educational priorities and pedagogical practices. I consider that during this evolution the involvement in the co-design and the continual support of RMIT University staff has strengthened the relationship between the school and the university, a relationship that I am looking forward to continuing.

Perspective 2: Allison—Course Coordinator As an initial teacher education educator, the aspect of my role that I value most is the work that I do within our school–university partnership, collaborating with up to fifteen primary schools at any one time. I work in partnership with primary school teachers to co-design and deliver professional experience courses for preservice teachers. Collectively we facilitate authentic workplace learning for preservice teachers in schools. Value is situated in the reciprocal learning that occurs; I bring a tertiary perspective and I learn about the pedagogical practices in a range of schools. In 2016, the Department of Education in the state of Victoria launched a school initiative to promote the development of Professional Learning Community’s (PLC) in schools. Excitement followed with schools and teachers selected to lead the implementation of PLCs to develop collective and shared responsibility of all children’s welfare, data, learning and progress. Over subsequent years I observed the impact with duplicate PLCs running across schools to build teachers’ expertise. The results were evident by teachers in adjacent rooms delivering similar programs with shared pedagogical practices, learning intentions and focus. It appeared to me that primary school teachers were being swept forward together, while I existed as an outsider, watching authentic capacity building across schools. I questioned what this could mean for initial teacher education (ITE) programs and wondered how I could embed PLCs into the school–university partnership course that I coordinated. The answers, I felt, were only possible through engagement with ‘insiders’; the primary school teachers living and driving the change. With these wonderings I contacted RMIT University’s TAPP partnership schools and invited them to collaborate and help redesign the TAPP course to incorporate the PLC initiative into ITE. Two partnership schools took up the opportunity and this resulted in the re-design of the existing professional experience course, through a collaborative design approach between university educators and a small number of leading primary school teachers.

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The generosity of the collective experience was central to what resulted in the re-shaping of professional experience for PSTs. Educators from the two sectors, university and school, were instrumental in creating a bigger vision of workplace learning for pre-service teachers. Again, reciprocal learning was central as educators shared practices and ideologies from their respective sectors. New learning was shaped so that PLCs were incorporated into the PST’s oncampus learning opportunities. PSTs planned for the learning growth of ‘mock’ students by analysing student work samples, applying a data cycle, and collectively making informed and evidence-based pedagogical decisions. A careful design ensured that practices were supported by underlying key theoretical ideology; to help the PSTs to make sense of why and how education had taken a turn towards PLCs and evidence-based practices. The PSTs reflected that they felt like ‘real’ teachers due to the authenticity of the learning, with on-campus experiences genuinely reflecting what they later observed and practiced in partnership schools. Years on, collectively we are still riding the wave as the partnership grows and changes. It is a wave I feel very grateful to be part of as it encompasses the best of both schools and ITE.

Perspective 3: Melanie—Academic Director, Professional Experience Working within the TAPP partnership as the ADPX from 2018 to 2022 afforded me the opportunity to see firsthand the strength that such a close school–university partnership can have. Working relationally to share knowledge and experience from both the perspective of the school and university educator has allowed us to break down that idea of the ‘theory practice divide’ and helped us enhance the professional practice experience of pre-service teachers. We have received feedback from the students that course materials and activities have direct links to what they are working on in their professional experience placement and that they can see the synergies. This is something which they had complained was lacking in the past. Through regular planning days between school-based coaches and universitybased educators we are continually refining the partnership course and its delivery. Through one of these planning day conversations, it became clear we had neglected an important aspect of the partnership, the development of the mentor–mentee relationship. In our reconceptualization of the course in 2019 we had enhanced the connection and involvement with our school-based coaches but had forgotten to provide opportunities to support and offer professional learning for mentor teachers. Therefore in 2021 we made this improvement a priority of our partnership. We considered that school-based coaches would be best placed to provide professional learning opportunities for the mentor teachers in their schools. A portion of the TAPP financial grant received by the School of Education from the Victorian DoET was used to provide a small amount of seed funding to each school. This seed funding was used to allow time release for the mentor teachers to meet with

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the school-based coach to discuss mentoring processes, further develop mentoring skills, and to familiarise them with what was expected of the pre-service teachers (mentees) while on placement. In several cases, the mentor teachers employed some of this extra time release to meet with their mentee (pre-service teacher) briefly getting to know them and working out teaching plans prior to the start of professional experience placement. Offering the school-based coaches the opportunity to work independently with their mentor teachers led to rich professional conversations and a sharing of the various successful and less successful professional learning strategies. This resulted in a consensus to employ the most effective strategies across all partnership schools the following year. Annual professional learning days and the maintenance of a continual dialogue between university educators and the school-based coaches has been fundamental to the success of the TAPP partnership. The conversations about learning have followed a cycle of reflect, plan, implement, and adapt—with both the school-based coaches and the university staff working in tandem which has resulted in the development of mutual trust and learning opportunities.

Perspective 4: Emilio—Partnership Broker ‘Metropolitan life’ and ‘regional life’ have long been considered to be two sides of a coin, with supporters of each side espousing benefits and nuances and claiming that the ‘others simply wouldn’t understand’ these nuances. Many of these differences would certainly have to do with the unique contextual variances that influence daily life of those living in metropolitan or regional areas and would indeed translate into the local classroom. The Victorian Department of Education and Training (DoET) highlighted that metropolitan-trained pre-service teachers, upon graduation from their institution, regularly opt to remain in, and seek employment in, a metropolitan context. This created a downturn in teachers living and working in regional Victoria which prompted projects such as this one to try and remedy the problem at hand. Whenever I find myself approaching a new research project, certain frames of reference influence my thinking. Foremost among them is an almost insatiable hunger to dive into the nitty-gritty, meaty part of the project and analyse data to uncover some new nugget of information. It was necessary for me to temper this urge however when engaging with this project as there were a number of unknown and emergent spaces. Redirecting that drive, I quickly decided that deeply and intently listening to the perspectives, ideas and musings of fellow academics and key stakeholders would allow for a more contextualised frame of reference. The metropolitan TAPP project is considered a success, and there existed an opportunity to leverage learnings from that project into a regional context. University academic staff carried a sense of optimism into the initial dealings with the regional Departmental officials. Carefully listening to the needs and apprehensions of the officials however tempered this enthusiasm as the scope of focus that both parties adopted seemed to be misaligned. The academics were looking to establish

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a framework for successful professional practice experiences in a regional context, while the Departmental officials were more concerned with accommodation, logistics and financial constraints associated with running such a project with a strong focus on ongoing sustainability. These constraints are very real for rural contexts and led to a closer understanding of the importance of the community in the extension work. Meaningful and equitable co-design between the metropolitan and rural-based stakeholders in this project can offer a workable middle ground. There will certainly be tension as preconceived ideas and virtues come to the surface, and I look forward to the lessons that will emerge in this dynamic space. Clear and open communication, as well as an inquisitive mindset will be required, and while the problem of retaining teachers might not be solved overnight, projects like this one are certainly steps in a positive direction.

Discussion The perspectives in this case study highlight three important considerations for collaboratively designed school–university partnerships that can be applied to other educational settings. The first consideration is the co-design process which should allow school and university-based educators and pre-service teachers to contribute to the design and evaluation of the professional practice experience. The second consideration is the relational agency, underpinning the co-design process. This shared agency allows stakeholders who are positioned differently within the same practice to work together to overcome institutional rituals and boundaries (Edwards, 2010). The third consideration is the provision of critical guidance, support, and advocacy, in this case through the role of a ‘school-based coach’. These considerations can help to create effective partnerships that enhance the educational experience for everyone involved. The interplay between the three considerations has been of primary importance when envisioning the development of the stages of the school–university partnership with the North Melbourne TAPP. The nature of the learning that occurred in the initial developmental stages of the North Melbourne TAPP partnership has provided a structure to both support and develop these new partnerships, which implies that this model has translatability to other educational partnerships and contexts. Therefore, co-design principles will be employed in negotiating how the new school–university partnerships will be structured in the Ovens Murray TAPP and on what curricular priorities the new course materials for ‘Classrooms, cultures and communication’ will focus. While it is acknowledged that the proposed regional TAPP will present an unfamiliar cultural and social context for many of the citybased pre-service teachers, the pedagogical structure of having the support of a school-based coach would be one with which they are familiar, from their second-year professional placement experience.

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The coach’s role in this new stage of the partnership model will be negotiated with school partners, with the intent to scaffold the pre-service teachers in connecting with both the profession and the regional community. It is anticipated that this would allow the coaches to facilitate links between the school and community to enable understandings and perceptions of working in a regional setting. Helping the pre-service teachers to develop and engender an appreciation of life in a regional community. Having experienced a structured and supported placement in a regional community it is anticipated that pre-service teachers will be more likely to consider taking up teaching in regional or even rural communities upon graduation (Downes & Roberts, 2018).

References Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2015). Supervising pre-service teacher teacher program review. AITSL. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2016). Initial teacher education: Data report 2016. AITSL. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/tools-resources/resource/initial-tea cher-data-report-2016 Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2019). AITSL strategic plan 2019–2022. Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. AITSL. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/ docs/default-source/default-document-library/aitsl-strategic-plan.pdf?sfvrsn=4e30e93c_42 Baumfield, V., & Butterworth, M. (2007). Creating and translating knowledge about teaching and learning in collaborative school–university research partnerships: An analysis of what is exchanged across the partnerships, by whom and how. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 13(4), 411–427. Ben-Peretz, M., Gottlieb, E., & Gideon, I. (2018). Coaching between experts—Opportunities for teachers’ professional development. Teacher Development, 22(3), 303–313. Burns, R. W., & Baker, W. (2016). The boundary spanner in professional development schools: In search of common nomenclature. School-University Partnerships, 9(2), 28–39. Clandinin, D. J., & Caine, V. (2013). Narrative inquiry. In A. A. Trainor & E. Graue (Eds.), Reviewing qualitative research in the social sciences (pp. 166–179). Routledge. Clifton, J., & Jordan, K. (2019). Who is the hybrid teacher educator? Understanding professional identity in school–university partnership. In Professionalism and teacher education: Voices from policy and practice (pp. 71–90). Clifton, J., & Jordan, K. (2022). Beyond cream, off-white, and beige: Finding slippages in accreditation for innovation in professional experience. In Reconstructing the work of teacher educators: Finding spaces in policy through agentic approaches—Insights from a research collective (pp. 71–87). Springer Nature Singapore. Cochran-Smith, M. (2003). Learning and unlearning: The education of teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(1), 5–28. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005). The new teacher education: For better or for worse? Educational Researcher, 34(7), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X034007003 Council of Australian Governments (COAG). (2009). National partnership agreement on improving teacher quality. AITSL. https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-inaustralia/nrosia2009/national-initiatives-and-achievements/teaching-and-leadership Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Teacher education and the American future. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 35–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109348024 Desimone, L. M., & Pak, K. (2017). Instructional coaching as high-quality professional development. Theory Into Practice, 56(1), 3–12.

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Downes, N., & Roberts, P. (2018). Revisiting the schoolhouse: A literature review on staffing rural, remote and isolated schools in Australia 2004–2016. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 28(1), 31–54. Edwards, A. (2010). Being an expert professional practitioner: The relational turn in expertise (Vol. 3). Springer Science & Business Media. Edwards, A., & Kinti, I. (2013). Working relationally at organisational boundaries: Negotiating expertise and identity. In H. Daniels, A. Edwards, Y. Engeström, T. Gallagher, & S. R. Ludvigsen (Eds.), Activity theory in practice: Promoting learning across boundaries and agencies (pp. 142– 155). Routledge. Elliott, J. (2005). Using narrative in social research: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Sage. Elsden-Clifton, J., & Jordan, K. (2015, July 8–10). What’s up DOCC? Creating third space courses in teacher education [Refereed paper]. Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) conference, Darwin, Australia. Elsden-Clifton, J., & Jordan, K. (2016). Reframing professional experience: Adopting a distributed open collaborative course framework to facilitate third spaces. In T. Barkatsas & A. Bertram (Eds.), Global learning in the 21st century (pp. 57–70). Springer. Ewing, R., Kervin, L., Glass, C., Gobby, B., Le Cornu, R., & Groundwater-Smith, S. (2020). Teaching: Dilemmas, challenges and opportunities (6th ed.). Cengage Learning Australia. Grimmett, H., Forgasz, R., Williams, J., & White, S. (2018). Reimagining the role of mentor teachers in professional experience: Moving to I as fellow teacher educator. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 46(4), 340–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2018.1437391 Grudnoff, L., Haigh, M., & Mackisack, V. (2017). Re-envisaging and reinvigorating school–university practicum partnerships. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 45(2), 180–193. https:// doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2016.1201043 Hartsuyker, L., Sawford, R., Bartlett, K., Bird, S., Corcoran, A., Fawcett, D., Ferguson, M., Henry, S., Livermore, K., & Markus, L. (2007). Top of the class: Report on the inquiry into teacher education. House of Representatives Publishing Unit. Hord, S. M. (1997). Professional learning communities: Communities of continuous inquiry and improvement. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. Kraft, M. A., Blazar, D., & Hogan, D. (2018). The effect of teacher coaching on instruction and achievement: A meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 547–588. Kriewaldt, J., Nash, M., Windsor, S., Thornton, J., & Reid, C. (2017). Fostering professional learning through evidence-informed mentoring dialogues in school settings. In J. Kriewaldt, A. Ambrosetti, D. Rorrison, & R. Capeness (Eds.), Educating future teachers: Innovative perspectives in professional experience (pp. 157–172). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5484-6_ 10 Loughland, T., & Nguyen, H. T. (2020). Using teacher collective efficacy as a conceptual framework for teacher professional learning—A case study. Australian Journal of Education, 64(2), 147– 160. MacLennan, N. (1995). Coaching and mentoring. Gower. Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2015). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. Wiley. Mitchell, C., & Sackney, L. (2000). Profound improvement: Building capacity for a learning community. Swets & Zeitlinger. Nash, M., Byth, A., Whewell, D., Kilkenny, M. L., & Hickey, R. (2022). Working relationally to bridge the divide: An exploration of an Australian school–university professional experience partnership from the perspectives of five stakeholders. In O. J. Bradbury & D. Acquaro (Eds.), School-university partnerships—Innovation in initial teacher education. Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5057-5_2 Ng, W., Nicholas, H., & Williams, A. (2010). School experience influences on pre-service teacher teachers’ evolving beliefs about effective teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(2), 278–289.

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Nguyen, H. T. M., & Loughland, T. (2018). Pre-service teacher teachers’ construction of professional identity through peer collaboration during professional experience: A case study in Australia. Teaching Education, 29(1), 81–97. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 8(1), 5–23. Rogoff, B. (1994). Developing understanding of the idea of communities of learners. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1(4), 209–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039409524673 Saint-Onge, H., & Wallace, D. (2003). Leveraging communities of practice for strategic advantage. Butterworth-Heinemann. Shernoff, E. S., Lakind, D., Frazier, S. L., & Jakobsons, L. (2015). Coaching early career teachers in urban elementary schools: A mixed-method study. School Mental Health, 7, 6–20. Squires, V. (2019). The well-being of the early career teacher: A review of the literature on the pivotal role of mentoring. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 8(4), 255–267. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMCE-02-2019-0025 Stoll, L., Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Wallace, M., & Thomas, S. (2006). Professional learning communities: A review of the literature. Journal of Educational Change, 7, 221–258. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10833-006-0001-8 Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG). (2014). Action now: Classroom ready teachers. Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. Victoria State Government Education and Training. (2020). Teaching academies of professional practice. Victoria State Government. https://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/educationstate/ Pages/tapp.aspx Voogt, J. M., Pieters, J. M., & Handelzalts, A. (2018). Teacher collaboration in curriculum design teams: Effects, mechanisms, and conditions. Educational Research and Evaluation, 22(3–4), 121–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2016.1247725 Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. M. (2002). A guide to managing knowledge: Cultivating communities of practice. Harvard Business School Press. Winslade, M., Loughland, T., & Eady, M. (2022). Reimagining the school-university partnership and the role of the school-based professional experience coordinator: A New South Wales case study. In O. J. Bradbury & D. Acquaro (Eds.), School-university partnerships—Innovation in initial teacher education (pp. 27–41). Springer Nature Singapore.

Dr. Melanie Nash is an Associate Professor and Educational Researcher at the School of Education, RMIT University. With a wealth of experience in schools and teacher education, she is committed to enhancing the quality of teacher education and professional learning. Melanie has served in various leadership capacities, including her role as Academic Director of Professional Experience at RMIT, where she was responsible for managing the development of sustainable, high-quality school–university partnerships. Her research is centred around, the impact of professional practice experience (WIL), collaborative design of school–university partnerships, education across diverse spaces, professional learning communities, and enhancing science teacher preparation. Allison Byth is a Lecturer and Early Career Researcher in the School of Education at RMIT University. She is passionate about the importance of quality professional experience as workplace learning in Initial Teacher Education. She has worked extensively in partnership with schools across Metropolitan Melbourne championing the co-design of hybrid approaches to foster the nexus between theory and practice. Emilio Kardaris is a Lecturer and Early Career Researcher in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at RMIT University. Having a background in both Allied Health and Education, and a passion for the science of teaching and learning, Emilio hopes to work in the intersectionality

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between university and the broader Education space, particularly in the field of STEM and STEM Education. Nerinda Hodgson is a primary school teacher with over 20 years of experience. As the PreService Teacher Coordinator, she has fostered positive relationships between primary schools and universities, ensuring that pre-service teachers receive the best possible support and guidance. Nerinda has a keen interest in mentoring new and graduate teachers, and she is passionate about helping them to develop their skills and confidence in the early years of their teaching careers. Dr. Angela Fitzgerald is a Professor and Associate Dean (Education) at RMIT University’s School of Education. She has extensive leadership experience in initial teacher education, gained from her work across Australia and internationally. Ange’s passion for improving the professional practice of both pre-service and in-service teachers is the driving force behind her research and teaching, with a focus on professional experience. As Associate Dean, she plays a crucial role in enhancing program quality by coordinating academics and stakeholders to meet external accreditation standards. Simone White is Professor and Dean of the School of Education at RMIT. She is a leading expert in teacher education and professional learning, focusing on the best ways to prepare teachers for diverse contexts, specifically rural, regional, and remote. Her research explores the fields of teacher education policy, teacher learning, professional experience and building and maintaining university-school/community partnerships.

Chapter 15

Sustainable School-University Partnerships: Motivators for Engagement, Enablers, and Constraints Stacey E. Jones

and Deb Clarke

Initiation of the School-University Partnership In 2014, the Teacher Education Managerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) was established to recommend how Initial Teacher Education (ITE) degrees could better prepare ‘classroom ready’ teachers. One key recommendation was “Higher education providers deliver integrated and structured professional experience throughout initial teacher education programs through formalised partnership agreements with schools” (TEMAG, 2014, p. xiv). In response, the New South Wales Department of Education (NSWDoE) introduced the Professional Experience Hub Schools Program. At its conception, the Hub supported twenty-four schools to work in collaboration with a university partner, focusing on professional experience (PEx) also known as teaching placement. Schools were selected based on their expertise in facilitating mandatory PEx for ITE students. In this chapter, we share the diverse professional activities that occurred within one of these 24 NSW school-university partnerships over a five-year period, with the focus of each phase being to collaboratively enhance the PEx experiences of ITE students. Figure 15.1 illustrates the activities undertaken in each phase. The establishment of a formalised partnership between the regional university and one local dual-site regional high school brought together academics and selected high school teachers to form a Hub team. Stakeholders’ professional partnership activity was guided by the overarching focus on enhancing the quality of ITE degrees, initially by team-teaching professional experience (PEx, also known as teaching placement) subjects at the university. As the partnership matured, stakeholders assumed a degree of professional autonomy and conceptualised and facilitated further initiatives to S. E. Jones (B) · D. Clarke Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_15

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Fig. 15.1 Phased implementation of the school-university partnership

enhance the quality of ITE student supervision. The Hub team moved their collaborative activities beyond tutorial rooms at the university to the high school in an effort to traverse the school-university divide. The partnership aim broadened to focus on enhancing the quality of ITE student supervision. This initiative involved working directly with high school teachers, who would supervise future ITE students on placement. This broadening of the target audience created reciprocal benefits for multiple stakeholders. This reciprocity ensured sustainability beyond NSWDoE funding with genuine partnership activities still maintained at the time of this chapter’s publication (2023). The following section describes the Hub phases in temporal order of their initiation, to illustrate the necessity for broadening the foundation partnership aim. Each description highlights the motivations for their initiation, the enablers which assisted sustainability, and the constraints that, at times, threatened members’ engagement. Furthermore, these descriptions visibly point to their alignment with the Hub aims. While there were further activities which contributed to the sustainability, those described most significantly impacted on ITE students’ professional preparation and supervising teachers’ (STs’) supervisory capacity.

Phase 1: Team-Teaching Professional Experience Subjects For institutions offering ITE degrees, the brief is to prepare students for the culture and tasks of their profession (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2022). However, given the complex nature of twenty-first century schools, and the currency (or lack thereof) of many academics’ school-teaching experience, it is a challenge to authentically prepare ITE students for the rigours and shock

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of the classroom. To date, there remains a perceived divide between the privileged knowledge of the university context and the schools’ practice role (Nash et al., 2022). This divide creates tensions for ITE students as they translate their university understandings in the reality of the classroom. Many ITE degrees present theoretical concepts, with minimal inclusion of the genuine practises of professionals in authentic contexts (Clarke & Winslade, 2019; Zbaracki & Green, 2022). Professional experience placements provide opportunities for ITE students to apply their theoretical knowledge, however their lack of frequency is less than adequate for providing meaningful, sustained engagement or reflection on their classroom skills and understanding of schools’ organisational and relational contexts (Dean, 2023). Furthermore, while academics are well credentialed and thoroughly versed in their discipline knowledge, their contemporary exposure to school classroom practice is limited or non-existent (Kezar, 2007). Additionally, those who historically supervised ITE students in schools voice their distrust of academics and the limited relevance of ITE degrees (Lynch & Smith, 2012) To interrupt these issues, a foundational and obvious Hub phase focused on enhancing the quality of PEx subjects in ITE degrees by drawing on the expertise and currency of Hub high school teachers. The aims of this initiative were to: (i) more authentically prepare ITE students for PEx and their transition to the profession; and (ii) provide capacity building and leadership opportunities for school teachers. To achieve these aims, the school-university partnership included a breadth of evidence-based, contemporary approaches to engage all stakeholders in real-world experiences and professional learning (PL). University academics and school teachers pooled their collective theoretical and pedagogical expertise to co-design and team-teach PEx subjects in the latter years of a Bachelor of Education (K-12) degree over a five-year period. Team-teaching created a holistic perspective as the stakeholders drew on each partner’s strengths and unique contexts, integrating the knowledge ‘of’ and ‘about’ teaching. The co-design included a breadth of authentic learning experiences including ITE students peer teaching tutorials, non-assessable school immersion activities, and mock employment interviews. To further strengthen the school-university interface, ITE students completed an authentic assessment mirroring the requirements for professional accreditation (AITSL, 2022) focused on goal setting and a professional portfolio. The following section describes the multiple Hub phases which, by their realworld nature, improved the quality of the PEx subjects, and the readiness of ITE students to engage as emerging professionals. In addition, STs’ knowledge of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) (AITSL, 2018), reflection, and classroom practice improved as a result of the explicit nature of the Hub activities.

Team-Teaching Team-teaching was facilitated in three Bachelor of Education K-12 PEx subjects on the university campus during the five-year Hub initiative. Each year approximately 25 students were enrolled in each of the 3rd and 4th year PEx subjects. These subjects

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were selected as the chapter authors led the Hub initiatives and were responsible for these subjects’ design and facilitation. The students provided a convenience sample for gathering evaluative data. Consenting students in each of the subjects over the five-year period (n = 80) participated in semi-structured interviews with a research assistant and additionally provided work and assessment samples and other informal written feedback used as the data set. Tutorials provided an appropriate pedagogical space for the teaching-team to model a variety of teaching and learning strategies, and codes of professional conduct. Tutorials were facilitated at both the university and school sites: a strategic decision to assist in dissolving the school-university divide. The teaching team modelled strategies to establish positive student relationships, lesson planning for a diversity of students and disciplines, use of learning intentions and success criteria (Hattie, 2013), and deconstructed the application of systemic policies and school expectations. Each of these examples of strong classroom practice were prefaced with explanations of why the team were facilitating these activities, and their explicit application to classroom practice. This overt modelling allowed ITE students to view the strategies in action, ask questions, and reflect on their efficacy and potential use in their own PEx classrooms.

Initial Teacher Education Student Peer Teaching In the three PEx subjects aligned with the Hub, ITE students worked in teams to collaboratively plan and peer-teach the tutorial class aspects of the week’s content to rehearse and refine identified teaching skills. A shared reflection was undertaken by the teaching team and students’ peers, offering feedback in a safe supportive environment. An enduring criticism of university degrees by school teachers has been the emphasis on theory (Lemon et al., 2018), therefore, to address this issue ITE students authentically navigated all elements of the teaching–learning cycle with their tutorial peers. The activity allowed real world experience of PEx expectations and the accrediting body’s requirements (AITSL, 2022). When interviewed, ITE students commented on the opportunity to practise and refine their teaching and reflection skills as follows: I loved doing the mini teaching sessions in our tutorials. It helped us to learn about planning, and working together with other people just like you would do at a school. Designing a mini lesson for the tutorial group meant we had to really learn the content from the week’s readings, and then come up with ways to teach … Having our peers and the Hub team give us feedback helped us to improve our practice. We could use these lessons for our portfolio to demonstrate giving and receiving feedback. (3rd year ITE student)

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Immersion Activities Literature acknowledges the lack of confidence and heightened anxiety levels of ITE students as they anticipate and engage in workplace settings such as schools (Ken & Chean, 2012). In the Bachelor of Education (K-12) degree, ITE students commence with primary school PEx placements to assist in gaining knowledge of schools, teaching, and to build confidence. In the latter years of their degree, ITE students transitioned to high schools, and often expressed their fear of teaching young people (rather than children) in a complex organisation with multiple discipline and organisational demands. To ensure familiarity with high schools’ culture, organisation, and expectations, the teaching team initiated non-assessable school immersion activities. Traditionally, ITE students are only exposed to the classroom during subjects in which their teaching is viewed as assessable performance (Reid, 2011). During the immersion activities, ITE students observed the complexity of relational interactions between teachers and students, the variety of teaching styles employed, and the array of instructional and behavioural strategies teachers adopted to facilitate safe learning environments. The purpose of the immersion initiative was twofold: to assist in alleviating ITE students’ anticipatory anxiety relating to undertaking PEx in a high school; and to authentically engage them in observing and applying theory in the reality of a real-world setting (Ashford-Rowe et al., 2014). ITE students were accompanied to the high school immersion site by the teaching-team with whom they had an established professional relationship. These actions were strategic, ensuring ITE students were supported by familiar professionals aware of the high school’s culture. ITE students participated in a school tour, observations of students’ behaviour with teachers, and facilitation of informal activities. At the conclusion of the visit, ITE students engaged on-site in a structured group dialogue about what they had learnt. Table 15.1 showcases an example of ITE student’s reflection of the immersion activity. This example of the ITE student’s reflection highlights the value of the school immersion activity in preparing ITE students to engage in an authentic setting and Table 15.1 Example of 3rd year initial teacher education students’ reflections on immersion activity What I learned about high schools

What I learned about young people

Busy, Loud, fast-moving, demanding, fun, large, complex, can be difficult spread out, hierarchy of staff, interruptions occur, many different kids

What I learned about teaching

What I learned about myself

Other comments

Need to fully prepare engaging activities, meet diverse needs, full-on, rewarding, hard work

I can do this! I know how to plan I need help in how to deliver lesson I like young people even though they might be tough

I really feel more confident to go to placement in high school There are staff to help and I feel I can now ask questions

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identify the various contextual nuances and features of the setting. ITE students developed a clearer understanding of the diversity of students’ needs, an awareness of the challenges and opportunities they will experience, and reported an increased sense of confidence as they prepared for their professional experience placements in schools.

Evidencing Practice: Goal Setting and Professional Portfolio As an explicit aim of the Hub was to improve the quality of ITE degrees, it was essential that the PEx subjects’ assessment replicated the requirements of teachers’ professional accreditation. This decision minimised the disconnect between schools, and their systems’ requirements, and the university, promoting further authenticity. Assessment products in PEx subjects required ITE students to engage in goal setting and submit a professional portfolio that included artefacts that showcased their achievements of the professional standards to date. To support ITE students to understand the task purpose and select and annotate artefacts as evidence, the teaching team presented quality examples of their own professional goals and teaching portfolios. These models of evidencing practice assisted ITE students to broaden their sources of evidence to include student observation notes, communications with parents and the school community, and PL reflection notes. ITE students’ in-class comments to guest speakers illustrated that they realised that documenting practice was an authentic accreditation commitment for the teaching profession (Allard et al., 2014), not merely a university assessment.

Mock Employment Interviews To close the preparation loop, the Hub team invited school leaders to facilitate mock employment interviews with 4th year ITE students. School leaders modelled the process and content of NSWDoE formal employment interview questions. To ease anxiety and encourage peer feedback, ITE students were grouped with a single facilitator and responded to a range of questions which mimicked those used by the employing body. This arrangement engaged ITE students in a non-threatening, familiar, low-stakes environment. School leaders and ITE students’ peers offered feedback from multiple perspectives. The interview allowed ITE students to select examples from their PEx placement to demonstrate their achievement of the graduate level Australian Professional Standards for Teaching (NESA, 2022). Students appreciated the authenticity of the experience and gained constructive feedback from school leaders who were well versed in the interview process for employment. During post-subject interviews, a fourth year ITE student commented: “We had practice DET [Department of Education and Training] interviews with school principals to help us practice for future

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job opportunities … Having real time feedback from the principals was particularly helpful”. A further illustration of the efficacy of the mock interviews indicated “the practice interviews with the local principals prepared me for my DET and other future interviews”. There were also unpredicted benefits for school leaders conducting the interviews. One school leader identified that his facilitation of the interviews assisted him to gauge his own school staff’s knowledge and application of the professional standards. The school leader valued the opportunity “to see where they’re up to and just see the level of the students at this stage of their career and compare them to what we’re doing in our environment” (School leader 1). Furthermore, school leaders expressed their support for the initiative, acknowledging its effectiveness in drawing together the otherwise disparate components of ITE students’ degree: I think that the activity is the culmination of almost everything you’re doing and it brings it all together, … it’s a good summary of all the things they’ve learnt. It looks more broadly than just the actual interview process to all the work they have done to prepare them for the profession. (School leader 2)

The interview team lauded ITE students’ knowledge of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL, 2018), and their ability to describe critical examples from their PEx placements evidencing achievement of each standard. For example: These students are ready. They are well aware of the work they will be doing, the way in which they should be doing it, and what conduct issues might arise. They look ready, they sound ready, they know the standards, they know how to ‘be’ a professional. (School leader 2)

Additionally, a Hub teacher acknowledged how the mock interviews assisted ITE students’ confidence as follows: I think it provided a really good reflection tool for the students to really sum up what they’ve learnt so far and increase their confidence levels going into their last prac, and considering a lot of those students are coming to the College [high school] for their prac, I think they’re walking in much more confident with their professional practice. Also, they will be more confident to engage in professional conversations with other teachers.

Outcomes ITE students voiced their overwhelming appreciation of the authentic practice that teachers value-added to the university subject. Zeichner (2010) notes these teachers working in the ‘third space’ assisted in creating a more porous border between the two institutions. The significant positive outcomes included ITE students’ enhanced preparedness for PEx placement, lessened anxiety levels, enhanced repertoire of teaching and management strategies, understanding of school and classroom practices, and their ‘readiness’ to assume their role in the teaching profession. The following excerpts from ITE students’ subject evaluations and interviews illustrate the team-teaching successes.

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ITE students’ recognised the strategies employed to assist in developing their professional identity. One 4th year ITE student commented “I loved that the teachers came to the uni and I loved that we were treated like teachers. I see that I have become a teacher”. Additional ITE student feedback illustrated the contribution of different stakeholders’ perspectives, for example: It helped us to understand the different elements of high school teaching. I believe much of what I have learnt in this class will significantly help me in my future studies and my teaching career. Working with the teachers was a great insight into high school teaching. Before this subject I was apprehensive about teaching multiple classes within a high school setting… more teachers was a much better arrangement as I was able to gather multiple opinions and views from the same subject. (4th year ITE student)

Furthermore, ITE students identified how engagement in the PEx subjects assisted them to develop a bank of relevant teaching strategies, for example: This subject has provided me with a toolkit to go into my next placement with strategies to manage the classroom and getting to know students and how they learn. I feel confident going into my next placement as I have been able to identify what I would like to work on and include into my SMART goals. I feel less anxious to go into prac. (4th year ITE student)

Engagement in the team-teaching phase had professional benefits for Hub teachers including a sense of professional autonomy, enhanced leadership skills, heightened ability to self-reflect, improvement in their own practice, enhanced awareness of the content, and sequence of ITE degrees and the capabilities and readiness of ITE students at particular stages of their degree. Hub teachers stated: My principal started tapping into my skills in a mentoring role for beginner teachers … His thinking is, “Okay, if you’re going to be at the uni teaching fourth year prac students and then supporting them when they come to our school, you can also start supporting beginner teachers”. (Hub teacher 2) I’ve been learning a lot. From a school’s perspective, understanding what’s happening at the uni, and having that constant contact with the fourth years, gives me a really clear understanding of what their knowledge is, what level they’re operating at, and what support they need going into schools. (Hub teacher 1)

Enablers Significant enablers contributed to the success of this foundation Hub phase. Teachers were released from their school duties on their university teaching days. This action created time and space with academics to plan, facilitate, and reflect on university tutorials. As such, the temporal disconnect between school and university was minimised, and the structural divide blurred. Additionally, teachers selected to participate in the Hub were required to submit an expression of interest to engage in the Hub. The outcome was selection of highly skilled, quality educators who were committed to the Hub’s aims and who recognised the reciprocal benefits of their contributions, for ITE students and as a PL opportunity for their own career. Much of the success of the initiative stemmed from the teachers’ capacity to genuinely and authentically

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(Ashford-Rowe et al., 2014) contribute to ITE students’ preparation in the partner institution before being placed for PEx in the partnership schools. While much of the partnership literature points to the vastness of the institutional divide, the time committed to relationship-building in each initiative enabled the members to ‘park’ their own institution’s cultures and create a new shared culture. One Hub teacher commented: Over the past few years of this project, looking on as an outsider initially, then as someone who was included as a participant in the degrees in 2017, then as a guest tutor in 2019 and now as a central part of the Hub Partnership involved in this action-research project, I can say that the relationship between [university] and the College [high school] has always been one of trust, respect and mutual benefit. Not once has it slipped into a dialogue or sentiment of “us and them”. (Hub teacher 4)

A further Hub teacher highlighted the importance of space in connecting the institutions: [Hub academic] mentioned the idea of “space” as opposed to “place” in creating a positive partnership in which all participants feel comfortable… this is extremely important to consider when selecting participants as they must be able to work together to foster an environment of openness, sincerity, vulnerability, and risk taking. If we can establish this as the basis of our interpersonal relationships for this project, I believe that we will successfully create a sense of “space” regardless of what “place” we are located in. (Hub teacher 3)

Constraints and Challenges Underpinning the Hub success was the nature of stakeholders’ relationships, which had been carefully, intentionally, and strategically built from the Hub’s inception. The teacher-academic combination was a critical enabler or, in one case, challenge, to the initiative’s success. Carefully aligning the motivations for and approaches to PEx needed to be a key focus of teaming, as misalignment had the potential to disintegrate positive partnerships. In the early school university partnership literature, Luce (2005) acknowledged the essence of effective teaming as: utilising individuals who can span the boundaries between disparate entities and champion the goals of the partnership in multiple settings, and establish healthy patterns of communication, expressed commitment to common goals, and mutual respect for the roles that each partner plays in accomplishing them. (p. 26)

Despite the careful pre-teaming measures, professional relationships were, at times strained as the two cultures with different traditions, perceptions, and understandings of ITE students’ preparation, negotiated their ‘place’ in the new third partnership ‘space’. In one instance, pairing of teaching teams arose as problematic, fuelled by significantly disparate perspectives of the Hub aim. This ‘teaming’ challenge presented disruption to the previously negotiated approaches, and required school leader intervention, resulting in the withdrawal of one Hub teacher. While minor organisational and structural challenges arose, in general, each was resolved efficiently, due to the close, respectful working relationships that were seen as crucial to the success and sustainability of the partnership.

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Phase 2: Teacher Education Student Supervision Enhancement (TESSE) Effective team-teaching developed strong professional relationships in the partnership. This established learning community provided the necessary platform to further explore innovative ways to improve the quality of the ITE degree. As a natural progression, stakeholder focus shifted beyond the university to the partner school. This was a practical way to further bridge the well-reported institutional divide (Darling-Hammond, 2006). Whilst it is the expectation of the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) that teachers receive adequate training to fulfil the role of supervising teacher (ST), the reality is many STs receive little to no formal training to perform this role (Leshem, 2012; NESA, 2013); potentially negatively impacting on the PEx and overall graduate quality. The Hub team recognised universities had limited involvement in the professional learning (PL) of STs, with universities heavily reliant on individual schools’ ability to provide quality placements. Therefore, the Hub team authentically engaged with schools by focusing on ST professional learning. Hub teachers identified the need for tailored, authentic PL opportunities for school-based teachers (Sharratt, 2019). Resulting from both regional location and the impact of COVID-19, there were limited authentic PL opportunities at the time. This pressing need for PL provided a unique opportunity for the partnership.

Peer-Group Mentoring To provide STs with authentic PL, the Hub team co-created a small-scale peergroup mentoring (PGM) pilot project. The Teacher Education Student Supervision Enhancement (TESSE) project aimed to improve the quality of PEx supervision. TESSE focused on developing STs’ supervision skills by demonstrating how to efficiently facilitate self-reflective practice through small-group dialogic inquiry (Haneda et al., 2016). The PGM model differed from the traditional mentor–mentee approach offered by the NSWDoE (Kemmis et al., 2014). PGM’s architectural design was selected as it moves away from a hierarchical structure, contributing to the development of a learning community school culture (European Commission, 2010). PGM facilitates a self-driven PL approach, therefore meeting individual needs and goals of STs and providing a more contemporary, collegial PL model, encouraging reflective practice (Geeraerts et al., 2015). PGM was co-facilitated by the Hub team, providing participants a wealth of skills and experiences from which to draw, whilst allowing them to drive their own learning. Participants met weekly as a peer-group, engaging in guided reflection, goal setting, and conceptualising their own action-research project. The nature of the facilitators’ support varied, in response to individual participant’s preferences. Ongoing

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peer-group dialogue and informal sharing allowed participants to consider their teaching ideas and insights. Several participants invited Hub facilitators to undertake lesson observations and team-teaching opportunities, whilst others chose to work independently on programmes and school-based initiatives beyond the classroom. The nature of the projects were varied and included: (i) enhancing coaching and mentoring conversation skills; (ii) development of new teaching programmes through collaboration with a newly established Technology and Applied Studies (TAS) teacher network; (iii) creation of a digital history teaching resource; (iv) implementation of collaborative group work in Stage 4 mathematics classrooms; and (v) promoting positive learning stories and community engagement project via social media. The facilitator/mentor relationships created were akin to the ST/ITE student relationship. Immersion in a similar working relationship allowed participants to better understand the ST role, informing how they could effectively support ITE students’ reflection and goal setting, as modelled by their mentor. This experience boosted their overall confidence in their ability to perform their future ST role. During a post-project interview, one participant noted: The project really does encourage you to build your capacity as a teacher and then in doing that, with these reflection sections that we have at the end, you then discover how you could maybe help someone else take that same journey, so the mixture of setting a goal, trying to realise a goal and then reflecting at the end is quite powerful and then how you’d help someone else on that journey.

Outcomes The PGM enhanced STs’ understanding of their role and improved the quality of their supervision. Participants reported constructing an alternate view of supporting PEx placements, recognising that mentoring and supervision of ITE students is a collective responsibility within their school, rather than the sole responsibility of one ST. The participants’ use of words such as ‘network of people’ and ‘look out for them’ was particularly noteworthy. Participants’ attitudes about sharing the responsibility of developing classroom practice throughout the school shifted significantly. As a collective, they realised that previously they had a tendency to work alone in individual classrooms. Operating within a peer-group shifted attitudes towards a more supportive and collaborative approach to teaching through professional networks. This realisation has the potential to greatly improve the participants’ future contributions to whole-school PL, and the notion of ITE student supervision as a shared responsibility. Importantly, there were reciprocal benefits for both the school and the university. Participation in PGM greatly improved the participants’ capacity to support ITE students, by enhancing their reflection, communication, planning, and leadership skills. For the university, the quality of future ITE student supervision had the potential to be enhanced.

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Enablers Existing, quality professional relationships served as the crucial link to successful engagement in the ‘third space’. Due to strong relational trust already built amongst stakeholders, the partnership allowed academics a seamless welcome to the school and encouraged five teachers of varied experience to participate in the TESSE 10week project. The voluntary nature of participation was a significant enabling factor, particularly given the demanding nature of the teaching profession and reported constraints on teachers’ time (Grattan Institute, 2022). Hub funding was also a significant enabler, allowing planning time for facilitators and teachers’ release from school to engage as a group in PL activities. Access to university resources, particularly its contemporary meeting spaces, provided a valuable off-site venue for participants, who cited the “importance of meeting away from school”. The university setting provided a space removed from the day-to-day demands of school to focus on their learning and to promote clarity in their thinking. The presence of familiar professional peers in the group was an essential element for most participants, with frequent references to the sense of comfort, support, and familiarity. One participant stated: I think [teachers name] as well, whose … been working on this with me, when I’ve caught up with her in the classroom … or in the staff room even, it’s been a case of having someone there who understands what you’re trying to work on … give you that backup and that confidence.

Therefore, the existence of established professional relationships was a crucial enabler of this successful PGM programme. The level of trust built within the partnership prior to the TESSE project being launched in schools ensured participants would comfortably and authentically engage in the PL. Finally, another key enabling factor reported by all participants was the importance of the PL being teacher-driven. One participant commented “It’s teacher driven. I think this has been the greatest thing of the project. And the staff here and the facilitators have really offered … their own experience and offered ideas without directing us what to do.”

Constraints and Challenges Teachers not involved in the TESSE pilot expressed interest in participating in future iterations. Unfortunately, this did not occur due to the cessation of funding and key teachers relocating to other schools. However, post external funding, one academic continues to mentor school executive staff (deputy/assistant principals) in self-driven instructional leadership projects.

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Phase 3: Professional Experience Coordination The role of Professional Experience Coordinator (PExC) in schools involves the coordination of ITE students’ mandatory school-based placements. The school-based role may be undertaken by the principal or their delegate, usually a highly experienced member of staff (NESA, n.d.). The role is a difficult and demanding school-based role (Loughland et al., 2021). Recent changes in the role require the PExC to build whole school procedures to promote high-quality placements from both ST and ITE student perspectives (NSWDoE, 2021). As explained by Burns et al. (2016), the role of PExC is greater in scope and complexity than previously assumed, requiring additional skills and knowledge in order to undertake a wider range of responsibilities, such as research for innovation to improve ITE student supervision on placement. The PExC role focused on facilitating well-structured placements, providing ongoing support from a network of teachers within the school. As a result, a host of supportive systems and processes were embedded into the responsibilities of the PExC role prior to, during, and post-placement as outlined in the following sections.

Grouping of Initial Teacher Education Students Changes to the timing of ITE students’ placements in the two high school sites were initiated by the newly appointed PExC. The university clustered ITE students into small groups at each of the sites. This request was made to complement the high school’s existing collaborative culture, which featured successful teacher professional learning communities (PLCs). ITE students’ grouped placements created an environment where they could form their own peer PLC to share ideas and problems encountered during placement (Kutsyuruba, 2011). This opportunity created a more supportive learning environment, reducing apprehension and assisting selfreflection on their practice with like-minded peers. Existing professional relationships with university workplace learning coordinators assisted this arrangement by aligning with placement dates of third and fourth-year students’ placement dates. ITE students greatly benefited from the support of a peer-group, citing the presence of other ITE students as a highlight, as they “did not feel alone in a new environment”. This grouping also increased time and resource efficiency and reduced the demands on the PExC and teaching staff with activities such as induction, weekly meetings, and PL sessions facilitated for the group. STs also benefited from the grouping of ITE students by allowing them to collaborate and engage with an allocated PExC who oversaw and guided their supervision.

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Pre-placement Initiatives The PExC-initiated activities reduced the barriers to entry for ITE students as they crossed the reported university-school divide for placement (Cochran-Smith, 2008; Zeichner, 2010). These initiatives included: early pre-placement contact; issuing and processing of pre-placement questionnaires; pre-placement school visits; induction days including full school tour; and early addressing of administrative tasks such as ICT access to school-based systems prior to placement. These on-boarding processes were new to the schools, courtesy of the Hub, and created a stronger start and familiarisation process for ITE students who reported feeling more at ease in comparison to commencing other placements. The structured, organised approach to on-boarding and ongoing support by the PExC emphasised to school staff the importance and prioritisation of the school hosting placements. The approach resulted in a marked increase in the level of teacher interest and willingness to perform the ST role as the Hub matured.

Supervisor Teacher Training As teacher-identified PL, supervision training modules were facilitated by the PExC for interested teachers during scheduled staff meeting times. Several faculty/ department head teachers approached the PExC requesting ST modules be delivered during fortnightly faculty meetings. ITE students’ supervision was now being viewed as a shared responsibility, demonstrating a shift in school culture. Middle leadership were also provided a brief training session outlining the requirements of ITE students’ placement with the university. These sessions were well received, with several staff acknowledging “the changing nature of ITE and the need for them to enhance their awareness of PEx processes and requirements.” These ST-focused sessions communicated the shared responsibility of the ST role as well as the significant potential for supervision to be reconceptualised as not just a service provided to the university, but as a genuine PL opportunity for teachers to reflect on and refine their own pedagogical practice. PExC training and information sessions resulted in increased numbers of teachers volunteering to supervise and requesting access to ST PL. These actions assisted in building the status and profile of supervision across the sites of the high school.

Initial Teacher Education Student Peer-Group Meetings During placement, the PExC held weekly ITE student meetings as a peer-group to facilitate meaningful, reflective dialogue and facilitate relevant PL sessions. STs also attended selected meetings to further enhance their understanding of

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the placement requirements along with guest speakers from an array of middle leadership and specialist teaching areas. Explicit links between teaching practice, the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL, 2018), and university theory were discussed. These discussions provided ongoing scaffolded support to complete placement-related university assessments, including the Teacher Performance Assessment (AITSL, n.d.) portfolio. Targeted PL workshops were designed, drawing on the PExC’s deep knowledge and understanding of ITE students’ previous learning and experience gained from their university education. Immersion in these ongoing PL opportunities was embraced by ITE students, with high levels of engagement and collaboration. ITE students shared lesson ideas and problem solved day-today concerns relating to issues such as behaviour, time management, and placement requirements in a relaxed, collegial atmosphere. They expressed the benefit of having a person (the PExC) they could speak to in a safe space, removed from the concerns of being judged or assessed as is the case with their STs, who hold the inherent responsibility for deeming them satisfactory/unsatisfactory during placement. The majority of ITE students rated the PL as “highly valuable”, with one ITE student stating “I think these were great and should be necessary in all schools…very relevant and valuable. I enjoyed wellbeing, behaviour management and voice projection.” ITE students identified unique learning opportunities during their placement as a result of their peer engagement in these meetings. For example, several requested to engage in peer lesson observations working around non-teaching times. Observing other ITE students’ practice provided safe spaces to receive observational feedback from peers functioning at similar levels of experience and expertise. This initiative resulted in broadening the nature of feedback and building ITE students’ classroom confidence and willingness to work with peers.

Outcomes The appointment of a border worker as PExC resulted in a unique, collaborative approach to PEx placements. Supervision and support provided to ITE students whilst in schools was enhanced. This support highlighted the effectiveness of ITE student peer groupings and the need for regular PExC facilitated meetings which built collaboration and shared practice into ITE students’ repertoire early in their teaching careers and assisted to expand their professional networks. The allocation of a school-based PExC role provided the necessary authority to lead PL which aimed to improve PEx placement quality. Leadership support and deployment of appropriate resources enabled release time from teaching for various initiatives, including: enhanced PEx mentoring and support of ITE students by a network of teachers and PGM; grouped placement of ITE students during PEx to provide peer-group support; mentoring of STs; and just as importantly, support for

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middle leadership overseeing STs. Additional pre-placement school-based initiatives were implemented to best prepare teachers, including ST information and training sessions, executive information sessions, and small-group ITE student school inductions.

Enablers A Hub teacher acted as a border worker by concurrently fulfilling a teaching role both at the university and the two sites of the high school. As a hybrid educator within the partnership, the PExC was able to transcend school and university boundaries (Burns & Badiali, 2020; Clark et al., 2005) to better mix educational theory and practice in support of ITE students’ professional learning (Zeichner, 2010). The appointment aimed to leverage their unique positioning, recognising them as an integral piece in the partnership relationship (Winslade et al., 2022). Given the existing positive professional relationships between the Hub teachers, academics, and ITE students, appointment as PExC was again a natural progression within the maturing partnership. The role was recognised by stakeholders as an additional partnership endeavour to better transition ITE students from university to the classroom. The unique university-based experience of the PExC provided a strong working knowledge and familiarity with university processes, assessment, and placement requirements. This familiarity provided a seamless transition between the theoretical aspects of ITE students’ learning and the practicalities of the school.

Constraints and Challenges Established institutional relationships informed a preference for accepting ITE students from the partner university. As a result, the load on the partner school teachers to act as PEx supervisors increased, with some disciplines garnering overwhelming placement requests. The resultant outcome was an inequitable load for supervision between disciplines, and the need for placement refusal for some ITE students.

Conclusion This school-university partnership has endured time, and the cessation of external funding. As members, the authors have used the Hub evidence to identify the factors that contributed toward the sustainability of this partnership. Firstly, the partnership flourished due to the openness and willingness of members to create

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a genuine ‘third space’ allowing the leaking of their diverse institutional cultures to be absorbed by ‘the other’. This openness resulted from the strategic and intentional selection of members, and the extended time building relational trust and respect. The phasing of activities allowed fluidity to authentically meet stakeholders’ needs and provide reciprocal benefits. The authenticity of activities was embellished by brokering of institutional members and using evidenced-based design to ensure contemporary, credible experiences for all stakeholders. Significant external funding provided esteem, release time for planning, teacher autonomy, and institutional buyin. While the multi-faceted approach to the Hub no longer functions, the school principal acknowledges the significant worth of institutional brokering, allocating school funds to targeted branches of the partnership. In addition, an academic’s professional support, university resources, and spaces remain available to the high school.

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Dean, B. A. (2023). The value of work-integrated learning for preparing the future teaching workforce. In. M. Winslade, T. Loughland, & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Work-integrated learning case studies in teacher education: Epistemic reflexivity (pp. 11–22). Springer. https://doi.org/10.21153/jtlge2 021vol12no2art979 European Commission. (2010). Developing coherent and system-wide induction programmes for beginning teachers: A handbook for policy makers (European Commission Staff Working Document SEC (2010) 538 final). European Commission. Geeraerts, K., Tynjälä, P., Heikkinen, H., Markkanen, I., Pennanen, M., & Gijbels, D. (2015). Peergroup mentoring as a tool for teacher development. European Journal of Teacher Education, 38(3), 358–377. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2014.983068 Grattan Institute. (2022). Making time for great teaching: How better government policy can help. https://grattan.edu.au/report/making-time-for-great-teaching-how-better-government-pol icy-can-help/ Haneda, M., Teemant, A., & Sherman, B. (2016). Instructional coaching through dialogic interaction: Helping a teacher to become agentive in her practice. Language and Education, 31(1), 46–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2016.1230127 Hattie, J. (2013). Visible learning for teachers. Routledge. Kemmis, S., Heikkinen, H., Aspfors, J., Fransson, G., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2014). Mentoring as contested practice: Support, supervision and collaborative self-development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 43, 154–164. Ken, T., & Chean, Y. (2012). Business graduates competences in the eyes of the employers: An exploratory study in Malaysia. World Review of Business Research, 2(2), 176–190. Kezar, A. (2007). A tale of two cultures: Schools and universities in partnership for school reform and student success. Metropolitan University Journal, 18(4), 28–47. Kutsyuruba, B. (2011). Mentorship of teachers across the intergenerational gap. In E. Ralph & K. Walker (Eds.), Adapting mentorship across the professions (pp. 157–75). Temeron/Detselig. Lemon, N., Wilson, A., Oxworth, C., Zavros-Orr, A., & Wood, B. (2018). Lines of school-university partnership: Perception, sensation and meshwork reshaping of pre-service teachers’ experiences. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43(10). https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2018v43.n10.5 Leshem, S. (2012). The many faces of mentor-mentee relationships in a pre-service teachers’ education programme. Creative Education, 4(4), 240–254. Loughland, T., Barr, J., de Villiers, G., Winslade, M., Eady, M., Hay, I., Humphries, J., Hart, N., Cotton, W., Handal, B., James, S., Whannel, R., Monteleone, C., & Donnelly, D. (2021, April 23). Examining the role of the school professional experience coordinator in the NSW Department of Education’s professional experience Hub School program (Final report for the New South Wales Department of Education). Luce, R. H. (2005). School-university partnership: A case study [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts. Lynch, D., & Smith, R. (2012). Teacher education partnerships: An Australian research-based perspective. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37(11), Article 8. Nash, M., Byth, A., Whewell, D., Leonard Kilkenny, M., & Hickey, R. (2022). Working relationally to bridge the divide: An exploration of an Australian school–university professional experience partnership from the perspectives of five stakeholders. In O. J. Bradbury & D. Acquaro (Eds.), Innovation in initial teacher education (pp. 7–26). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-98119-5057-5_3 NSW Department of Education. (2021). Professional experience coordinators statement. https:// education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/pl-resources/pre-serviceteacher-resources/professional-experience-coordinators%23sidenavigation_auto NSW Education Standards Authority. (2013). Great teaching, inspired learning: A blueprint for action. https://www.educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/about/initiatives/greatteaching-inspired-learning

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Stacey E. Jones is a Lecturer and Workplace Learning Coordinator in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Charles Sturt University. She specialises in professional experience placement and teacher mentoring. Stacey has performed the role of school-based professional experience coordinator, with a focus on early career teacher mentoring and accreditation. Stacey’s current research focuses on school-university partnerships developed through authentic communities of practice as an effective strategy to enhance teacher quality. She is fervently committed to best preparing university students for highly successful and impactful teaching careers, recognising the crucial role of high-quality teacher education courses in their development. Deb Clarke is an Associate Professor Curriculum at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Deb has sustained a teaching career in both secondary schools and higher education institutions in New South Wales, and has worked as an educational consultant in multiple school systems, and accrediting authories. Deb’s extensive curriculum expertise is showcased as a contributing author of the Australian K-10 curriculum, and an array of secondary school curriculum textbooks. Deb’s passion is ensuring students engage in quality learning experiences that replicate real world tasks and prepare them to make meaningful contributions to society. Deb’s research is in the areas of authentic assessment, the scholarship of teaching and learning, communities of practice and school-university partnerships.

Part IV

Learning Lessons and Navigating Challenges

Chapter 16

Prerequisites for Policy and Practice in School–University Partnerships in Sweden: Short- and Long-Term Incentives for Taking Responsibility Helena Berglund , Elna Sivhed , Martin Granbom, Linda Smidfelt, and Sinikka Neuhaus

Aim, Questions and Outline In teacher education in Sweden, collaboration between schools and universities is promoted by the policy and intrinsic incentives of both schools and universities. These collaborations face obstacles, such as difficulties concerning communication, views on knowledge and knowledge cultures, resources in the form of time and personnel, but also motivation relating to incentives and policy. In 2022, a new policy concerning school–university partnerships, linking school-based teacher education with collaborative research, was implemented in Sweden. The present chapter analyses frames in terms of regulations, organisation, and resources, both for school-based teacher education and collaboration on research, in relation to school–university partnerships. The aim relates to two overarching questions: . How can school–university partnerships, linking school-based teacher education with collaborative research, be described in relation to frames in terms of regulations, organisation, and resources of the different actors associated to Lund University teacher education?

H. Berglund (B) · E. Sivhed · S. Neuhaus Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] M. Granbom Gymnasieskolan Spyken, Lund, Sweden L. Smidfelt Katedralskolan, Lund, Sweden © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_16

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. Based on the emerging description, which considerations and steps can we take to enable collaboration that is beneficial for pre-service teachers, schools, and university? Collaborative research is sometimes referred to as practice-close research, depending on where the center of gravity is located. In the policy presented, the term practice-close research is used to indicate that the questions asked derive from school practice. Collaborative research is used here as an umbrella term for research involving actors from both schools and universities. The outline of this chapter starts with a contextualisation of the school–university partnerships in Sweden and Lund University. The network involved is described and tensions and conflicts are identified. Using a frame-factor approach, the incentives and prerequisites for partnership of the different actors are deciphered. From this stance, we describe how we navigate the landscape created by new Swedish policy concerning school–university partnerships, linking school-based education with collaborative research, considering prerequisites and incentives. The perspectives presented here are those of teacher-education leaders and researchers, Helena Berglund, Elna Sivhed and Sinikka Neuhaus, and those of two upper secondary school teachers, Martin Granbom and Linda Smidfelt, regarding their experiences of practice-close research. The chapter ends with reflections on issues that have been identified as being of concern for building valuable school–university partnerships for both teacher education and collaborative research.

The Context: Upper Secondary Teacher Education in Sweden and at Lund University Swedish teacher education for upper secondary school is made up of three parts. Two of these are university-based subject studies (usually in two different subjects, including methods on teaching and learning the subject) and educational core studies that include general teacher competences that span the different subject orientations. The third part is school-based, where the pre-service teachers learn from observing and practicing teaching under the supervision of teachers employed at schools. Since there is a shortage of teachers in Sweden, especially in certain subjects, measures have been taken to create more ways of entering into teacher education. In addition to a coherent teacher programme of five years, there are also complementary teacher programmes for those who have already studied their subjects to the required extent and want to switch to a teaching career. Several different solutions to the shortage of teachers are on trial in the higher education system, resulting in different versions of complementary teacher education. Something that all varieties of upper secondary teacher educations in Sweden have in common are the intended learning outcomes, which are abundant in numbers in relation to other university programmes in Sweden. Most of the learning outcomes are directed towards the one-and-a-half years of educational core and school-based courses, of which the

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latter enables realisation and assessment of many of the goals that relate to the broad range of qualifications associated with the teaching profession (McDonald, 1978; Peklaj, 2015). At Lund University, the Department of Educational Sciences (founded 2011) organises two types of teacher education programmes: a cohesive subject teacher education and a complementary programme. The department is responsible for the educational core (one year in total) and school-based courses (one semester in total) for both programmes. The leadership of teacher education is located within this small and newly formed unit and thus functions as a central part of the local teacher education network, producing guidelines and information to be distributed through the network of faculties, subject departments, and schools involved in teacher education. Some of the information is easily transferred, while some of it is complex and therefore more difficult to spread (Centola, 2018). The teacher education is a new, interdisciplinary addition to this old and, by Swedish measures, large university (founded in 1666 with 44,000 students) with differentiated, well-established department cultures in the numerous subjects involved. In the schools, educating pre-service teachers is a small part of the job assignment, but each individual pre-service teacher has a close relationship with their supervisor at the school during the school-based courses, which can be viewed as a strong tie (Centola, 2018). A pre-service teacher usually follows the same supervisor during all three courses spread out over three semesters. Finding appropriate placement for the required school-based parts, with regard to subject, level, and individual prerequisites of the pre-service teachers, is a challenge. The tensions and conflicts that sometimes arise and the aim of improving and developing the school-based part of teacher education towards high quality and equality in learning and assessment forms a rationale of this chapter.

Tensions Between Different Actors in the School-Based Part of Teacher Education: How Distance Can Create Misconceptions and Mistrust Conflicts commonly appear in different areas in relation to the school-based courses. One conflict area originates from different assessments of the pre-service teacher made by the university teacher and the supervisor at the school. Such conflicts often spring from different views regarding what is important knowledge and competences in the context. Some of the university teachers assessing the pre-service teachers on the school-based courses are located in the same department. However, since there is a desire to have subject relevant university teachers for all pre-service teachers in these courses, most of the assessors are located at different departments, or sometimes other universities, which makes it challenging to build consensus on and equality in assessment.

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Conflicts sometimes concern behavioural aspects where, for example, the university teacher is perceived by the pre-service teacher or supervisor as being rude and unpleasant towards the pre-service teacher and/or supervisor. Often, when retold second hand, the behaviour that is perceived as causing the problem becomes a general truth; for example, ‘university teachers act like this’, or ‘supervisors are like that’. Such ‘we and them’ thinking can be seen as an inherent disposition in humans, where we attribute bad things that ‘we’ do to unfortunate circumstances, while the bad things ‘they’ do are seen as inherent to ‘their’ ways (Klintman, 2019). There is also a risk that we see our own knowledge claim as an undisputable fact, even though there are uncertainties and contextualisation that will affect the validity of the claim (Klintman, 2019). Occasionally, the differences in what is viewed as valuable knowledge or abilities for pre-service teachers can be perceived as a problem; for example, pre-service teachers perceive differences in assessment made by different teachers in the same course. These areas of conflict can also be understood in relation to the many complex learning goals associated with the school-based courses, where different actors can put different amount of weight on certain goals. Managing communication with the many different actors involved in the preservice teachers’ school-based education is a challenge. Each pre-service teacher has at least one supervisor at the school and also a university teacher that will make a school-visit, observe the pre-service teacher while teaching, and afterwards have a reflective talk with the pre-service teacher and supervisor as a part of the assessment. This is complemented with a written assignment that is handed in by the pre-service teacher and commented on by the supervisor at the end of the placement. From these three parts, the university teachers assess the pre-service teachers and grade them according to a three-grade scale: fail, pass, or pass with distinction. It is difficult to achieve similarities in views in the complex assignment of assessing what makes a good teacher, and with so many actors functioning in different subject cultures as well as educational contexts, so equity in grading can be hard to achieve. This calls for measures that can strengthen the routes of communication between the different actors, which is further complicated by the peripheral part these assignments have in the individual actors’ work. These conflicts, mistrust, and misconception occur too often and there is a significant concern in building a shared responsibility to address them. Awareness of the contextualisation of knowledge claims is an important part in this, which might be supported by increased interaction between different actors. The ‘we and them’ problem is also a product of the gap between schools and university, where the view of each other is based on assumptions and lack of consensus. Organising for interaction and enabling collaboration can work as a key to increase common responsibility, the sense of ‘building this together’. It is also important with informal talk, laughter, and other solidarity-producing interactions to help ease conflicts between school teachers and university teachers and researchers in order to make the differences in viewpoints productive instead of leading to alienation (Olitsky, 2017). Other challenges concern the bridging of theoretical and practical aspects of the subject teacher education. Lund University has attempted to reduce this gap through collaborative research and by involving teachers from upper secondary

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school in university-based parts. Collaborative efforts in teacher education can help pre-service teachers navigate the complexities of practice and theory (Christianakis, 2010). Again, collaboration can help smooth out tensions that arise between schools and universities in teacher education and replace it with common understanding and solution-oriented discussions. The teacher education can act as a suspension bridge between the two, with clear anchoring on both sides, especially through the schoolbased parts of the education, which requires collaboration concerning both logistic and qualitative development. To find a valuable course of action we take a starting point in frames that affect different actors’ prerequisites for interaction and collaboration. This helps us find our way forward by pinpointing some of the important considerations for building partnerships, grounded in the new policy and investments that are described in more detail further below.

A Frame-Factors Perspective on Collaboration Frames come in different forms, such as external frames that lie beyond our influence and internal frames that lie within our control (Lindblad et al., 1999). The external frames at a system level limit freedom of action (Persson, 2015). Such frames include policy and regulations governing teacher education such as intended learning outcomes (ILO) and resources in the form of available time and payment for the different actors involved. Internal frames refer to processes we can control, such as the design and content of the collaboration (Persson, 2015). Even though it is possible to influence these internal frames, they also depend on people’s experiences and interactions and the dynamics created in a given context. Those experiences and interactions can be solid and grounded in common references and at the same time fragile and easily transformed. By building on these common references, a turn from temporary interaction to continuity can be reinforced. The possibility of transformation is based on the assumption that collaboration is constituted by the actions of those who are active and thereby construct additional limitations and opportunities for the continued development of the collaboration (Persson, 2015). A frame-factor approach can contextualise processes and open up for different perspectives (Persson, 2015). In this text, the focus is on frames that can contribute to a transformation of the collaborative processes, from gap to bridge with increased continuity of interaction. The frames used here are: prerequisites for collaboration concerning schoolbased education and collaborative research, in terms of policy and ILO, recourses/ limitations in terms of payment, time and investments, and the organisational network involved. These frames can affect incentives of different actors and, by analysing the organisation from this perspective, bring forward important aspects to consider when adjusting internal frames to support collaboration in school–university partnerships. The core and doxa of collaborative research is that the understanding can be deepened between involved actors. Strengthened mutual understanding can lead to practice-relevant research and better education for the pre-service teachers (Christianakis, 2010). Therefore, linking collaborative research with development

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of school-based education for pre-service teachers can be fruitful. Collaborative research can be described as consisting of and depending on both closeness and distance. Closeness consists of vicinity to the practice and the object of interest and closeness to inside actors. The university actors stand for distance to practice; this is an outside perspective that includes closeness to theoretical perspectives (Persson, 2020). Combining inside actors (teachers) and outside actors (researchers) with their specific expertise is a way of making the most of both inside and outside perspectives. For a functional collaboration, it is important that all actors can participate as equals but with consideration to their individual roles (Blossing, 2020). All actors need to have control over both the forms of the collaboration and the outcome of the work; for example, setting of the agenda, decision making and implementation. Those terms, and the different roles that researchers and teachers have, can function as a double-check where researchers and teachers can compensate for each other’s shortcomings, emphasising collaboration as a mutual interest. The various actors must also contribute with their specific skills and ensure that the other(s) are included in both form and content. The underlying idea in this form of practice-close research is that the questions posed should be anchored and sprung from practice. The initiative for research could come from schools and from the university. Therefore, collaborative research should be able to address issues that are of concern to both school staff and (university) researchers, to conduct research that is perceived as meaningful (Serder & Malmström, 2020). Various meanings have been attributed to different forms of collaboration between school and university, resulting in varying implications for schools and teachers (Sundberg & Adolfsson, 2015). According to Swedish Government Official Reports (2018), the aim of collaborative research is to achieve a long-term and sustainable structure for collaboration between school and university and at the same time anchor school development in academic foundations. Facilitating collaborative research aims to reduce the tension and gaps that exist between school and university. For example, research that cannot be applied easily in schools has been accused of deteriorating school results (Parliamentary Secretariat for Evaluation and Research, 2013). The gaps can also be seen within subject teacher education in difficulties upholding valuable collaborations between universities and schools. Time plays a decisive role in this work, both the time that can be controlled and the time beyond control. By shifting focus between past, present, and future, the actors’ understanding of meaning can be swayed towards continuity and shared responsibility. The organised interaction can shift the frames over time, from collaboration being new, untested, and interpreted as temporary, to a permanent feature for both university and school. If long-term collaboration is to be developed, long-term planning and incentives are required with some guarantees of stability, requiring time for thought, time for discussion, and time set aside for future involvement. Initial costs for teachers initiating collaborations are often high, so continuity is important because it enables trust and qualitative development (Berglund, 2022). The continuity can also bridge instabilities that can come from exchange of individuals involved. Actors come and go; some change jobs and others lose interest. Building consistency for collaborative interaction can make it easier for new actors to enter into collaboration.

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Furthermore, time is in short supply in the school world, as teachers with busy schedules have little time for collaboration with the university. Here, a dialogue with both teachers and schools’ management is required to free up resources for collaboration in the form of time, and the incentives for participation might be strengthened by coupling school-based education with collaborative research.

A New Policy Taking Shape in Practice To solve the problem of finding placement for pre-service teachers’ school-based courses, and to improve the quality, the Swedish government has issued a new policy that binds universities to form contracts with schools concerning placement of preservice teachers (Swedish Code of Statutes, 2021). When signing the agreement, the schools become so-called practice schools, tied to the teacher education at a specific university. It is stipulated that the schools should provide placements in high concentrations as well as supervisors who are qualified and trained for supervision of pre-service teachers. The universities are required to provide courses in supervisions for the teachers. In the policy, pre-service teachers’ accessibility to practice-close research is specified as a common responsibility, thereby linking school-based education and collaborative research more closely than previously. A few schools have entered into partnership with Lund University, including the five upper secondary schools governed by the municipality of Lund.

Roles and Incentives for Different Actors in Teacher Education Before looking at how to navigate the collaborative landscape of school–university partnership, we present a description of some of the prerequisites for different actors based on frames such as policy, incentives, and resources concerning both schoolbased education and collaborative research.

Schools While most schools in Sweden are run by municipalities, some so-called freeschools are run by private actors. Both forms are solely governmentally funded1 since combining governmental and private funding of schools is not allowed in

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Sweden (Dahlstedt & Fejes, 2018). The schools are not obligated to take on preservice teachers but their incentives in teacher education are quite clear; namely, to obtain access to competent teachers to employ for teaching positions, providing their students with high-quality education. Sweden is a large, elongated country with low population density. Close proximity to higher education institutions that educate teachers has a positive effect on how easy it is for a school to recruit teachers. The further away a school is from the teacher education institution, the harder placement becomes since the pre-service teachers cannot travel too far. Therefore, there is pressure to take on pre-service teachers for the schools close to teacher education institutions, and those same schools have less difficulty recruiting teacher staff. Other incentives for the school can be that the pre-service teachers bring fresh perspectives and also provide the schools with one more adult in the classroom; the latter perhaps has more bearing in the lower grades. The school also receives a small sum for each pre-service teacher, which often goes directly as salary to the teacher who acts as supervisor, or into development funds the teachers can use. It is up to the school or municipality how the payment is distributed. Furthermore, in our region it is often up to individual teachers to decide whether to take on a pre-service teacher. Incentives for this can be instrumental (for example, pressure from the principle, who may feel that supervising pre-service teachers may be beneficial to the teacher in terms of salary negotiation) or intrinsically motivated (for example, an individual feeling of responsibility, wanting to share one’s knowledge, or the opportunity to learn about yourself by reflecting on teaching and learning together with pre-service teachers). Apart from the benefits the schools gain from taking on pre-service teachers, there are few other incentives. There are no regulations concerning how many pre-service teachers a school of a certain size should take on. Instead, the policy is based on trust that municipalities and private actors take on the responsibility voluntarily. This type of steering relies on common effort and trusting relationships, where strong social capital can be built by rosy circles of cooperation, expanding trust, strong reciprocity, civic activity, and collective well-being (Siisiäinen, 2003). Accordingly, municipalities have often developed routines for how they act on the issue, and strive to solve the puzzle of providing all pre-service teachers with a relevant placement with regard to level and subject. Free schools also take on pre-service teachers to some extent. However, there is also the possibility of contrasting vicious circles where distrust, breaking of norms of reciprocity, and avoiding one’s duties lead to disorder and stagnation (Siisiäinen, 2003). For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, many schools declined to take on pre-service teachers, which led to an interruption of teacher education. There are also incentives for schools and teachers to partake in practice-close and collaborative research. By law, Swedish schools must be based on research. The stipulation can be interpreted in different ways: research in subjects and in relation to subject knowledge, as well as research in relation to educational sciences. Individual teachers can also have special interest to partake in research, both as producers and consumers.

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Universities In contrast to the optional position that the schools have in offering placements, the universities are required to find placement and strive to offer high-quality schoolbased education that is appropriate for pre-service teachers’ subjects and levels. To get some degree of control over the placements, everything is organised within a regional collaboration, including schools from different municipalities and four universities in the region. Perhaps the most pronounced difficulty is in finding placement for pre-service teachers in school subjects, such as history, that are small in terms of hours of teaching, but popular to study among pre-service teachers. Another challenge is how to broaden the pre-service teachers’ experiences with regard to different school cultures, since it is difficult to shift schools between the periods of placements in the complex system with so many actors. When it comes to collaborative research, university researchers benefit from access to informants and the possibility to maintain relevant understanding of practice.

Pre-service Teachers In the midst of this organisational complexity are the pre-service teachers, who depend on the teacher education, and perhaps especially on the school-based part, to prepare them for their future profession, including research literacy in both understanding and conducting research. They are preparing for a profession that places large demands on knowledge as well as relational and practical skills that are sometimes difficult to obtain outside of practicing teaching. Thus, many of the learning goals stipulated for teacher education are supposed to be developed and realised during the school-based courses, where they also expose their capacities to potential future employers. These pre-service teachers enter teacher education with many different perspectives, hopes, and wishes that are sometimes in line with and sometimes opposed to what the teacher educators they meet have in mind for them, or the political steering of teacher education. It is a challenge to develop the school–university partnership in a way that strengthens the pre-service teachers’ future professional identities, adheres to the different perspectives held by the many different actors and ILO in teacher education, and provides validity, reliability, and equity in learning opportunities and grading. Therefore, to reinforce the communication and incentives for collaboration between schools and universities it is important to strengthen both educational research and the teacher profession.

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Incentives for Entering into the Partnership Stipulated by the New Policy of Practice Schools As described above, skewness in incentives exists between schools and universities. Although the universities are to place as many pre-service teachers as possible into practice schools, and the demands on practice schools are stipulated, the schools are by no means required to enter into partnerships. Since it is difficult to find placements for the pre-service teachers, it is also difficult for the universities to stipulate demands on the schools. In order to convince schools to enter into the agreement of partnership in line with the new policy, contracts that are attractive to the schools need to be developed. So, what can the university offer that might benefit the schools? Professional development for teachers and closer connection to the research developed at the university might be attractive for the schools. The university also benefits from linking the schools more closely to research since it can enable research questions and aims to be developed in communication with practitioners in schools and facilitate data sampling in collaboration with schools, thus laying a foundation for practicerelevant research. We strive to realise the partnerships stipulated by the policy in a manner that strengthens these aspects of the collaboration. With these incentives and common efforts from these different groups, we hope to bridge some of the gaps we encountered in relation to school-based education and also to enable connections for building collaborative research and supporting preservice teachers in their thesis work. By combining the focus on school-based education and collaborative research, we hope to build stronger ties and shared responsibility between the different actors involved. Teachers taking ownership of research is one part of this endeavour; at the same time as the new policy concerning practice schools was being implemented, Lund municipality was making a new investment into practice-based research. Two teachers working at different upper secondary schools in Lund were given a research assignment by their employer equivalent to 30% of full-time over a two year period to conduct research. This investment in research from the municipality provides an additional arena for realising the goals concerning practice-close research required by the new policy on practice schools. To further strengthen the connection between the teacher education at the university and the schools, Lund University offers research support and involves these teachers in ongoing collaborations. Teachers Martin Granbom and Linda Smidfelt, co-authors of this chapter, have held this assignment since September 2022. In the following section, they relate their prerequisites for practice-close research at the start-up of their two-year research project granted by Lund municipality.

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The Lund Municipality Teachers’ Opportunities to Conduct Research We (Linda and Martin) have been teaching in upper secondary school for more than 20 years. We each have Ph.D.’s, in Italian and biology, respectively, and we applied for and were assigned the two 30% two-year positions as practice-close researchers in Lund, starting in autumn of 2022. For the remaining part of our 100% positions at our schools, we teach our subjects. This is the first time Lund municipality has initiated a project of this kind. The research project is not within our subjects since the municipality specified that it should concern all teachers regardless of subject. Considering this, we directed our research project toward classroom relationships between teachers and students, with focus on teachers’ relational competence. Lund University, specifically the Department of Educational Sciences, supports the investment from Lund municipality by providing us with office space and interaction with researchers and access to the university’s libraries and academic articles. The common interest in practice-close research and collaborations concerning teacher education makes this collaboration important, both for the university and the schools. However, several factors influence our possibilities to conduct research. Below, we reflect on some of the main issues that we believe are important to address based on our experiences and the position of being in the first quarter of our two-year research assignments.

Incentives for Schools to Support Teachers Conducting Research With experience, teachers gain tacit knowledge that is difficult to pass on to preservice teachers. It is also difficult for inexperienced teachers to acquire tacit knowledge since it takes time to gain the necessary experience. Collaborative research can make tacit knowledge more explicit and available for inexperienced and pre-service teachers by exemplifying and theorising teachers’ work. Another benefit of collaborative research is that teachers are encouraged to evaluate teaching methods. During a teacher’s working life, the popularity of different teaching methods is constantly shifting and teachers are expected to adapt to the latest trends. If teachers focus on issues that are relevant them, continuous validation of changes of teaching practises may occur. If the focus for collaborative research originates from an actual need experienced by teachers, meaningful teacher development can be achieved. By gathering practical examples and constantly evaluating teaching practise, the tacit knowledge of expert teachers can become available for others to be inspired by and use. The main focus for school principals is providing students with excellent teaching. An important part of teaching is profound knowledge of the teachers’ subjects, but also the capacity to build good relations with their students. When employing new teachers, the main focus for principals is usually to employ the applicant they think

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will be the best teacher, rather than a teacher with research experience. Teachers with a Ph.D. may also be more costly to employ. At universities, publishing research papers is meritorious, but there is nothing similar in the Swedish school system. Most principals expect teachers to perform a systematic evaluation of their practice, but for that to become research, the results need to be put in a scientific context and published, which takes a lot of time and effort. The distinction between school development and research is not always obvious, and the employer and the teacher sometimes have different interests. However, when conducting research, the results will be available for others and be a part of the knowledge base. Schools often advertise the fact that many of their teachers have a doctoral degree as an argument for parents to choose to send their children to that school. There are also considerable regional differences regarding the number of teachers with a Ph.D. in Swedish schools. If the school is in an area close to a university, the chances are higher that some teachers have a Ph.D. This also affects the possibility that a teacher will be able to conduct research as part of their employment in the sense that the fewer teachers there are with Ph.D.’s, the greater the possibility that the municipalities or the schools will use that asset for different projects. In a university city such as Lund, where we work, there are many teachers with a Ph.D. and such a qualification is somewhat taken for granted. However, the practice-close research project that we conduct is an example on how this asset can be used to reinforce collaboration and research on educational issues in the region.

Time Available Many teachers consider that they suffer from high levels of stress connected to their workload (Månsson, 2004). Mandatory documentation, examinations, giving feedback, etc., is stressful and it is difficult to find time to conduct research as a part of a full-time position as a teacher. In practice, we have a day and half during the week to work with the research project over a two-year period. Within this timeframe we are supposed to choose a relevant research area (relevant for us, the school board, the principals, our teacher colleagues, and the students) and research method, implement the research with participants in school, analyse the results, and ensure that the results are disseminated in our schools. Ideally, there would also be time to write a report or an article about the research project in order to be able to make the results available to a wider audience. The pressure from different actors and expectations for practical output can collide with the basic idea of research—to investigate something unknown where there are no given answers or clear paths to take that can be known in advance. We encountered a few practical issues regarding the time spent on the research project versus teaching. There is a risk that we spend too much time on school work since there is no limit to the work there. For instance, in a period involving many examinations, there is correcting and assessment to be done, which we sometimes need to prioritise. While there are advantages in terms of time that we have at our

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own disposal, it is important to ensure that there is enough time for research as well. Another issue that relates to the time spent in school is that a teacher’s work assignments not only include teaching and assessment. It is important that some of the other work assignments are adjusted according to the time available as well.

How to Spread the Results An important part of all research, not only collaborative school research, is disseminating the results. Research is an ongoing process in which new research projects take a starting point in research already carried out. Therefore, it is important to make sure that collaborative research will be spread beyond the place where it is carried out. It is important to discuss the plan for communicating the results early in the process since schools do not have the same incentives as universities to make sure that the results are published. However, if teachers’ practice-close research will add to current knowledge so that other researching teachers will be able to further elaborate and continue investigating, it is necessary to have peer-reviewed scientific publications. Research in schools may be highly context-based and not relevant to school systems that differ from ours, which implies that publication in international journals may not be necessary. However, there are several Swedish and Nordic journals that are peer-reviewed, indexed in databases, and read by researchers. A reasonable goal would be to make sure that our research is published in those journals. Another possibility to spread our findings is to participate at scientific conferences. Furthermore, it is also important to publish in journals, or present at conferences, directed towards teachers.

The Plan Ahead—Shared Responsibility and Increased Collaboration To connect interaction concerning school-based education with opportunities for collaborative research, part of the funding that was issued by the government to implement the new policy on practice schools has been set aside for starting up a yearly one-day conference for pre-service teachers, teachers who supervise them, and university teachers and researchers involved in teacher education. Here, time again plays a significant role, especially the time we can control. It is important that the conference feels like time well spent and contributes to the professional life of pre-service teachers, teachers, and researchers, providing an arena for the spread of practice-close research such as Martin and Linda’s, as well as collaborative research initiatives from university researchers. The conference should provide opportunities for these three groups to meet and interact, besides the conversations between individual actors that take place when pre-service teachers are assessed on their school-based courses.

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On the conference programme the plan is to add presentations on research and organisational aspects concerning both the school-based education and collaborative research by inviting speakers from school and universities. We plan to make room for alumni students presenting their finalised exam theses and the Lund municipality researchers to present their research ideas and preliminary results. We will also organise subject workshops in which pre-service teachers, supervisors, and university teachers together can discuss school-based education as well as collaborative research ideas. Priority will be given to creating opportunities for people to mingle and meet informally, as this can help to reduce the ‘we and them’ issue and perhaps overcome some tension. Acting upon those issues is a way of taking responsibility and admitting shortcomings and, through this form of collaboration, turning them into something positive. The conference will be held during the autumn when the pre-service teachers in both teacher education programmes are in their first week of school-based education (in the second or third and final course, depending on the programme). In the following semester, the pre-service teachers will work on their exam theses and can therefore use the conference as an opportunity to get inspiration. The pre-service teachers can interact with school and university teachers, both within and between subjects, and the supervisors and university teachers can meet in a less formal setting than during the assessment of the pre-service teachers’ school-based education. While it is hoped that participation in the conference can be perceived as valuable for all parties, we still perceive attendance as one of the major difficulties to overcome. Freeing up time can be especially difficult for teachers with busy teaching schedules. Since they are from different schools and municipalities, it is difficult to find a day to set aside for this. However, it is stipulated in the policy that the principals should enable, and the university should offer, possibilities for the supervising teachers to take courses in the supervision of pre-service teachers. To help free up time for the teachers to part-take in the conference, we have included in the written agreement with the schools that continued participation in the conference over a five-year period can be equivalent to the required course credits. The teachers can then lean on the agreement signed by their principal and use some of their time set aside for professional development to participate. The strong tie between pre-service teachers and supervisors can also help motivate attendance and a sense of common responsibility (Centola, 2018). The pre-service teachers’ participation is easier to enable; we can make it a mandatory part of their studies to participate and free up their schedule for the day of the conference. The third remaining actor is the university teachers involved in teacher education, and we hope to be able to attract those involved in the school-based education, as well as those involved in the pre-service teachers’ exam theses. It might be possible to pay the university teachers to attend and function as workshop leaders on the conference, but our hope is that there will be other incentives and values that motivate attendance for this group, to develop their own professional role in their teaching assignment in relation to teacher education, including school-based parts, and opportunities for insights and building relationships for collaborative research.

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Concluding Remarks In addition to the already established organisation to support placement, high-quality school-based teaching, and collaborative research, we need to find ways to utilise the new policy and agreement between schools and universities to strengthen the connections while considering the recourses in forms of staff and time, in order to make the measures we take valuable and avoid ending up with visions without content (Christianakis, 2010). It is important to build bridges between the different actors in order to mend conflicts and enable common efforts to improve teacher education and education research. Therefore, there is a need to increase the benefits and reduce the costs for actors to be involved in school–university partnership, such as through structures allowing for long-term interaction (Berglund, 2022), and to acknowledge both power differences and differences in incentives of the actors involved (Yamashiro et al., 2023). Bringing forward teachers’ reflections on collaborative research can bring a larger awareness of conditions that are important to consider. In relation to the Lund municipality’s investment in teachers getting research time, we especially notice the difficulty in balancing between development projects and collaborative research in relation to time as a frame factor. The expectations of various actors (teachers, researchers, principals, and investors) regarding the output of practice-close or collaborative research can be difficult to navigate. There is a risk that too much pressure to produce ‘usable’ results under a short period of time (in Martin and Linda’s case, two years) will direct efforts towards development projects rather than towards investigating and problematising research. Yamashiro et al. (2023) specified different types of research use in relation to research–practice partnerships and concluded that instrumental use is often most sought after but not necessarily the most meaningful for learning and transformation processes in an organisation. Other types of use can be symbolic, strategic, or political, which connects to the pursuit of following different paths in the organisation; conceptual use, which informs on how actors think about problems and possible solutions in practice; or process use, which can impact how problems are addressed in the organisation. A fruitful approach that considers both power relations and incentives of different actors in school–university partnerships could be to take on a more process-oriented approach rather than an outcome-oriented approach. Shifting the focus toward process orientation can allow for more progressive ideas to develop, while a strong focus on outcomes is likely to lead to more traditional paths to achieve common goals (Sjölund, 2023). A developmental project can follow up on research, but also feed into research by posing questions about aspects that are difficult to manage in the how of practice. Development and research function in different temporal paces but can be seen as parallel operations that feed into each other, where the research is more openended and problematising, while developmental projects are more directed towards finding concrete solutions in specific contexts. A strength of the research approach can be that conceptual understanding and variables of importance can be identified, thereby increasing knowledge of which conditions need attention when considering

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solutions to a problem encountered in practice. Following that line of argument, the role of research can be more about identifying what is important to consider than about producing manuals of how things should be handled, and leaning more toward conceptual or process use than instrumental use (Yamashiro et al., 2023). These outcomes can be considered in relation to approaches for development in operations decided upon in the local context, which can also enable, for example, strategic, symbolic or instrumental use. Another conclusion concerns school-based teacher education and the frame formed by the many different knowledge cultures that meet, and the many intended learning outcomes (ILO) specified in the policy, for subject teacher education. This creates tensions and pressure and questions arise regarding how the ILO are to be balanced in assessment. Naturally, different actors will weight assessment criteria differently, and even though we try to enable valid and equal assessments, we acknowledge that differences in views regarding what is the most important or minimal acceptable knowledge in the complex professional role of (preservice) teachers is unavoidable (McDonald, 1978), and maybe even desirable to some degree. The complexity of the teacher profession, in constant movement and following the living, meets goal-oriented course syllabi attempting (and failing) to capture the complexity on paper in clear bullet point-statements on knowledge (Bornemark, 2018). The many ILOs also pose a risk that education will become crowded with details and thereby shallow, resulting in a lack of opportunities for pre-service teachers to go into knowledge fields in depth. By interacting with alumni students’ exam-thesis work, teachers, and teacher educators, the pre-service teachers can get support in terms of choosing relevant and interesting topics for their final exam-thesis. The new meeting spaces we plan to create can adhere to this and other challenges by bringing the different actors together. Hopefully, this process-focused approach, together with considerations for differences in power and incentives, will enable creative and valuable interaction. Differences in viewpoints will (and perhaps should) remain, but we can strive towards greater insight into each other’s points of views and willingness to continue these important interactions to sustain a shared responsibility for building a strong teacher profession involved in educational research.

References Berglund, H. (2022). Biology teachers’ collaborative experiences: Benefits and difficulties in different contexts in relation to perceived value. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 17, 1089–1113. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-022-10127-2 Blossing, U. (2020). Samverkansprocessens problematik i den praktiknära forskningen [Challenges in collaborative processes of practice-close research]. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 25(4), 95–99. https://doi.org/10.15626/pfs25.04.08 Bornemark, J. (2018). Det omätbaras renässans—En uppgörelse med pedanternas världsherravälde [A renaissance of the unmeasurable—A reckoning with the pedantises’ world-domination]. Volante.

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Centola, D. (2018). How behaviour spread—The science of complex contagions. Princeton University Press. Christianakis, M. (2010). Collaborative research and teacher education. Issues in Teacher Education, 19(2), 109–126. Dahlstedt, M., & Fejes, A. (2018). Skolan och marknaden & den entreprenörskapande skolan [The school and the market & the entrepreneur-developing school]. In M. Dahlstedt & A. Fejes (Eds.), Skolan, marknaden och framtiden. Studentlitteratur. Klintman, M. (2019). Knowledge resistance—How we avoid insight from others. Manchester University Press. Lindblad, S., Linde, G., & Naeslund, L. (1999). Ramfaktorteori och praktiskt förnuft [Frame-factor theory and practical sence]. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 4(1), 93–109. Månsson, E. (2004). Dagens lärare—klämd mellan oförenliga krav [Today’s teachers—Stuck between unreconcilable demands]? In A. Persson, et al. (Eds.), Nära Gränsen? Arbetslivsinstitutets Förlag. McDonald, F. J. (1978). Evaluating preservice teachers’ competence. Educational Testing Service, 29(2), 9–13. Olitsky, S. (2017). Crossing the boundaries: Solidarity, identity, and mutual learning in a K-20 partnership. Science Education, 101(3), 399–425. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21272 Parliamentary Secretariat for Evaluation and Research. (2013). Hur kan ny kunskap komma till bättre användning i skolan [How can new knowledge be applied in a better way in school]?. 2012:RFR 10. Riksdagsförvaltningens utskottsavdelning. https://data.riksdagen.se/fil/3D12A65D-C3C24BCB-904E-ED8AC1C9E4F5. Downloaded 20230505. Peklaj, C. (2015). Teacher competencies through the prism of educational research. Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal, 5(3), 183–204. https://doi.org/10.26529/cepsj.134 Persson, A. (2015). Framed school—Frame factors, frames and the dynamics of social interaction in school. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 59(5), 499–514. https://doi.org/10. 1080/00313831.2014.932305 Persson, A. (2020). Dubbel närhet och distans behövs inom praktiknära forskning [Dual closeness and distance is needed within the practice-close research]. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 25(2), 1–4. Serder, M., & Malmström, M. (2020). Vad talar vi om när vi talar om praktiknära forskning [What are we talking about when talking about practice-close research]? Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 25(1), 106–109. https://doi.org/10.15626/pfs25.01.07 Siisiäinen, M. (2003). Two concepts of social capital: Bourdieu vs. Putnam. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 40(2), 183–204. Sjölund, S. (2023). Discourses of collaboration and participant positioning in research-practice partnerships. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831. 2023.2263474 Sundberg, D., & Adolfsson, C.-H. (2015). Att forskningsbasera skolan: En analys av utbildningspolitiska frågeställningar och initiativ över en 20-års period, delrapport från SKOLFORSK-projektet [Research as a foundation for the school: An analysis of education politics and initiatives over a 20-year period, partial report from the SKOLFORSK-project]. Vetenskapsrådets rapport 33, Stockholm, Sweden. Swedish Code of Statutes. (2021). Förordning (SFS 2021:1335) om utbildning till lärare och förskollärare [Ordinance (SFS 2021:1335) on education for teachers and preschool teachers]. Utbildningsdepartementet [Ministry of Education and Research]. https://www.svenskförfattningssam ling.se/sites/default/files/sfs/2021-12/SFS2021-1338.pdf. Downloaded 20230505. Swedish Government Official Reports. (2018). SOU 2018:19. Forska tillsammans—samverkan för lärande och förbättring, betänkande av utredningen om praktiknära skolforskning i samverkan [Conducting research together—Collaboration for learning and improvement, considerations on the official report on practice-close research in collaboration]. https://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/1e0e6381c554497ab51eeeb13d36b1ce/sou2018_19.pdf. Downloaded 20230505.

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Yamashiro, K., Wentworth, L., & Kim, M. (2023). Politics at the boundary: Exploring politics in education research-practice partnerships. Educational Policy, 37(1), 3–30. https://doi.org/10. 1177/08959048221134916

Helena Berglund is Assistant Head of Teacher Education at Lund University and currently also a postgraduate student at the Department of Educational Sciences at Lund University. She has previously been working as a teacher in upper-secondary biology and mathematics and has a teacher degree from Umeå University as well as a Ph.D. in Ecology from the Department of Biology at Lund University. The current Ph.D. project concerns biology teachers’ collaboration and autonomy. Elna Sivhed is a postgraduate student at the Department of Educational Sciences at Lund University. Her dissertation project is focusing on collaborative research and school-university partnership in relation to different school cultures. She has a background as an upper secondary teacher in social sciences and are currently also teaching at teacher education at Lund University. Martin Granbom teaches, and is the department head, in biology at an upper secondary school in Lund, Sweden. He has a Ph.D. in Animal Ecology from Lund University. His research concerns conservation of biodiversity and he has also conducted research in didactics of biology and effects of COVID-19 on students’ health. Currently he is working on a practice near research project regarding teachers’ relational competence and the importance of good teacher-student relationships in the classroom together with Lind Smidfelt. Linda Smidfelt teaches English and Italian at an upper secondary school in Lund, Sweden. She also has a Ph.D. in Italian from Lund University. Her dissertation project regards lexical inferencing and the use of previously learned languages when reading and understanding text in Italian as a foreign language. Currently she is also working on a practice near research project regarding teachers’ relational competence and the importance of good teacher-student relationships in the classroom together with Martin Granbom. Sinikka Neuhaus is a lecturer in educational sciences and Head of Teacher Education at Lund University. Neuhaus has been working with Teacher Education on different levels for many years and is interested in how educational institutions and community can facilitate recognition of all members of society, especially young people. She is an experienced educator and administrator with an academic interest in refugee education, theories of recognition and social justice and equity in education.

Chapter 17

Multilateral Partnerships Supporting Community Engagement Among Pre-Service Teachers: The TELLUS Partnership Carmen Heckmann , Ina Alexandra Machura , Holger Horz , Nicole Lustig, Yvonne Nünlist, and Cora Stein

Introduction In our current globalized, fast-paced world facing multiple crises such as the COVID19 pandemic, national and international conflicts, and massive refugee movements, pre-service teachers expect and are expected to not only gain pedagogical and discipline-specific competencies in higher education (HE), but indeed to develop their capacities as engaged citizens employing their professional expertise as teachers to tackle complex challenges in their communities (Bennett, 2018; Brandt et al., 2019). To support pre-service teachers in their professional development as well as in their community engagement during their studies, formats such as Service Learning (SL; Bringle & Clayton, 2012; Stoecker, 2016) or community-engaged learning (CEL; Brabazon et al., 2019) have been proposed as high-impact practices (Bringle, 2017). Key stakeholders from universities, schools, as well as from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and non-profit organizations (NPOs) join forces to provide valuable educational services to the community with the help of SL university students (Mordel et al., 2021). With this mission, the TELLUS partnership has been successfully established in midwest Germany as a multidisciplinary, ongoing, and expanding partnership between a NGO, various community partners, several universities and universities

C. Heckmann (B) · I. A. Machura · H. Horz Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail: [email protected] N. Lustig · Y. Nünlist · C. Stein Crespo Foundation, Frankfurt am Main, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_17

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of applied sciences,1 and a range of vocational schools. In 2015, the Crespo Foundation2 (a NGO), taking stock of educational challenges faced by refugee and immigrant youth trying to obtain a high school certificate before the age of 21, contacted Goethe University in Frankfurt, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, and Wilhelm-Merton-School (a local secondary school) to ignite the TELLUS partnership. This chapter details how high school teachers and administrators, university academics, and the Foundation collaborate with community partners in creating 12-month projects. In these projects, pre-service teachers as well as students from the educational sciences, economics education, social work, and psychology are teamed with experienced teachers and social workers. Together, they work in interdisciplinary teams at the secondary schools, responding to the schools’ requests for help for their vulnerable students. In this chapter, we explain eight lessons learned in a school-university-community partnership that is deeply rooted in the needs expressed by schools that are part of a diverse community in which challenges of education, migration, and social justice intersect.

Context School-University Partnerships in the DACH Region In the DACH3 region, school-university partnerships constitute a standard element undergirding teacher education (TE). These partnerships are long-standing collaborations between institutions of HE, such as universities,4 and local as well as

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Goethe University Frankfurt (GU), Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (FRA UAS), Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), Technical University of Darmstadt (TUDa), and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (h_da). 2 The Crespo Foundation has grown from an art-based foundation in the Frankfurt area, initially focused on empowering and educating artists in the region, to a multilayered foundation developing, providing, supporting, and funding civic services in the Arts, aesthetic education, and social affairs. This foundation is a major community partner in school-university partnerships in the region. 3 Teacher training in Germany is highly similar to the teacher education provided in HE in Austria and Switzerland. For this and a broad range of linguistic, governmental, socio-demographic, and political similarities and cooperations, these adjacent German-speaking States in the heart of Europe are often referred to as the DACH region (Deutschland, Austria, and Confoederatio Helvetica, i.e., Switzerland), pronounced /dax/. 4 Pre-service teachers’ trajectories for becoming teachers start in HE degree programs in either universities (Universitäten) or universities of applied sciences with a pedagogical focus (Pädagogische Hochschulen). Irrespective of whether students want to become teachers for primary education (Grundschule, L1), for one the tracks of secondary education (Sekundarstufe I/II, L2/ L3), or for special-needs education (Sonderpädagogik, L5), the first phase of their TE program is dedicated to academic study of the educational sciences, pedagogy, psychology, and at least two school subjects, such as mathematics, art, history, biology, etc. For an excellent overview of German TE, see Terhart (2021).

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regional schools. Generally speaking, TE in the DACH region is structured by frameworks developed by the European Union (European Commission Standards, n.d.), by federal frameworks that apply to individual States (Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, n.d.), and by state-specific frameworks, as, e.g., the 16 federal states of Germany retain considerable autonomy where the architecture of the educational system is concerned. Accordingly, the exact nature of school-university partnerships in the DACH region is shaped by European standards, State standards, as well as federal standards, and also depends to a high degree on the profile of each individual HE institution. For instance, school-university partnerships are flourishing as the foundations for experiential learning (EL; Kolb, 2015) for pre-service teachers. In Germany, the six to ten semesters of academic lectures and seminars in TE degree programs are interspersed with at least two school-based internships of varying length, ranging from two to 15 weeks (Terhart, 2021). The length and importance of these internships in TE in Germany has substantially increased over the last decade, thus also intensifying the partnerships between universities and schools (Terhart, 2021; for examples in Austria, see Resch et al., 2022). School-university partnerships have also been established in the DACH region as permanent foundations for research and innovation in teaching practice and TE. In Germany, research projects such as Transdisciplinary Development Teams (Straub & Vilsmaier, 2020) or University Schools (Gerholz et al., 2020) are designed as cooperative research-driven partnerships between universities and schools. Thus, for these long-term partnerships, researchers and practitioners are the main collaborators maintaining the partnerships through co-constructing research-based innovations in teaching practices (Straub & Ehmke, 2021). Importantly, researchers and practitioners in the DACH region as well as in other national TE contexts across the globe have realized that TE cannot be the prerogative of solely schools and universities, without connecting to the multifaceted local communities in which universities and schools function: The recent push to develop authentic partnerships instead of university-directed agreements is rooted in the notion that university programs and university researchers need to learn as much from the school and the community as the school and the community need to learn from the university. In addition, these new conceptions of networking draw on the theories of collective educational leadership and community engagement that address social injustices in schools. (Grogan & Fahrenwald, 2019, p. 241)

It has been recognized that learning and development are life-wide activities that by far transcend classrooms and school walls. Consequently, pedagogies need to be designed that cater to the exigencies and affordances not only of school-centered learning, but of learning in and with communities (Fahrenwald, 2020). Accordingly, networks of schools, universities, and community partners are increasing their reach and significance also in the DACH region (Fahrenwald, 2020; Lindau & Thürkow, 2022; Schulze & Kanwischer, 2018). Also, school-university partnerships in Germany are no longer anchored solely in departments of education or educational psychology. EL formats where schools, universities, and civic partners cooperate are currently being offered for university students across an increasing

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number of faculties and disciplines (Banholzer, 2021; Kreikebaum & El Bouyahyani, 2020; Robertson-von Trotha & Scholl, 2020; for Austrian examples, see Grogan & Fahrenwald, 2019; Meyer et al., 2019). Thus, long-standing, more traditional formats of school-university partnerships in the DACH region, and specifically in Germany, have evolved to encompass more diverse stakeholders within universities and schools, and more civil partners from the community. This evolution begs the question of which pedagogies are implemented to ensure that the needs and priorities of all partners are respected and addressed. One of the central pedagogical frameworks that has found increasing application in TE in the DACH region, catering particularly well to multiple-stakeholder learning contexts in which academic learning goals intersect with authentic community concerns, is community-based Service Learning (Bringle & Clayton, 2012).

Service Learning Service learning (SL) as a high-impact practice (Bringle & Clayton, 2021), especially for higher education, has been defined as a course- or competency-based, credit-bearing educational experience in which students (a) participate in mutually identified and organized service activities that benefit the community, and (b) reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of personal values and civic responsibility. (Bringle & Clayton, 2012, p. 105)

Thus, the design elements that constitute genuine SL opportunities align with recommendations for sustainable, successful multilateral school-university partnerships. First, it is not the university educator or the academic researcher alone who determines the content and architecture of the learning experience. Instead, the learning design needs to be grounded in an authentic need and priority of the community partner for the SL format. In the case of SL in TE, community partners, schools, and universities need to engage in an open, transparent, and respectful conversation on equal footing to ensure that authentic community needs are being met and academic learning outcomes can be reached at the same time (Altenschmidt & Miller, 2020; Bringle & Clayton, 2021; Fernandez & Slepcevic-Zach, 2018; Tsiorvas & Eady, 2023). Second, students and, ideally, also university, school, and community partners need to engage in systematic critical reflection in order to ensure mutual learning in the SL partnership (Bringle & Clayton, 2021). Reflective practices on the part of all partnership stakeholders are particularly pertinent in SL because they are designed to investigate systematic issues and inequities that give rise to authentic community needs (Brabazon et al., 2019). Thus, SL in teacher training provides pedagogical practices that combine academic learning with authentic community services for the school while engaging all stakeholders in critical reflective processes as equal partners. Occasionally, concerns have been raised whether community needs and authenticity of service might take priority in SL in HE, so that pre-service teachers who take

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SL courses instead of more traditional EL courses are hampered in their professional development (Hofer & Derkau, 2020). Generally speaking, it has been difficult to ascertain empirically whether the multiplicity of partners in SL school-university partnerships will affect how service needs and academic requirements are met. This empirical difficulty results in part from methodological questions that still need to be fully addressed in SL-based educational research. First, previous studies tended to investigate only a limited range of parameters for instructional quality in SL, e.g., juxtaposing SL opportunities with non-SL equivalents while not investigating instructional quality in each of the courses (Mordel et al., 2021). Second, previous studies tended to include only one SL format in comparison to one other non-SL format, thus limiting the applicability of the findings across different SL provisions (Mordel et al., 2021). Finally, studies on the impact of SL formats tend to not control for other relevant variables (e.g., individual students’ learning strategies, group dynamics on the course level, or the status of SL on the university level) (Mordel et al., 2021). However, for the moment, the empirical data suggest that students in SL classes do not fare worse than their peers in non-SL equivalents, e.g., when it comes to levels of self-efficacy (Meyer et al., 2019). Specifically for students in pedagogical degree programs, positive tendencies emerge (Fernandez & Slepcevic-Zach, 2018; Schulze & Kanwischer, 2018). Thus, SL as a community-based pedagogy for multilateral school-university partnerships provides a substantial range of instructional design elements that can support mutually respectful co-construction with all partners, academic learning, and development, as well as authentic community service.

Service Learning in the DACH Region SL in the German-speaking DACH region has been implemented in secondary schools since the 1990s and has entered universities since the turn of the millennium (Fernandez & Slepcevic-Zach, 2018). With the implementations at individual schools and universities, associations for connecting SL researchers and practitioners across federal states, across the DACH region, and across Europe, have been established in Germany (Hochschulnetzwerk., n.d.; Stiftung n.d.), Switzerland (ben:edu, n.d.), and as European networks (eashle, n.d.; eoslhe, n.d.). It appears that countries such as Germany have engaged with SL pedagogies somewhat earlier and in more systematic ways than, e.g., Austria, where practices are less unified or connected (Resch et al., 2020). For instance, a range of pedagogical SL formats in Germany, such as the long-standing mentorship program Balu & Du report positive program results for all stakeholders (Robertson-von Trotha & Scholl, 2020). Thus, based on pedagogical partnerships between schools, universities, and communities, SL has been recognized as particularly valuable for TE (Lindau & Thürkow, 2022).

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Fig. 17.1 Current partners in the multilateral TELLUS partnership

On the basis of SL pedagogies, the TELLUS partnership, at the heart of the present project report, ranges among the permanent multilateral school-universitycommunity partnerships that respond directly to the ways in which migration movements and increasing numbers of displaced people have contributed to increased diversity in schools and classrooms, requiring that pre-service and in-service teachers be trained and equipped to support diverse students in their learning trajectories.

The TELLUS Partnership The TELLUS partnership, established in the urban Frankfurt area in southwest Germany, came into being when, in 2015/2016, more than one million refugees, migrants, and other people seeking protection, mainly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but also from African countries, entered Germany (Herbert & Schönhagen, 2020). Across Germany, the sudden large number of arriving people were met with a broad range of civic responses, with citizens and students joining projects to help refugees integrate into local communities (Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, 2017),5 for instance by helping local schools address the additional challenges of supporting refugee high school students, as the TELLUS partnership has been established to do. The current partners in TELLUS can be seen in Fig. 17.1.

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The surge of public support for arriving refugees among German citizens since that time has been noteworthy, with 55% of the population providing some manner of general support (donating money or goods, signing petitions, etc.) or active support (translating, accompanying refugees to doctor’s appointments, providing accommodation, etc.) since 2015 (Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, 2017).

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Lessons Learned From how the multilateral partnership was created, expanded, and has evolved, we have drawn eight lessons that we hope will provide valuable insights for similar educational contexts.

Be Prepared to Have a Third Space Established by a Community Partner Members of the Crespo Foundation, a non-profit organisation located in Frankfurt (Crespo Foundation, n.d.), were looking for possibilities to support newly arrived refugees, some of them unaccompanied minors, and contacted local authorities, schools, and refugee helpers. It gradually became clear that refugees, including unaccompanied minors, already received support in many ways, such as programs for socio-pedagogical accompaniment, intensive language support, and additional financing for accommodation and care (Lienen & LeRoux-Rutledge, 2022; OlivierMensah et al., 2020). However, vocational schools in the Frankfurt area reported that there was a great need for support among refugees between the ages of 16 and 21 years who are not necessarily covered by support programs for minors, and are trying to integrate into the German educational system, some of them struggling with basic educational challenges such as illiteracy. These young people are in danger of aging out of the German high school system without obtaining the necessary high school diploma.6 Without this diploma, successfully applying for apprenticeship positions, other opportunities for vocational training, or regular employment in Germany becomes much less likely (Achatz et al., 2022). At the same time, a Center for Service Learning had been established in the department of educational psychology at Goethe University Frankfurt.7 Faculty in the department contribute to the curricula for psychology, educational sciences, as well as TE, and were looking for meaningful ways to establish SL projects catering to the needs of schools welcoming refugee students into their classrooms. The faculty also visited refugee homes in the Frankfurt area, and spoke to refugees and those helping refugees, to identify ways to engage. Ultimately, it was the Foundation that

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The German system for secondary education distinguishes between three possible tracks: Hauptschule (vocational), Realschule (technical), and Gymnasium (academic). Hauptschule constitutes the minimal track with the least number of years spent in school (SCME, 2021). 7 Goethe University (GU) Frankfurt is the third-largest university in Germany. As a research-based, public institution, it currently has a student enrolment of over 48,000 (Goethe University Frankfurt, n.d.).

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approached GU and Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences,8 looking for cooperation partners for an interdisciplinary project responding directly to the vocational schools’ request for support for their at-risk students. Thus, the Foundation established a ‘third space’ involving a vocational school, the Service Learning Center at GU, FRA UAS, and the Protestant Association for Youth-focused Social Work9 in Frankfurt as an additional community partner. The foundation’s central role for this thriving school-university-community partnership is evident in multiple aspects. First of all, additional services could be provided, like financing internship salaries, additional training prior to the project with the help of the community partner, permanent external supervisors, a big closing ceremony at the end of the school year, etc., which could not have been provided by either the universities or the school alone. Second, thanks to regular supervising contact with each university student, the Foundation is central for functional communication in case of unexpected problems. Thus, the Foundation acts as a mediator between university students, teachers, and social workers, mirroring insights from non-European educational contexts in which civil partners provide linguistic and cultural understandings for contextually sensitive TE (White, 2019).

Be Prepared to Expand The TELLUS partnership started with eight pre-service teachers and nine social work students integrating into eight specialized classes, with around 20 students per class, at Wilhelm-Merton-School.10 The Foundation is the central motor for the expansion of the project. Thanks to the Foundation’s constant search for additional schools, universities, and matching civic partners, the program has expanded over the last seven years, supporting 1985 high school students from ten different schools. This would not have been possible without the excellent communication about the project, which includes not only a successful web presence (Crespo Foundation, n.d.) and promotion films, but also many hours of talking to interested people and finding new ways to attract people to the project. As more and more local schools reached out to participate in the TELLUS partnership, more dedicated pre-services teachers and students in social work were needed to meet the schools’ requests. In a joint decision, the schools, the university partners, and the community partners opened up the application process to invite not only 8

Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (FRA UAS) is a public university with research foci in healthcare, information technologies, as well as mobility and logistics. The institution has a current student enrolment of about 15,000 (Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, n.d.). 9 The Protestant Association for Youth-focused Social Work (Evangelischer Verein für Jugendsozialarbeit) is a faith-based association of social work providing educational and social support such as vocational training, sheltered housing, and other pedagogical services in the Frankfurt area. 10 Wilhelm-Merton School in Frankfurt has a particularly divers student body with around 1,305 students from 56 different countries. The school offers vocational tracks for adolescents, as well as life-long learning programs for adult learners (Wilhelm-Merton-Schule, n.d.).

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pre-service teachers at GU and students of social work from FRA UAS, but also students from psychology, from educational sciences, and business pedagogy. This added multiplicity of disciplines also allowed the student–teacher partnerships to offer additional services to the refugee students, such as self-confidence training for girls, career guidance, teambuilding events, professional communication training, but also recreational activities such as dance, arts and crafts, baking, etc. Later, additional universities in Darmstadt and Giessen (both in the extended Frankfurt region) joined the partnership. To meet the additional demands in terms of number and content of necessary training opportunities, the Foundation also brought in an additional community partner, the Society for Youth Employment in Frankfurt.11 Thus, the project has grown from an initial multilateral partnership between two universities, one school, the Foundation, and a faith-based community provider to a more complex multilateral partnership between five universities, 10 schools, the Foundation, and two community providers, one faith-based and one secular, as of 2023.12

Be Prepared for Multilateral Curricular Design The vocational school, Wilhelm-Merton-School, had already established specific support classes for refugees in the Frankfurt region. However, the faculty at the school reported that their organizational, personal, and educational resources were being overtaxed with the particular difficulties that their refugee students faced in their classrooms, such as substantial language barriers, issues with the youth refugees’ legal status in Germany, intercultural misunderstandings, and considerable psychological and emotional distress as the result of displacement trauma. Accordingly, the school, the university partners, and the Foundation joined forces to design a training curriculum for HE so that university students who had completed the training could be partnered with faculty at Wilhelm-Merton-School to meet the particular needs of their vulnerable students. Wilhelm-Merton-School provided insights into their school routines and mapped out how they would like to integrate pre-service teachers into day-to-day school life with their refugee students. Experienced educational trainers (external and GU) provide training on how to address issues of displacement, trauma, and intercultural conflicts in classes with adolescents from migrated and refugee families; trainers also provide input on appreciative communication, and on how to navigate counselling dynamics such as closeness/distance conflicts and setting professional boundaries; legal specialists and social workers brought in by the 11

The Society for Youth Employment in Frankfurt (Gesellschaft für Jugendbeschäftigung e.V.) is a non-profit association focused on providing support for vocational training and employment for youth in the Frankfurt area. 12 While the schools, the universities, the foundation, and the community providers are focused together on co-creating the educational architecture of the TELLUS partnership, the foundation also brokered financial support from the JP Morgen Chase Foundation, and the Heraeus Foundation for Education.

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Foundation introduce the university students to the specific legal status of refugees and discuss German youth welfare laws, asylum procedures, and legal requirements for entering into the German employment market. The university students familiarize themselves with the entry requirements for alternative educational tracks, such as vocational training, and with requirements for joining the German employment market at a considerably younger age than they themselves would. Specialists from the GU language departments as well as school teachers at the partner schools provide training on how to teach in German as a foreign language.

Be Prepared to Rethink Existing EL Formats In the regular mandatory internship formats that pre-service teachers complete as part of the first phase of their teacher training in Germany, university students usually work at local schools for up to six months under the mentorship of one teacher at the school, where they are expected to teach regular lessons as well as to shoulder a range of organizational tasks (Terhart, 2021). However, in order to address the needs that faculty and high school students at Wilhelm-Merton-School had expressed, the traditional EL format had to be re-designed for the TELLUS partnership: (1) The school expects pre-service teachers to commit to the partnership for a full year, not merely six months, even as the university students complete their regular workload at university. In order to support pre-service teachers in their longer commitment, the Foundation agreed to provide financial benefits to students. This ensured that students had sufficient time to fulfill both their study requirements and their practical internship requirements. This support also allowed some of the university students to discontinue unrelated part-time jobs such as waiting tables. The Foundation’s financial support allowed the HE students to avoid financial barriers to internships that have been reported as one of the most common factors limiting HE students’ access to work-based learning (Hora et al., 2021). (2) The more common EL pairings of one pre-service teacher with one school teacher needed to be expanded to multi-(pre)-professional teams: Since the capacities for socio-pedagogical services in the support classes were not sufficient to meet refugee students’ needs, with high levels of support needed by individual students, the teachers and pedagogical social workers at the school were partnered with a tandem of one student in teacher training from GU and one student of social work from FRA UAS per class. Unlike paired practicums (Jederud et al., 2022) or team-teaching internships (Simons et al., 2020) where pre-service teachers work together in disciplinarily homogeneous pairs, TELLUS offers an interdisciplinary experience to the university students. (3) Together, the school, the university partners, and the community partner decided that university students applying for the TELLUS project would have to complete a rigorous selection process in which the school faculty makes the

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final decision: in addition to filling out an extensive application form, university students are interviewed by members of the Foundation and GU staff. Over the years, trust and alignment between the universities and the Foundation have solidified in such a way that, currently, it is the Foundation alone that handles the initial phases of the application process. If this initial selection is positive, the university students visit the school for a day, on the one hand to compare their own expectations with the actual work in the support classes, but on the other hand to give the teaching staff at the school the opportunity to connect with the applicants and make their final decision.

Be Prepared to Provide Multilateral Mentoring Educational research (Mayor, 2021) has demonstrated that school teachers can experience secondary traumatization (Kindermann et al., 2017) when refugee students disclose their experiences. TELLUS responds directly to agendas positioning Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) as an integral part of trauma literacy for all educators (Lawson et al., 2019). Importantly, the usefulness of trauma-informed training for pre-service teachers’ self-reported resilience is supported by quantitative investigations (L’Estrange & Howard, 2022). In addition to the training provided in TELLUS, the pedagogical psychologists from GU are available as contact persons for the university students throughout the project. Additionally, the community mentors from the Foundation remain available for mentoring, reflection, and supervision. As challenges and conflicts arise that the university students feel they cannot discuss with the community partners or university professionals, a psychotherapist and a coach are available as supervisors for the university students, should they experience secondary traumatization through what they learn about their refugee students’ journeys.

Be Prepared to Have Partnership-Based Variability in the Curriculum During the project, university students are assigned to specific teachers in the school and specific classes to address the exact difficulties that have been identified based on the teachers’ and the high school students’ needs and feedback. In class, the students offer trainings and workshops for which the professionals (teachers and social workers) lack time and resources: job application training, photo projects, individual support for individual students in mathematics, German or English, etc. The working hours per day and week are arranged by the school teachers with the university students to accommodate everyone’s needs.

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Be Prepared to Celebrate In the multilateral TELLUS partnership, all partners focus their efforts and time not only on addressing hardships, but also on acknowledging progress, improvement, and growth together. For instance, each 12-month project cycle culminates in an important graduation ceremony at the end of each school year. The ceremony is a joint event for all project participants. University students and high school students are given the opportunity to present their projects at school to the wider community. The high school students who have successfully completed their high school journey receive their diplomas, as the university students receive their TELLUS certificates, and their achievements are celebrated by all partnership participants. These events also are held as spaces to express thanks for everyone’s efforts and commitment, and to provide suitable closure as university students and high school graduates transition into the next phases of their education.

Be Prepared to Evolve For project monitoring purposes, evaluation and revision phases have been woven into the partnership from the start. First, the training curriculum co-created by the school faculty, the university partners, and the community partners is evaluated by the university students through a qualitative evaluation survey. The aim is to make profound adjustments in the workshop program to support and prepare the university students as thoroughly as possible for the work needed in the schools. Secondly, we took advantage of the fact that a state-wide survey among all preservice teachers in the State of Hessia was introduced in 2015 to evaluate the internship formats in initial TE (Ulrich & Gröschner, 2020). In order to be able to compare SL university students’ experiences in the TELLUS partnership to the experiences of pre-service teachers in non-SL internship formats, we included the surveys from Ulrich and Gröschner (2020) in an extensive TELLUS evaluation for which we collected data from 2016 to 2019. The TELLUS university students were asked to complete online surveys concerning their developments in both professional and personal competencies at four times during the 12-month project. The online surveys encompassed 13 scales with 417 items altogether, providing data concerning the university students’ . sociodemographic backgrounds, . previous pedagogical experiences (e.g., prior training or work in youth associations), . motivations for entering HE/for pursuing teacher education (e.g., SELLMO, see Spinath et al., 2002) . self-regulatory skills and work-related behaviour/experience patterns (e.g., based on AVEM, see Schaarschmidt & Fischer, 1997) . emotional exhaustion,

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. self assessments (e.g., concerning professional self-efficacy, problem-solving skills, resilience, see Schaarschmidt, 2013), . prior knowledge of inclusive educational practices and experiences in specialneeds education, . perceived benefits of the internship, and . social attitudes in terms of political interests and views. In the competence-focused scales, university students rated their own abilities on a scale from 1 (not at all competent) to 6 (very competent). The TELLUS pre-service teachers (N = 31) were compared to a control group of students participating in regular teacher education with non-SL internship formats (N = 31), matched in age (M = 28 years; SD = 5.54), gender (24 female; 7 male), and fields of study. Since data privacy is subject to very strict requirements in Germany, especially when working with (unaccompanied) underage refugees, we were not able to collect data from the high school students. Also, we had to respect the school faculty’s priorities concerning their workload, so we did not collect additional data among them, other than their regular input into curricular design, implementation, mentoring, and revision.

What We Learned from the Quantitative Evaluation Most differences between the groups were not significant but showed slight trends. Accordingly, the differences in the mean values between the groups are probably random and cannot be attributed to specific effects, but do provide insights for future research and designing SL programs. The most important finding addresses concerns of whether students in SL projects ‘do good’ but do not learn what they need to learn for their ‘actual profession’. Irrespective of the internship the university students participated in (TELLUS or regular TE), the perception of their own competence in teaching, educating, assessing, and innovating (Gröschner, 2015) increased significantly from the first measurement to the last (p = 0.039, α = 0.05). Specifically, the university students improved (a) their abilities to plan lessons methodically and in a student-centered way, and (b) their ability to structure lessons (teaching). They also reported being able to de-escalate conflicts in high school classrooms and to discuss mistakes as well as rule violations in an appropriate way (educating). An increase in their competence to assess and recognize students with learning difficulties (assessing) and developments in their ability to use evaluation and reflection results for constructive teaching processes (innovating) were also reported by the university students. Furthermore, the students’ enthusiasm for teaching (Kraatz et al., 2023; Kunter et al., 2008, 2011) and for working with high school students increased during their participation in either of the formats. However, participating in the TELLUS partnership seems to have resulted in specific positive developments that students in the non-SL internship format did not necessarily show. Although all students had already shown considerable enthusiasm

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for their subject at the beginning of the non-SL internship or the SL project, subjectspecific enthusiasm still increased during participation in TELLUS, with no equivalent changes among students in the non-SL internship format. The results indicate that TELLUS imparts or maintains subject-specific competencies and enjoyment of the intended profession during the program. Also, students of both groups experienced the transdisciplinary collaboration in schools as helpful and supportive. On the whole, the TELLUS project is a telling example of how multilateral partnerships can influence university students’ academic and social progress in a positive way.

What We Learned from the Qualitative Evaluation On the basis of the open questions in the evaluation survey as well as individual interviews conducted with the university students, it can be demonstrated that multilateral school-university-community partnerships can expand the professional identity and the ‘bigger picture’ that pre-service teachers and students in other programs associate with their academic studies: I think these SL formats should be mandatory for all pre-service teachers because they address issues in society and social change, which I think is incredibly important and necessary if you want to and are going to work with future generations of students in schools.13 (Pre-service teacher, 2021)

Additionally, the university students realized that being an educator in today’s diverse classrooms by far transcends the application of pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986). They acknowledged the difficulties they had to address when teaching in a classroom of diverse learners coming from particularly challenging backgrounds: Providing inclusive teaching for behaviorally challenging students is extremely difficult. It’s probably one of the biggest challenges as a teacher, I’ve often failed at that, but I learned a lot. (Pre-service teacher, 2017)

In this respect, the students observed that the multidisciplinary mentoring provided in the multilateral partnership helped them make progress: The constant mentoring and supervision provided by the TELLUS team really enriched my internship and I learned a lot. (University student in the educational sciences, 2021) They try to cater to everyone’s needs. No one is ignored. The individual students’ situations are taken into account. (Pre-service teacher, 2018)

This appreciative view is echoed among the teachers in the secondary schools, and among the community partners in the Crespo Foundation: What’s special about the TELLUS internship is that we really work as equals, eye to eye. Our university students are involved from the start, they join our classes, they offer support, and they are just an incredible asset. (Secondary school teacher, 2022) 13

All responses were provided in German and translated by the authors.

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The TELLUS project did change our school. (Department head in a secondary school, 2022) What’s special about the project is that everyone benefits from it! The high school students receive additional support during an entire year, teachers and providers are supported in their classes and during socio-pedagogical services, and the university students gain intensive interdisciplinary practical experiences at their university through SL. This is in line with our principle “Making people strong!” (Department head at the Crespo Foundation, 2023)

Additionally, the secondary schools acknowledge that the university students do not have a fully formed professional identity as teachers yet, and can connect with the high school students on a personal level: It is wonderful to see progress in both groups. Obviously, [the university students] are not professional teachers yet, and this allows them to make great connections with the high school students. (School principal, 2022)

Unlike more traditional school-university partnerships, the TELLUS partnership with its multidisciplinary approach unites different partners in supporting high school students who struggle with their experiences of migration and displacement.

How We Reflect To implement a recursive reflection-implementation cycle, two regular exchange meetings with all participating cooperation partners are held every year. The multilateral partners stress the importance of interdisciplinary cooperation: The most important aspect of the TELLUS project is its interdisciplinary nature. I think it is highly beneficial to have the profession of social pedagogues and the profession of teachers join in conversation. (Department head in a secondary school, 2022)

Whenever necessary, bilateral coordination between the cooperation partners concerned helps to adequately address challenges that may arise.

How We Adapt Based on the quantitative and the qualitative evaluation results, the TELLUS project partners continue to revise the training program on a regular basis. For instance, students rated specific topics, like teaching German as a foreign language, to be of particular importance, so adjustments were made concerning length and focus of the training. Another important aspect is the choice of trainers since the training should be helpful and motivating. Additional trainers are onboarded and trainings are modified. For each of the changes based on the stakeholders’ feedback, decisions are made on the basis of multilateral negotiations, as intended in the TELLUS multilateral partnership. Also, the Foundation and GU are currently working on a revised evaluation concept that will focus more on university students’ perspectives on reflection and social commitment, aspects of working in multi-professional

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teams and interdisciplinarity, and on university students’ individual perceptions of autonomy and self-efficacy as members of a multi-professional team. We will also try to monitor the high school students’ development by asking their TELLUS partners to assess the refugee students’ progress and the specific benefits that the partnership has for them.

Conclusion In SL partnerships, all partners commit to joining forces, to alleviating concrete problems in a community, and to engaging in mutually beneficial, respectful cocreative educational work. Even though challenges present themselves, the benefits within the TELLUS collaboration outnumber the problems for all parties involved. One recurring challenge in TELLUS is that, on the one hand, school teachers need support in their classes and for specific subjects, with little flexibility in time and location. On the other hand, university students have to study in accordance with the curricular requirements at university and try to align the requirements of university with the teachers’ needs at the partnership schools. However, we take it as an indicator for successful collaboration in the TELLUS partnership that a number of university students stay at ‘their’ school as teachers’ aids or return as regular staff to one of the partnership schools or one of the civic partners after finishing their studies. School principals and teachers regularly report that the support by university students in their classrooms is enormously enriching and beneficial. The high school students receive support inside and outside of the classroom, gain valuable experiences for their education, but also for living in a foreign country and for planning their journeys after graduation. Since the university students from different subjects work closely together, they benefit from insights from different professional fields. Ideally, the future social workers (also including students in psychology and educational sciences) gain insights into the field of teaching and learning. Finally, university students not only gain valuable experiences directly relevant for their studies and careers, but also gain relevant insights into the life of youth struggling with challenges unknown to some university students from privileged backgrounds. In a complementary manner, university students who discover biographical similarities in terms of displacement and migration between their own educational trajectories and the high school students’ journeys may reflect on their own progress in a new, self-empowering way. As such, the TELLUS partnership constitutes an interorganizational collaboration in teacher education as outlined by Straub and Ehmke (2021), that (a) constitutes a long-term partnership, (b) relies on constant, mutually respectful exchange of co-constructing educational opportunities, and (c) is focused on implementing pedagogical innovations for schools and all phases of teacher education. It responds to specific educational challenges by drawing together academic expertise from the universities and community insights from the community partners to provide services that really meet the schools’ needs.

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Gets It Wrong. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/155 62948.2022.2098445 Lindau, A.-K., & Thürkow, D. (2022). Lehrerprofessionalisierung durch Service Learning am Beispiel der digitalen Plattform „Klimaanpassung online verstehen“. In J. Weselek, F. Kohler, & A. Siegmund (Eds.), Digitale Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung (pp. 165–176). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65120-9_14 Mayor, C. (2021). Teacher reactions to Trauma disclosures from Syrian Refugee students. Children & Schools, 43(3), 131–140. https://doi.org/10.1093/cs/cdab013 Meyer, M., Neumayr, M., & Rameder, P. (2019). Students’ community service: self-selection and the effects of participation. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 48(6), 1162–1185. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0899764019848492 Mordel, J., Heckmann, C., & Horz, H. (2021). The process of learning and teaching in service learning–the need for a multi-level approach. In K.-H. Gerholz (Chair), Impulse zu Methoden in der deutschsprachigen Civic Engagement-Forschung. https://www.bildung-durch-verant wortung.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/proceedings_agforschung_impulsemethoden.pdf# page=7 Olivier-Mensah, C., Duscha, A., Stier, J., Feneberg, D., Jung, L., Meier, B., & Samhammer, D. (2020). Developing lifeworld oriented perspectives for return migration: Needs, vulnerabilities and support of refugees in Germany: Short summary. https://doi.org/10.25358/OPENSCIENCE5203 Resch, K., Fellner, M., Fahrenwald, C., Slepcevic-Zach, P., Knapp, M., & Rameder, P. (2020). Embedding social innovation and service learning in higher education’s third sector policy developments in Austria. Frontiers in Education, 5, Article 112. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc. 2020.00112 Resch, K., Schrittesser, I., & Knapp, M. (2022). Overcoming the theory-practice divide in teacher education with the ‘Partner School Programme’. A conceptual mapping. European Journal of Teacher Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2022.2058928 Robertson-von Trotha, C., & Scholl, I. (2020). Ein Angebot zur Stärkung bürgerschaftlichen Engagements. In D. Rosenkranz, S. Us, & N. Oberbeck (Eds.), Service Learning an Hochschulen: Konzeptionelle Überlegungen und innovative Beispiele (pp. 176–180). Beltz. Schaarschmidt, U. (2013). FIT-L ist vor allem ein Entwicklungsinstrument! Kommentar zum Beitrag von Köller et al. In Heft 2/2012. Unterrichtswissenschaft, 41(1), 80–83. Schaarschmidt, U., & Fischer, A. (1997). AVEM – ein diagnostisches Instrument zur Differenzierung von Typen gesundheitsrelevanten Verhaltens und Erlebens gegenüber der Arbeit. Zeitschrift Für Differentielle Und Diagnostische Psychologie, 18, 151–163. Schulze, U., & Kanwischer, D. (2018). Spatial citizenship and service learning – breaking the mould of geography teacher education. GI_Forum, 1, 131–142. https://doi.org/10.1553/giscie nce2018_02_s131 SCME. (2021). The education system in the Federal Republic of Germany 2018/2019. https://www. kmk.org/fileadmin/Dateien/pdf/Eurydice/Bildungswesen-engl-pdfs/dossier_en_ebook.pdf Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Simons, M., Baeten, M., & Vanhees, C. (2020). Team teaching during field experiences in teacher education: Investigating student teachers’ experiences with parallel and sequential teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 71(1), 24–40. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/https://doi. org/10.1177/0022487118789064 Spinath, B., Stiensmeier-Pelster, J., Schöne, C., & Dickhäuser, O. (2002). Die Skalen zur Erfassung von Lern- und Leistungsmotivation (SELLMO) [Measurement scales for learning and performance motivation]. Hogrefe. Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs. (n.d.). Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany. https://www.kmk.org/kmk/information-in-english.html Stiftung (n.d.). Stiftung Lernen durch Engagement. https://www.servicelearning.de/english

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Stoecker, R. (2016). Liberating service learning and the rest of higher education civic engagement. Temple University Press. Straub, R. P., & Ehmke, T. (2021). A Person-centered approach for analyzing multidimensional integration in collaboration between educational researchers and practitioners. Frontiers in Education, 6, Article 492608. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.492608 Straub, R. P., & Vilsmaier, U. (2020). Pathways to educational change revisited – controversies and advances in the German teacher education system. Teaching and Teacher Education, 96, 103140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103140 Terhart, E. (2021). Teacher education in Germany: historical development, status, reforms and challenges. In J. C.-K. Lee & T. Ehmke (Eds.), Quality in Teacher Education and Professional Development (pp. 44–56). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003197973-4 Tsiorvas, A., & Eady, M. J. (2023). Creating a compulsory subject requiring authentic community service learning: A framework for change. In M. Winslade, T. Loughland, & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Work-Integrated Learning Case Studies in Teacher Education (pp. 235–245). Springer. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6532-6_19 Ulrich, I., & Gröschner, A. (Eds.). (2020). Edition ZfE Ser: v.9. Praxissemester im Lehramtsstudium in Deutschland: Wirkungen auf Studierende. Springer VS. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/ lib/kxp/detail.action?docID=6133729 White, S. (2019). Teacher educators for new times? Redefining an important occupational group. Journal of Education for Teaching, 45(2), 200–213. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2018.154 8174 Wilhelm-Merton-Schule. (n.d.). Wilhelm-Merton-Schule. https://www.wilhelm-merton-schule.de/

Dr. Carmen Heckmann is lecturer and senior researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for University Teaching and Learning at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. She is responsible for the management and coordination of the academic development program at Goethe University. She holds a PhD in Psychology and teaches academic development courses for university teachers as well as pedagogy courses for undergraduate students in psychology and for pre-service teachers. She coordinates and implements Service Learning projects in cooperation with civic partners. Her research focuses on civic engagement among university students and the development of teaching skills in higher education. Dr. Ina Alexandra Machura is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center for University Teaching and Learning at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. She teaches discipline-specific courses in (media) pedagogy for undergraduate students, as well as interdisciplinary writing-intensive courses for graduate and doctoral students in the social and life sciences. She holds a PhD in Linguistics and Cultural Studies. In her research, she is particularly interested in intercultural transfer pedagogies that cater to the needs of superdiverse student populations and faculty. Prof. Dr. Holger Horz holds the professorship of Educational Psychology with a focus on learning and teaching in adulthood at the Department of Psychology and Sport Sciences at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. He is the Executive Director of the Academy for Educational Research and Teacher Education (ABL) and Dean of Academic Affairs of the psychology department. His research interests are digital education, AI & education, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Literacy, blended learning, lifelong learning, instructional design, higher education, faculty development in higher education, teacher education, and digitalized continuing education and training.

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Nicole Lustig, a project consultant at the Crespo Foundation, is responsible for overseeing the TELLUS project. She completed her studies in educational sciences with a focus on adult learning, extracurricular youth education, and counseling at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, where she obtained a degree in Pedagogy. Since 2009, she has gained extensive professional experience in systemic counseling and career guidance, successfully managing various projects in vocational and general education, as well as consumer education. Her primary focus has been addressing the specific needs of clients who would greatly benefit from high-quality educational interventions in their professional and personal development. Yvonne Nünlist, Project Consultant at Crespo Foundation, is leading the TELLUS project. She pursued her studies in General History at Zürich University. Her professional journey started as a cantonal equal opportunities officer and research assistant in a Swiss vocational training project before transitioning into cultural administration. In Zürich, she served as a press officer at the Theater am Neumarkt, managing productions for numerous independent theater and dance companies, e.g., the dance event Tanztag Zürich. Recently, she worked as a project manager at a renowned artist management agency. Since March 2021, she has been an integral part of the Crespo Foundation. Cora Stein, the Manager of the Education and Social Affairs section at Crespo Foundation, holds a degree in Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, along with studies in Romance Languages and Historical Ethnology from Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and Università La Sapienza in Rome. In 2006, she assumed the role of project manager for “SABA – Education Scholarships for Female Migrants”. Over the years, she has overseen the development and implementation of programs under the Crespo Foundation’s focus areas of “Educational Guidance,” “Family,” and “Aesthetic Education” Since 2020, she has taken on the responsibility of expanding and enhancing existing programs within the “Education and Social Affairs” department.

Chapter 18

Exploring Complexity in Multi-System Partnerships Amanda Gutierrez

Introduction This chapter explores the multiplicity and multi-voiced nature of partnerships by drawing on complexity theory (Cohen & Gilead, 2022; Jacobson, 2019; Woolcott et al., 2021) and Bakhtinian theories (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986) to explore two schooluniversity partnerships managed by a university academic across a period spanning just over ten years. This includes investigating the interweaving complexity of factors that impact the sustainability of partnerships. Combining complementing concepts from these theories provides a more nuanced understanding of what happens in partnership systems, how it happens, and why it happens. Complexity theory has its origins in the biological and physical sciences domains (Ell et al., 2019; Mason, 2008). It provides conceptual understanding of how complex systems manage webs of inter-relationship, unpredictability, and go through continuous adaptation to account for change. In an educational partnership context, it encourages the recognition of the phenomena of partnerships as being a part of a “fabric of relations” (Alhadeff-Jones, 2008, p. 64) and a dynamic intersection of human interaction between and among systems including “interconnected actors, shaped by spatial and historical contexts” (Fransman et al., 2021, p. 331). Bakhtinian theory (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986) provides a framework to explore social processes, and the forces around these processes, that impact the ways multiple meanings are constructed. It recognizes the dialogic and multi-voiced nature of knowledge creation which assists in analysing partnerships as they go through processes of emergence, development, expansion, and/or dissolution. It also provides conceptual ways to consider the intersection of spatial and historical contexts within and between human actors and systems (Gutierrez & Kostogriz, 2020; Gutierrez & Nailer, 2021).

A. Gutierrez (B) Australian Catholic University, Brisbane, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_18

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The two partnerships explored in this chapter are those between the author’s university, multiple school settings, external organisations (including international), and with education systems such as the Department of Education and various Catholic organisations. It is a critical reflection on the author’s experiences utilising complexity theory and Bakhtin’s dialogism (Holquist, 1990), drawing on various data and experiences across 10 years of partnership work. This allows exploration of the collaborative interweaving of educational systems and the ways the fabric of relations have impacted the continuing dynamic movement of the partnerships.

Educational Partnerships in a Complex World The notion of partnering to address complex issues is not a new idea. Grobe in his 1993 publication stated partnership “has become the watchword of the 1990’s” (p. 1) and that partnerships help to “stimulate and promote reforms” (p. 1). Many organisations utilise multistakeholder partnerships to develop new and innovative products, explore solutions to social issues, and expand ways to enact activities (Gray & Purdy, 2018). In the education context, partnerships reported in the literature mainly focus on work integrated learning approaches (Le Cornu, 2015), community engagement (Evans-Andris et al., 2014), and professional learning (Brauckman et al., 2023). Other educational partnerships with less attention include those focusing on areas such as system level change and modelling (Grudnoff et al, 2016; Jones et al., 2016), developing and exploring international connections and issues (Gutierrez, 2016; Major & Santoro, 2016), curriculum areas (for example STEM, the Arts, Sustainability) (Chittleborough & Jones, 2018), and cross disciplinary collaborations. One thing in common with all educational partnerships is complexity. All partnerships involve the meeting and negotiation of multiple voices, at times with conflicting agendas, ideologies, and power dynamics (Cardini, 2006; Gutierrez & Kostogriz, 2020). In the space of negotiation, these voices also bring with them historical echoes, various system or organisational expectations, and other impacts that arise from factors influenced by time and space. Universities, educational organisations, and school partnership negotiators (such as principals and other school leadership staff) work within spaces of policy and accreditation requirements that at times create barriers for practical implementation (Gutierrez et al., 2019). In addition, resources, funding, and personnel can be difficult to secure and/or sustain (Green et al., 2020; Grudnoff et al., 2016; Herbert et al., 2018; Ryan & Jones, 2014; White et al., 2018), and can limit partnerships to short-term engagements (Cardini, 2006). Partnerships between universities and schools (and sometimes education systems) require the involved parties to act as ‘boundary crossers’ (Gardiner & Lorch, 2015; Loughland & Nguyen, 2018; Sewell et al., 2018) as they work with each other to negotiate the multiple spaces they exist in and encounter in attempting to achieve goals and outcomes. The partnership coordinators across the various stakeholders are often working towards reconciling differences relating to university expectations of graduates (Bloomfield & Nguyen, 2015), research agendas (Walsh & Backe, 2013),

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accreditation standards (Bloomfield & Nguyen, 2015), perceived theory/practice dichotomies (Allen & Wright, 2014; Green et al., 2020; Gutierrez & Kostogriz, 2020; Zeichner, 2010), and misalignment between institutional missions/ideals and workload allocations (Jongbloed et al., 2008). The need for collaboration and successful relationship building increases the complexity of partnership development, operation, and sustainability. Partnership literature reports on multiple characteristics that are essential to partnership growth, in particular trust, mutuality, and reciprocity (Hobbs et al., 2015; Kruger et al., 2009); and the joint creation of aims, goals, and knowledge (Day et al., 2021). In a relational space such as partnership work, recognition and valuing of heterogeneity and complexity enables greater reflection on ways to build and maintain partnerships. Teacher education and partnerships work is a “challenging, messy, human business that in its very essence denies simplification” (Mockler, 2018, p. viii). By its nature, the field of Education in schools and universities requires innovation and change as it serves a continuously changing society. Whether that be due to factors such as technological, cultural, socioeconomical, or high impact events such as floods, fires, or disease; educators are tasked with leading education that responds to often disorganized and unpredictable futures (Cohen & Gilead, 2022). While partnerships can provide a gateway to innovative approaches that help prepare the next generation of adults, it is important to recognise the complexity of this work and consider ways to analyse this complexity. Partnerships require flexibility and adaptability to respond to change (Woolcott et al., 2021). The following section proposes an intersection between complexity theory (Woolcott et al., 2021) and Bakhtinian theory (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986) as a way to explore the impact of complexity on partnership development and sustainability.

Intersections Between Complexity Theory and Bakhtinian Theory While Bakhtin is not commonly referenced in educational research, his concepts and theories are utilised. For example, the most commonly used concept coined by Holquist (1990) which captures the work of Bakhtin is dialogism. This concept illustrates an understanding that knowledge through language is not a linear process back and forth between deliverer of information and participant. Instead, it is a complex relationship in which both parties (or multiple parties) are interacting and bringing with them factors across context, space, and time that interweave to create multiple meanings. Partnership work in education and beyond is inherently about interaction and negotiation, and it includes multiple voices and contexts. It is often unpredictable, demands adaptability, and encourages emergence and innovation. It is, in essence, complex. This section of the chapter explores the intersection between Bakhtin’s conceptualisation of meaning making and complexity theory to explain key concepts and illustrate the benefits of this pairing for the theorisation of partnership

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work. In particular, it connects complexity theory with Bakhtinian conceptualisation of ideology, the impact of centripetal and centrifugal forces, and time, space, and context through the ‘chronotope’. Bakhtin held particular views on the social nature of language, meaning, and subjectivity. His conceptualisations of discourse as ‘dialogic’ (Holquist, 1990) emphasise the social nature of language, and recognised language as dynamic and involving multiple sources surrounding language moments. In Bakhtinian approaches to language and meaning, discourses are always dialogic, in that discourse is a socially interactive and living process between the voices of speaker/writer and listener/reader. He argues discourse is a social phenomenon “throughout its entire range and in each and every of its factors, from the sound image to the furthest reaches of abstract meaning” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 259). The social nature of discourse, and the contextual factors surrounding it, create a situation in which meaning will never exist in a singular unitary state. Bakhtin (1981) states: The word, directed towards its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgements and accents, weaves in and out of complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group: and all this may crucially shape discourse. (p. 276)

This “tension-filled” environment reflects the space of partnership work, as all parties negotiate the complex interrelation of words in an attempt to create stability for the partnership. Partnership negotiation includes struggles to create meanings based on the “stratified and diversified” (Maybin, 2001, p. 65) language of each participants’ own context, generation, experiences, historical moment, and ideological being that intertextually intertwine in their inner persuasive discourse, in other words, their negotiation with their inner addressee. To understand this tension filled environment, one needs to recognise the significance of Bakhtin’s version of the concept ‘ideology’. Morris (1994) describes Bakhtin’s ideology as referring “in a more general sense to the way in which members of a given social group view the world” (p. 249). This is not to say that the social group’s view of the world is necessarily received in an uncontended way by members of the group, or that there are not tensions and struggles. Within and beyond the social group there are what Bakhtin (1978) calls “ideological environments”. These environments contain a large diversity of voices, of which an individual can choose which dialogues to engage with, which to dismiss, and which ones to partly engage with/ partly dismiss. As Bakhtin (1978) argues, ideological creation “is not within us, but between us” (p. 8). In the context of partnerships, tension can strengthen or weaken partnership negotiations depending on the ideological environment in that time and place, the forces at play, and the relationships between the partnership actors. We also need to take into consideration Bakhtin’s (1981) theorisation of the forces at play. He uses the concepts centripetal forces (centralising) and centrifugal forces (decentralising) that create challenges when trying to construct stability and shared understanding. Within a Bakhtinian framework, the partnership dialogical environment involves multiple forces colliding: some trying to create stable, classifiable meanings (such as shared goals and aims of the partnership), and others trying to

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invent, some adapt, some are trying to disrupt. Bakhtin (1981) states, “every utterance participates in the ‘unitary language’ (in its centripetal forces and tendencies) and at the same time partakes of social and historical heteroglossia (the centrifugal, stratifying forces)” (p. 272). There is a constant dialogic negotiation of meaning within and between multiple voices when attempting to stabilise a shared understanding. This ‘stability’ is under constant challenge and must contend with historical relations and echoes that carry through space and time (Bakhtin, 1981; Gerofsky, 2010). To understand the impact of space and time on meaning making in partnerships, it is important to explore Bakhtin’s use of the concept ‘chronotope’. Bakhtin (1981) views time and space as inseparable and interdependent. The chronotope can be used as a unit of analysis to examine how “the instrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 84) organise and are represented in language and discourse. It enables consideration of the ways dialogic discourse includes “an interplay between the past, the here and now, and the possible and imagined” (Brown & Renshaw, 2006, p. 251, emphasis in original), which can create hybrid and variable outcomes. In addition, chronotopes can be linked to specific genres that represent particular worldviews or ideologies. For example, Gutierrez and Kostogriz (2020) analysed sample professional conversation discourses in stakeholder partnership meetings identifying tension between an historical teacher apprenticeship genre that challenged the relevance of educational theory, and an academic genre valuing reflective connections between theory and practice. This reflects Gerofsky’s (2010) suggestion that “chronotopes can be fresh and surprising in a newly-developing genre, or ‘fossilized’ to reflect an earlier culture in a genre that is well-established and traditional” (p. 65). Time and space are dimensions through which people perceive and structure the surrounding world and hence are inseparable forms of both understanding it and representing it (Morson & Emerson, 1990). Bakhtin (1981) uses the metaphor of ‘gate’ arguing “every entry into the sphere of meaning is accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope” (p. 258). Hence historical, current, and future chronotopes impact dialogue and discourse. The interplay of chronotopes is context specific and participants are obliged to make a decision about how to act and what to become. Partnership work happens through social processes which include encounters with multiple forces that form a complex matrix through space and time. The interweaving discourses not only reaffirm social systems impacting partnership negotiation but also contribute to the renegotiation and change of systems (Lemke, 1995). Bakhtin’s attempts to capture the complexity of meaning making and knowledge creation aligns with complexity theory which attempts to understand the characteristics of complex systems, their interrelationship, and their interdependence. This connection has great potential, however very few researchers have published in this space. Sade (2009) and Arndt (2017) are two researchers who have explored complexity and Bakhtin in an education context. Sade (2009) explored the contribution of polyphony on complex systems. Polyphony, in a Bakhtinian sense, relates to the multi-voiced nature of text which is brought about by the complex relationship between the speaker, the addressee, and the interweaving matrix of factors that contribute to dialogic discourse as discussed above. Arndt (2017) utilises a

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Bakhtinian/Kristevan lens to explore dialogic and intertextual encounters and their complexity in foreign teacher educational encounters. Bringing the two theories together can enable a deeper understanding of complex phenomena. Turning now to complexity theory, its use in educational research is relatively new (Woolcott et al., 2021). It has however been discussed as having great potential for assisting studies of educational systems which exist in and must adapt to constantly changing contexts (Cochrane-Smith et al., 2014; Cohen & Gilead, 2022; Jacobson, 2019). Complexity theory originated in the biological and physical sciences domains (Ell et al., 2019; Mason, 2008) and aimed to examine phenomena that could not be classified as linear or complicated. Linear phenomena behave in a simple cause and effect manner, for example if you kick a ball, it will move. An example of something complicated includes taking apart a piece of furniture and putting it back together again. While it may be a complicated process, as long as you do not lose any parts and pay attention when disassembling, the sum of the parts will equal the whole when put back together. A complex system, however, is made up of an array of interactions and weaving relationships. The system manages unpredictability and change through adaptation, leading to the emergence of new interactions, weaving relationships and meaning making. Complex systems contain interdependent variables which are in a constant changing web of activity with each other and other complex systems. Educational partnerships are bound by human relationships that cross multiple complex systems and must negotiate the changing tide of society, policy, political agendas, and environment to name a few; all variables that have elements of unpredictability. This is the dialogic human existence Bakhtin describes in action. This chapter draws on the characteristics of a complex system summarised by Woolcott et al., (2021, p. 93), which illuminate dialogism and are useful when analysing partnerships. The characteristics listed are shown in Table 18.1: When considering the above characteristics, the socially constructed nature of complex systems (particularly educational partnerships) can be seen. These characteristics, when used in tandem with Bakhtinian conceptualisation of meaning making, help to analyse the elements and processes that occur in the phenomena of dialogic partnership work. Due to the interaction and exchange of a large number of elements in partnership work, there is a constant struggle for equilibrium in an attempt to stabilise partnership structures. These elements are impacted by multiple forces, some attempting to create a centralised understanding, others decentralising our understanding of what partnerships can or should look like. Partnerships include ongoing feedback loops, which enable the system and actors within it to react and adapt to change. The longer a partnership exists, the more effective it becomes at adaptation and can tend towards co-evolution. The actors in partnerships are often engaged in a polyphonic discourse yet may only work within the parameters of a section of the system as a whole. Some, the border crossers, have highly complex polyphonic encounters as they manage the dynamic and non-linear spaces within and between complex systems. The system also manages the influence of history, those echoes of the past or connectedness between the temporal and the spatial that Bakhtin labels as chronotopes. Partnership growth and sustainability depends on the dialogic interactions and

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Table 18.1 Characteristics of a complex system Characteristics of a complex system

Explanation of the characteristics

Consists of a large number of elements

Large number of actors connecting and intersecting within larger system, actors bound by socially constructed boundaries and the open system is shaped by interaction and exchange (relationships)

Elements interact dynamically

Interaction is constant and iterative and influences subsequent behaviours

Interactions are non-linear

Actors in the system are not aware of the behaviour of the system as a whole and respond only to what is available or known locally in a non-linear pattern

Feedback loops are operating

Multiple interacting (nested) systems create feedback mechanisms with and between actors and systems, with direct and indirect feedback loops

Functions under conditions far from equilibrium

If actors are working together in situations operating outside of established norms, a system can be said to be functioning far from equilibrium. These systems, although often appearing stable, can undergo radical unpredicted changes, disproportionate to small stimulus, when tensions or paradoxes occur

Actors and the system have history

The history of the actors and the system influences the system’s starting point for change, shaping present and future behaviour

The system is a whole

The combined effect on the system of the interactions between actors (relationships) is greater than the sum of their actions. Exploration of coherent and novel emergent patterns informs system understanding

Self-organisation and co-evolution

Without hierarchy of command, a system continuously self-organises to best respond to and change with environment. The system can learn from adaptation to evolve more effectively over time (co-evolution)

Emergence

Emergence is a process by which new order is generated through selforganisation and co-evolution, arising from the actor interaction, but affecting the system as a whole

Reproduced with permission from Taylor and Francis (www.tandfonline.com) from Woolcott et al. (2021). Partnered research and emergent variation: Developing a set of characteristics for identifying complexity in higher education partnerships. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 43(1), Table 18.1, p. 93. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2020.1733734.

whether these lead to self-organisation and co-evolution, or dissolution. If the former is achievable, then emergence can occur and the partnership can adapt and generate sustainable management of change. The next section of this chapter provides two sample partnership cases to explore the characteristics of complex systems, and the importance of dialogism in making meaning around partnership work and sustainability.

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Exploring Dialogic Complexity in Partnerships The two sample cases discussed in this section provide a variety of partnership contexts, voices, and longevity. They include multiple tension points, which in one case included unresolvable tension, leading to the dissolution of the partnership. The other has been able to negotiate tension and complexities to create sustainable conditions enabling longevity. As this chapter is an analytical reflection on my own partnership work, from hence forth, I refer to myself in first person.

Case 1—International Partnership with an Organisation in a Developing Nation1 Context The Case 1 partnership ran from 2011 to 2020. It was a partnership between a Monastic (Buddhist) Education Organisation in Myanmar and the Australian university at which I worked. Monastic schools have traditionally catered for students who cannot afford the fees of government or other schools, are not able to travel the distance to access government schools, or are training to join the monastery. Across the nine years of the partnership, the work included multiple projects funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Training (DFAT). DFAT is a department of the Australian Government focused on promoting and protecting Australia’s international interests. These projects included an Australian Leadership Awards Fellowship; New Colombo Plan pre-service teacher (PST) placement grants; and an Australia Awards Fellowship. The partnership team also applied for two research grants, Spencer Foundation grant, and an Australian Development Research Awards scheme (ADRAS), however these were unsuccessful. The aims of the partnership were to improve Myanmar in-service teachers’ student-centred pedagogies; provide international experiences for Australian preservice teachers (PSTs); enable transfer of knowledge between staff in the Monastic Education system and the Australian university; and assist with the development of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs/training for teachers working in the Monastic system. In practice, this included teachers from Myanmar travelling to Australia for training, PSTs travelling to a large school in Myanmar to work in classrooms, academics travelling to Myanmar to work with Myanmar teachers and administrators, and both online and face-to-face engagements between the partners. The main actors in developing and maintaining the partnership were myself and 1

Note – the use of ‘developing nation’ in this chapter describes a nation that is economically unstable and has government/civil disorder that disrupts provision of adequate services to its people. The World Bank no longer uses the concept ‘developing country’, and instead opts for nouns such as lowincome country. I have chosen to use the term ‘developing country’ as it is still used in recent peer reviewed publications (for example, Mehmood, 2022; Zajda & Majhanovich, 2022).

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an Australian representative who worked in a leadership position for the Monastic organisation while living in Myanmar. Myanmar has experienced significant political turmoil historically, including the closing of universities from 1988 to 2000, which has significantly impacted what was once a highly educated population (Lall, 2008). It was under military rule between 1962 and 2011, after which some democratic reforms were put in place, with plans to have a full democratic shift including a democratic election in 2020.

Interaction Between Elements and Actors—Negotiating Ideological Environments and Forces Case 1 included numerous complex systems that operated with tension across the political, ideological, and environmental domains. Some of the major systems intersecting and requiring negotiation included the Monastic System in Myanmar, the Monastic school in Myanmar, the Australian university, DFAT, and the government system in Myanmar. Across these systems there were a large number of local and international actors, both directly and indirectly influencing the projects. For example, the governments at the time of developing this partnership in both Myanmar and Australia were focused on increasing bi-lateral relationships between the two countries. Leaders from the Monastic system were working with Myanmar political leaders to improve the education of teachers in Monastic schools, who were unable to access ITE programs. The Myanmar state schools provided university training for their teachers, which included employment directly into state schools upon completion. There were no equivalent arrangements available for teachers heading into Monastic settings (Gutierrez, 2016). There was ideological agreement in the political space that until the education policy in Myanmar could address this gap, support from international Higher Education authorities was a priority. In addition, the ideological environment in the Monastic system at the time gave preference to a shift to child-centred education approaches, engaging with Western voices for ideas, and critical thinking pedagogies (Lwin, 2007). This resulted in an environment in which centripetal forces created by shared voices were attempting to develop a stable environment for education in the country. While this was the case, there were multiple interactions between systems and actors that were creating decentralising forces. For example, the international experience for Australian pre-service teachers highlighted some of the ideological tensions caused by cultural discursive differences. This included views around education with some PSTs experiencing conflict when observing some of their mentor teachers in Myanmar not attending their class, falling asleep during class, or leaving early. The Australian PSTs’ carried with them expectations of a ‘teacher’ and professionalism that did not always translate in a developing nation context. There were also some PSTs who fell ill due to not following guidelines around food consumption. This was a challenging experience for PSTs, university staff, and the partner organisation, and required increased dialogue around cultural contexts, program expectations, and future planning (including whether to discontinue PST placements). In addition to

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the dialogic interactions being negotiated at a local level, there were also indirect, national intersections increasing tension for education in Myanmar that gradually increased over time. The political context in Myanmar was attempting a shift from military control to democracy. Tension increased in the lead up to the agreed date for the military to hand over control which is discussed in the following section.

Actors and Systems Have History—Chronotopic Challenges This case is a clear example of the connectedness between the temporal and the spatial (or chronotope) and how chronotopes act as a gate to meaning. At a local level, most of the PSTs brought with them their own history of educational experiences across their time as children in an Australian education system, and training in Australian ITE. This created tension and shaped their actions as they negotiated working with teachers who had very different chronotopes to construct meaning through. This tension was reciprocal as the Myanmar teachers and administrators attempted to adapt their system, with limited resources, to meet the expectations of the partnership program and the Australian actors within. At a global level, Myanmar’s turbulent history between the people, the military, and religion was creating an unstable relationship between larger international political systems, including the Australian government bodies, the university supporting the program, the Monastic system, the Myanmar government, and the military. As stated in the above section, Myanmar and Australia were in a relationship-building phase at the start of the partnership, and there was hope that Myanmar would move out of military control and into democracy, however tension built as the handover date approached. In the final year of the partnership, the democratic process was enacted with an election in November 2020, quickly followed by a military coup in January 2021. The chronotope of military rule was reinstated and civil war ensued, impacting possibilities for partnership feedback loops and dialogic interaction to occur. The country was also managing tension around COVID-19 including concern around the management of the vaccination roll outs. Attempts were made to shift collaboration online, however funding applications were not approved internally due to the significant shift in ideological environments in both Myanmar and Australia. A final significant impact was the main actor from the Monastic system returning to Australia and retiring from his leadership position. While the partnership was multidimensional and very successful for in-country professional training and learning (although perhaps not as successful for the PST experiences), continuation of the partnership met resistance from university leadership and the system could not adapt to the breakdown and closure of feedback loops and high-risk political context. It was unable to respond to the destabilising forces, hence could not go through a process of evolution and emergence and had to be dissolved.

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Case 2—University Partnership with Multiple Catholic Dioceses and Universities Context The Spiritual and Pedagogical Accompaniment (SPA) program partnered with Australian universities with Catholic organisations (the funding bodies) and focused on holistic PST development through spiritual, pedagogical, and intellectual companioning. The Catholic system in Australia is broken up into regions, with each region (called Diocese) controlling an allocation of funding and managing projects and schools within their region. The program was piloted in 2019 in Brisbane and expanded to two regional Dioceses in 2023. Each Dioceses has various departments (e.g., Catholic Identity, and Teaching and Learning). The main actors for this partnership from the Catholic Dioceses are the Catholic Identity Directors, education officers, and the Human Resources staff. It aligns with the partner Catholic Dioceses’ priorities to develop and retain an employment force and support schools and staff to sustain strong Catholic teacher identities. The model includes PSTs having greater involvement with their school (regular visits and completing their placement block) and increased spiritual, pedagogical, and curriculum mentoring support across their experience both within and external to their school experiences. The program entry is by application and open to all degrees that have a final year professional experience placement in a primary or high school setting. In the 2019 pilot year the program consisted of 4 PSTs from one university, 1 Companion, 1 school, and one Diocese. In 2023 the program supported 50 final year PSTs placed across 35 schools in three Dioceses, with 14 Companions, and from three universities. I began negotiating this model in late 2017 and was the coordinator of the program. In 2022, the program was able to negotiate funding for the support of an administrative staff one day a week and connect a quantitative expert to the project for assistance with survey analysis. The Companion was employed by the university and was external to the schools. They were often retired principals or Dioceses staff selected for their expertise in spiritual companioning and pedagogical mentoring. They acted as Companion and Tertiary Supervisor, did not formally assess PSTs (as this was the job of their school-based teacher mentor), and if any issues arose within the placement (for example, student noted as at risk of failing placement), an independent Tertiary Supervisor was brought in for moderation purposes. This program utilised a number of data tools for research and evaluation including a longitudinal REDCap survey, professional mentoring conversations, focus group interviews/meetings, individual interviews, and a classroom observation template (Bhattacharya, 2017; Stake, 1995). The research approach in this partnership was designed to understand the professional becoming of PSTs across the span of the project (Gutierrez & Kostogriz, 2020; Gutierrez & Nailer, 2021), the impact of the project design and any associated risks (Gutierrez & Rowe, 2022), and to be able to look across the cohorts for comparable longitudinal data.

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Interaction Between Elements and Actors—Negotiating Ideological Environments and Forces Case 2 included a large number of elements and interweaving systems—schools, multiple Catholic education systems spread across geographical locations, and multiple universities. Multiple actors were also involved across these systems, increasing the ideological environments that needed to be negotiated. As this project had the aim of preparing PSTs for Catholic schooling, ensuring ideological alignment between the systems around Catholic Identity and spirituality was essential. In addition, tensions around initial teacher education also existed (discussed in more detail in the next section), and this space provides an opportunity to bring multiple voices together. Prior to opening negotiation for this partnership in 2017, I reflected on my previous partnership work. Bakhtin (1981, 1986) discusses the importance of the ‘inner persuasive discourse’ in dialogic processes. This inner voice constantly battles with external voices to create a stable meaning and self-identity. In this moment in time, I had moved to a new state, and had an opportunity to critically self-reflect on past experiences and partnership research voices. I engaged in critical self-reflection across my partnership experiences to assess those partnerships that survived, those that did not, and the forces that impacted stability. This included drawing on Parker’s (2012) organisational systemic assessment and management model and organisational theory (Malott & Martinez, 2006) to analyse organisational systems and impacts of stakeholders in changing landscapes of partnerships and professional experience. This analysis included mapping the values, purpose, and mission of my university institution and Catholic school system partners. This exchange with my inner dialogue, theory, policy voices, and ideological positioning of systems enabled an initial setting of goals that could meet the needs of the various systems. I then created multiple points of contact and exchange including: . Partnership planning meetings with Dioceses staff; . Partnership planning meetings with university staff; . ThinkTank meetings with representatives from all stakeholders (Diocese, universities, Companions, schools, PSTs); . Town Hall meetings; . Mentoring professional development day for PSTs, supervising teachers, and Companions, including joint delivery by those in the Catholic system with the university program coordinator; . Research interviews; . Classroom observations; and . Professional conversations. These interactions were critical to the partnership as they increased dialogic feedback loops between the various actors in the partnership. This enabled negotiation of polyphonic discourse around initial teacher education. The Catholic Dioceses staffing from 2017 to 2023 changed several times, which meant multiple feedback loops have been essential for building stability and ideological alignment on the

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major elements that create partnership stability (e.g., on the ground implementation, policy, responsibilities, goals, and priorities). This increased interaction also enables PSTs to develop an understanding of the elements of the complex system that is education (and in this case Catholic education). One PST stated, this partnership program has allowed me opportunities to stop, breathe, reflect, and evaluate my teaching with a supportive, understanding, and encouraging team to ensure I am continuing in the right direction, building confidence in myself and my teaching, and reflecting on my formation of faith.

Dialogic exchange with a large variety of voices at every point of the partnership, from design, initial negotiation with stakeholders, implementation, and adaptation as the partnership encounters change enables the complex system to deliver productive and positive outcomes for the actors within.

Actors and Systems Have History—Chronotopic Challenges At the time of initial negotiation (2017), school-university partnerships were in the spotlight due to a recent review into ITE in Australia called the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) review (TEMAG, 2014). Among the points focused on in the TEMAG review, those around partnerships highlighted the importance of strong relationships between stakeholders in the preparation of PSTs, mentoring capabilities of teachers mentoring PSTs in schools, and PSTs’ abilities to transition into the profession. This created a chronotope that valued exploration of partnerships between universities, education systems, and schools. While the political ideological environment encouraged partnership collaboration, several tensions existed and continue to exist due to intersections between various chronotopes, a few of which are discussed here. While not as significant as observed in some other partnership work I have coordinated, the apprenticeship chronotope (Gutierrez & Kostogriz, 2020) lingered during some of the school-based professional conversations. This is apparent when PSTs and supervising teachers focus fully on practice and have little connection to research, evidence, or theory to justify decisions or suggestions. In these instances, the partnership relied on the Companion to increase feedback loops with these educational discourses that enable critical reflection on and with the profession. Second, the partnership was developed around a recontextualised vision of Catholic education. This at times creates tension when historical perceptions of Catholic education and the Church arise from external voices. Historical echoes in this area at times impacted PSTs’ decision to apply to join the program. The partnership has also had to manage the COVID-19 chronotope. This evolving time and space phenomena demonstrated the importance of partnership work. While most universities, including the one I worked at, had to cancel placements and PST engagements with schools, the SPA program was able to increase feedback loops between the system and schools to explore innovative ways for PSTs to continue to engage with their schools. This included preparation of online lessons, marking, and assisting with online classes.

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A final example relates to chronotopes that exist across the Catholic Dioceses due to historical interactions of actors across time, funding discussions, and at times competing agendas. In this program there have been budget cuts within each system, requiring the coordinators within each system to provide impact data and evidence that creates a justification not only for continuation, but expansion.

Adaptation to Change—Dialogic Co-Evolution and Emergence Overall, the positive and affirming dialogic nature of the interactions in this partnership created strong professional connections between the actors in each system and between the actors and the goals of the partnership. The shared passion towards achieving the outcomes of the project, which for the actors includes strong ideological connection, increased the desire to have flexibility and resolve cross-system and cross-actor tensions that potentially jeopardise essential elements (such as funding, personnel, PST applications, school commitments). Across the five years of the project, this flexibility accounted for heterogeneity and enabled the partnership to be innovative and adaptable. The system co-evolved and created emerging new structures that created sustainability and expansion between 2019–2023, even with significant disruption due to actors leaving, some chronotopic tensions, and environment impacts such as COVID-19.

Conclusion Bringing together complexity theory and Bakhtinian dialogism has enabled a critical reflection across two partnership endeavours. It has provided a snapshot of what elements make up complex partnership systems, the impact of interactions with actors within and across these systems, the ways time and space influence present and future system existence, and how systems must be able to adapt to change to survive. One partnership case was unable to battle destabilising centrifugal forces and chronotopes, and it had to be dissolved. This highlights the social nature of partnerships, which is visible in the dynamic and living processes of a dialogic system (Bakhtin, 1981). It also illustrates that the survival of partnership systems relies heavily on the effective interconnectedness of the actors within (Fransman et al., 2021) and their negotiation with the chronotopes that act as gates (Bakhtin, 1981) to representing and understanding the partnership system. The other partnership case found some stability (and the ability to adapt to change), co-evolved and was able to expand. The partnership system managed to find ways to expand activities and negotiate tensions created by heteroglossia. Spaces were created in which the polyphony of voices around teacher education could come together. This created the kinds of conditions Hobbs et al. (2015) and Day et al. (2021) suggest are essential for partnership growth and sustainability. In Case 2 there is acceptance of possible ideological tensions for minor interactions, with ideological

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harmony around the mission and approach to improving initial teacher education. For educational partnership systems to have an impact, it is important to consider the various characteristics that Woolcott et al. (2021) identified as making up a complex system, and to understand the dialogic nature of knowledge creation. This includes understanding that tensions will exist, that forces will attempt to stabilise and destabilise partnership efforts, and that humans are influenced by ideology and make meaning through the gates of chronotopes. It has taken a great deal of critical reflection on the part of this author to come to this understanding. While it does not mean partnership negotiations will always head in the intended direction, it does help to understand that partnership systems try to manage destabilising forces to recognise those that are too powerful to overcome, and to plan for more efficient and emergent futures.

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Amanda Gutierrez is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Australian Catholic University. She has developed, coordinated, and learnt from many school-university-system partnership programs including in local and international contexts. She has also worked across states negotiating partnership structures and systems with various stakeholders to collaboratively develop partnership models. Dr Gutierrez has won numerous awards for her work and has multiple research grants. She has also published in high-ranking journals and chapters with recognised publishers analysing her partnerships.

Chapter 19

A Classroom Teacher’s and Teacher Educator’s Perspective of the Barriers to Their Involvement in a School-University Partnership Bethany H. G. Carter-Sherlock and Jessica A. Sears

Introduction School-university partnerships (SUPs) are effective vehicles for individual, collaborative, and institutional professional development that enhances both student learning and achievement (Sandholtz, 2002) and pre-service teachers’ preparedness by bridging the disconnect between schools and universities via strengthening the relationship between theory and practice (Allen et al., 2013; Jones et al., 2016; McDonough, 2014). Functional SUPs include those where both institutions can benefit from the sharing of resources, expertise, and research involvement resulting from enhanced and authentic professional collaborations (Burns et al., 2016; Green, 2021; Jones et al., 2016; McDonough, 2014; Oerlemans, 2017). The intention of such SUPs is to increase the quality of, and inspire change in, teacher education (Burns et al., 2016; Ng & Chan, 2012). Research identifies that several difficulties may exist for SUPs internationally which may result from institutional differences in values, culture, and structure (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009; Clarke & Winslade, 2019), difficulty navigating logistics (Green et al., 2020; McLaughlin & Black-Hawkins, 2007) and/or may be related to school or university reform (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009). Many of these challenges are experienced in already operating partnerships and there is little research concerning obstacles for stakeholders’ initial participation in SUPs. Therefore, identification of, and potential solutions for, barriers for classroom teachers’ and

B. H. G. Carter-Sherlock (B) · J. A. Sears Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. A. Sears e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_19

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teacher educators’ initial involvement are of value to initiate and sustain these partnerships more effectively. In summary, as logistic and systemic barriers can impact the initiation or functioning of a SUP, furthering knowledge of the ways in which challenges can be understood, addressed, and solutions sustained is of timely importance to enhancing teacher professional development, student learning and achievement, and pre-service teacher preparedness.

Challenges of SUPs Fully functionable SUPs involve authentic professional institutional collaborations that initiate change in teacher education, enhance professional development, and increase pre-service teacher preparedness (Allen et al., 2013; Burns et al., 2016; Howell et al., 2021; Jones et al., 2016; McDonough, 2014; Oerlemans, 2017; Ralston et al., 2016; Zeichner, 2010). The barriers to the creation of SUPs such as these have included contrasting political and educational demands, interpersonal challenges, and personal challenges. These have been the focus of much research and are summarised in Table 19.1.

Contrasting Political and Educational Demands In research, identified challenges related to institutional differences have included competing institutional demands (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009; Howell et al., 2021), different cultures and policies (Clarke & Winslade, 2019; Phelps, 2019), and different organisational structures (Phelps, 2019). Some of these varied educational and political aspects (for a specific example, where a school’s quality may be determined primarily by student test data) may be difficult to navigate (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009; Howell et al., 2021; Oerlemans, 2017). Further challenges may include contradictory perspectives of the function of each institution/individual within the partnership (Noffke et al., 1996; Phelps, 2019; Ralston et al., 2016), the existence of a unidirectional relationship (Moreno, 2005), or one where each institution pursues their own purposes, ideas or solutions for emerging concerns (Ralston et al., 2016). The lack of equality between the institutions may therefore be a challenge to navigate (Green et al., 2020; Lai, 2010; Trent & Lim, 2010) and may result in miscommunication and confusion between stakeholders. Unresponsiveness from either institution or changes in leadership positions may also impede the effective functioning of the SUP (Wepner et al., 2021), especially if such changes result in major school or university reform, or the partnership experiences difficulties with meeting proposed outcomes (Green et al., 2020). If challenges such as these continue, this may result in the cessation of the SUP.

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Table 19.1 Summary of the types of challenges to initiating and sustaining SUPs Contrasting political and educational demands . Contrasting cultures (Clarke & Winslade, 2019; Phelps, 2019) . Different understandings of research (Guerrero-Hernández & Fernández-Ugalde, 2020; Noffke et al., 1996; Richmond, 1996) . Conflicting visions (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009; Oerlemans, 2017; Sandholtz & Finan, 1998) . Varied organisational systems (Phelps, 2019) . Inequality between institutions (Green et al., 2020; Lai, 2010; Trent & Lim, 2010) . Leadership changes (Wepner et al., 2021) . Growing the partnership across school sites (Burns et al., 2016; Smedley, 2001) Interpersonal challenges

. Communication (Howell et al., 2021; Lai, 2010) . Collaboration (Oerlemans, 2017; Tomanek, 2005) . Maintaining mutual relationships (Allen et al., 2013; He & Lin, 2013; McLaughlin & Black-Hawkins, 2007; Ng & Chan, 2012) . Sharing labour (Smedley, 2001) . Conflicting perspectives (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009; Clarke & Winslade, 2019; He & Lin, 2013) . Targeting experienced teachers (Smedley, 2001)

Personal challenges

. Identity formation (Chan & Clarke, 2014; McDonough, 2014) . Time and resource distribution (Green et al., 2020; Guerrero-Hernández & Fernández-Ugalde, 2020; McLaughlin & Black-Hawkins, 2007; Smedley, 2001; Wepner et al., 2021) . Suitability to the role and ‘staff turnover’ (Phelps, 2019) . Equal value for ideas of both professions/ institutions (Oerlemans, 2017) . Negative perceptions about a perceived unbalanced relationship (Phelps, 2019) . Academic pressures (for classroom teachers) (Chan & Clarke, 2014; Phelps, 2019)

Interpersonal Challenges Interpersonal challenges to initiating and sustaining working SUPs may involve inconsistent or ineffective communication (Howell et al., 2021; Lai, 2010), difficulty maintaining mutual relationships (Allen et al., 2013; He & Lin, 2013; Ng &

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Chan, 2012) and the need to overcome conflicting perspectives of teaching and learning (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009; Clarke & Winslade, 2019; He & Lin, 2013) and/or the role of the teacher in the classroom (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009). For example, regarding different perceptions of valued teaching practice, some classroom teachers may focus on quality resources whereas academics may give higher value to quality instruction (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009). This may result in confusion between the classroom teacher and academic that negatively impacts teaching and learning of pre-service teachers. Further difficulties may include establishing and maintaining trust and a power balance (Howell et al., 2021; Ng & Chan, 2012; Phelps, 2019) where clear communication is needed to establish and sustain distinct roles, responsibilities, expectations, and outcomes (Green et al., 2020; Guerrero-Hernández & Fernández-Ugalde, 2020; Howell et al., 2021). In some cases, the university may be perceived as purely ministering to classroom teachers’ professional development (Baumfield & Butterworth, 2007) or classroom teachers’ knowledge may be perceived by them as inferior to that of academics (Oerlemans, 2017) resulting in classroom teachers’ reliance on academics to drive new ideas (or a situation that results in the opposite). There are complications with operating across institutions (Dallmer, 2004; McDonough, 2014) and within the ‘third space’ (Zeicher, 2010) as the definition of roles and responsibilities may vary amongst partnerships (Green, 2021). Thus, there is difficulty with clarifying roles within single partnerships as there are few models that are comparable to the context of each partnership, impacting the initial design of the SUP. When working with a greater number of classroom teachers and teacher educators, enhanced complexities may involve the varied perceptions of the degree of significance the role of theory holds in practical university classes (Clarke & Winslade, 2019). Further complexities may include conflicting expectations regarding workload, and opposing opinions amongst the number of participants involved, resulting in potentially challenging conversations (Clarke & Winslade, 2019; Phelps, 2019). Finally, being able to target teachers with greater teaching experience may be an initial struggle as such teachers generally already exist in more complex school roles; this also limits the pool of teachers who have the option to be involved in the SUP (Smedley, 2001).

Personal Challenges For the individuals involved, personal challenges such as identity struggles (Chan & Clarke, 2014) have been identified in research. One’s identity within the space of the partnership may be perceived as “multiple, shifting and complex, a site of tension” (Chan & Clarke, 2014, p. 300) as those involved attempt to navigate roles as classroom teachers, researchers, leaders, academics, and so forth. Logistical issues such as balancing time and resource distribution may operate as both initial and sustaining barriers to effective institutional relationships (Green et al., 2020; Guerrero-Hernández & Fernández-Ugalde, 2020; Wepner et al., 2021). Both the academic and the teacher may perceive the SUP as an additional activity outside

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of their normal workload and may experience difficulty allocating enough time to SUP-related planning, collaboration, teaching, professional reflection, and research (Green et al., 2020; Howell et al., 2021; Jones et al., 2016; Oerlemans, 2017; Phelps, 2019) as well as the administrative tasks related to maintaining and justifying the place of the SUP in each organisation’s future directions. The time for SUP-related activities may therefore impede on time allocated to other obligations, including marking and reporting, mandated by one’s primary role at a university or school (Guerrero-Hernández & Fernández-Ugalde, 2020; Wepner et al., 2021). Additionally, as identified in the previous section, the roles and responsibilities within the SUP may be vague or competing (Guerrero-Hernández & Fernández-Ugalde, 2020; McDonough, 2014; Oerlemans, 2017). Therefore, if not navigated carefully, individuals who may not be suited to the position may end up being involved, or there may be a high level of staff turnover (Phelps, 2019), causing greater personal and institutional challenges. If the SUP is then continued, this may result in further difficulties related to meeting targets. Specifically for classroom teachers, as effective SUPs involve stakeholders’ mutual dedication to research (Burns et al., 2016) and equal valuing of ideas from both perspectives (Oerlemans, 2017), personal challenges may involve overcoming negative feelings about a perceived hierarchy (Phelps, 2019) and understanding the value of action research or overcoming the preconception that academics are using classroom teachers to assist with publication (Noffke et al., 1996). Therefore, teachers may struggle with various academic pressures within the partnership (Chan & Clarke, 2014; Phelps, 2019). Figure 19.1, created by the authors and based on the literature, provides an overview of where each challenge is situated in terms of its relevance to initiating or sustaining the partnership, or both. Whilst some challenges can continue throughout the partnership, especially due to school and/or university reform, or the redesign of partnership’s visions and purposes generally, once roles and purposes are established, the following may be present:

Fig. 19.1 Overview of where each challenge is situated in terms of initiating and/or sustaining the SUP

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Autoethnographies The study that comprises the remainder of this chapter is situated within the Central Western region of New South Wales, Australia. The author-researchers are a secondary school teacher (Bethany) and a university academic (Jessica) from the same regional city. The context of the partnership involved Bethany and Jessica working together at the university or school on one allocated day per week. Activities involved co-planning in preparation for the co-teaching of pre-service teachers, delivery of professional learning to school teachers, reflective practice, and so forth. The study spanned a period of three years and adopted an autoethnographic case study approach (Cohen et al., 2007; Creswell & Poth, 2017) which enabled deeper exploration into the barriers experienced by each participant (Denscombe, 2010). Data was collected six months prior to, and during, each participant’s involvement in the SUP in the form of field notes which allowed a closer, more personalised view of aspects that were significant (Denscombe, 2010). Ethical approval for the study was provided from the university and the school. Data was grouped according to statements via content analysis and analysed further through the process of thematic analysis (Yin, 2018) to then formulate two autoethnographic narratives which are presented below. The thematic analysis revealed barriers that echoed challenges in already operating SUPs (e.g., Baumfield & Butterworth, 2007; Guerrero-Hernández & FernándezUgalde, 2020; McDonough, 2014): . Contrasting political and educational demands – Competing institutional demands – Teacher shortages and workloads – Contrasting ideas about the purpose and outcomes of SUPs . Interpersonal challenges – – – –

Colleagues’ preconceptions regarding university partnerships Communication Perceptions of who is benefitting from the SUP Contrasting discourse

. Personal barriers – Self-doubt – Time – Navigating identity The findings imply that greater initial preparation and understanding may reduce the number of challenges experienced by stakeholders. Clear role statements and responsibilities during the initial stages of the SUP (Allen et al., 2013; Jones et al., 2016; Oerlemans, 2017) involving greater clarity and expression of expectations, and a deliberate focus on the formation of working relationships (Ng & Chan, 2012;

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Oerlemans, 2017; Ralston et al., 2016) are suggested as broader solutions to overcoming barriers to establishing and sustaining an effective SUP. These are expanded on following the autoethnographic narratives. The SUP that is the focus of this chapter was initially established in 2017, and Bethany and Jessica joined in 2018 and 2020 respectively. The role description was categorised as ‘Teacher Mentor’ and the focus was on the joint facilitation of university level teacher education professional experience subjects. For the classroom teachers involved, further activities initially identified in the partnership included the mentoring and coaching of classroom teachers in line with their Performance Development Framework. This is a process whereby teachers plan to achieve between three and five goals aligned with the school’s focuses, as mandated by the Department of Education and supported by each staff member’s completion of a yearly Performance Development Plan. For university academics, tasks initially involved team planning, marking, and team teaching of university subjects. The partnership spanned five years.

Bethany’s Story: The Classroom Teacher Perspective Prior to her interest in being involved in a SUP, Bethany had been employed as a full-time public school English teacher at her local secondary school for eight years. She began her teaching career in 2010 as a mixture of casual teaching and temporary contracts until 2016 when she achieved a permanent position at the school. Here is her story: Despite many schools’ identification of the importance of building strong community partnerships, whether verbally stated or mentioned explicitly as part of their strategic improvement plan, there had always been multiple questions in my mind regarding how to form effective, durable, and stable quality relationships between organisations and individual stakeholders, particularly as each organisation differed significantly. To me, the notion of ‘university’ was a distant memory; a hazy four years that merely got me to where I needed to be and I often considered the vast distance between universities and schools. I had expressed my concerns regarding teacher retention and the disconnections between the local school and the university to my then supervisor. There was an acknowledgement of this disconnection, but the notion of forming a relationship with two worlds that operated distinctly from each other was not entertained. The perception that the university was purely theoretical and therefore disconnected from schools permeated the school at which I taught, despite the luxury of having access to a local university in our region. One of the first conversations between preservice teachers and their placement supervisor(s) usually involved the cliched ‘forget what you learnt at university’ comment. Amongst staff, there was also discontent with the institution, and its slow-paced, theory-driven, last-minute changing culture was misunderstood by many classroom teachers from the fast-paced, ‘just keep the students in the classroom’ and ‘keep the parents happy’ context of the school at which I worked. To be honest, in my school context, many teachers were undermined by their authorities, students, and parents; they were told by most in many ways that they could not do their job. And thus, from my colleagues’ perspective, I was asked why I would be interested in developing a relationship with the local university when there were so many problems to focus on at the school. I was also told that if I was to be involved in more extracurricular

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activities or alternate roles, I would not be given advanced classes, as I would not ‘be present’. From my own perspective, if we were perceived to be not managing things at the school, why would a university academic want to work with a school teacher such as I? And yet, still, one thing bugged me. Over the years, I would watch fresh, energetic, excited teachers gradually wear down. I’d take a walk around the school to watch, or formally observe, other teachers teach. Behaviour management was a real struggle – probably for most of the staff at the school at which I taught. These once energetic teachers would leave the school within the next one to three years exhausted, either to move to a smaller school, a private school, or to leave the profession entirely. To provide my own understanding of their situation, I would recall when I first acquired a position at the school. Most of my load was taken up with teaching a language subject, even though I was not trained in any Languages subjects. I shared most of my classes with other teachers, except for two lower ability classes for which I was sole teacher – it was to date my most difficult load as a classroom teacher. Nonetheless, as time went on, this fuelled my passion to bridge the gap between schools and universities and more fully prepare pre-service teachers for actual school experiences, provide authenticity to theory, and hopefully improve teacher retention, particularly in my local school. In time, a new principal came to the school and I expressed my interest in increasing teacher retention via a connection with the university to particularly focus on maintaining stamina, managing administrative tasks, creating positive learning environments, and behavioural management strategies. I was told to consider applying for a position in a SUP that would focus on ‘bridging the gap’ between universities and schools. When the Expression of Interest was released, the role description was rather vague and, for a one-daya-week position, there were a lot of outcomes that needed to be met; nonetheless, I applied, but did not get the position. At the end of that year, I discovered that the individual who was successful in acquiring the position had not wanted to continue in the role. The Expression of Interest was again released, and I applied and was successful in my application. Whilst I was successful at the time, there were some obstacles to overcome before starting the role. Firstly, I was unsure of the role description, and after speaking to the individual who was previously in the role, I gained little clarification – no one seemed to know what the position actually involved. It was then that I decided to ‘drift’ – if they wanted me, they knew my email address and phone number. Further difficulties came from within my own school faculty. Whilst some colleagues were positive about the role, others were not. I was told that I could not take advanced or extension classes as I would now be at the university, rather than at the school, on a Wednesday. The same staff member expressed dislike for not knowing exactly what the role for me would involve, as understandably, this impacted her planning. Ultimately, the general perception that ‘school is where ‘real’ teaching takes place, so forget what you learnt at university’ was instilled in the culture of some of my faculty colleagues. The contact made with me regarding the SUP objectives was rather delayed into the next year – and so initially, there was not much to do at all on the Wednesdays (the allocated SUP days). I still decided to wait, as at the start of the year, I had attempted to make contact, gain clarity, and so forth, but to no avail. When the university work did start up, it varied in pace. At times, there was very little to do, and then during other times, there was at least 3 days’ worth of work to do in the timeframe of a single day – it was very much a roller-coaster in terms of workload. In the initial set-up of the SUP, there was still very little knowledge of what was actually to be achieved – this was clarified later in the year. I struggled initially with the different paces of both organisations – the school was consistently fast paced, and the university, in terms of making contact, seeking clarity, collaborating, workload, etc., was very slow paced, with bursts of insurmountable work. I then decided to take a slowpaced approach at school – I would habitually start writing student reports four weeks before they were due, all lessons for the week were planned on Monday mornings, and I would

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only answer emails at specific times during the day. Further, I found myself walking much slower, there were daily set times for student consultations and mandatory reporting, and all examinations and rubrics were designed and/or revised at the start of units – I learnt to control what was in my control. I timetabled all these activities into my school timetable – and found the slower pace doable. However, regardless of dealing with the difference between a slow and fast paced context, I missed out on Wednesday faculty meetings at the school – which was a great disadvantage. The meeting minutes had stopped (at this time, many of my colleagues were overworked), and although they briefly started back up again at my request, they later ceased permanently. I consequently felt very disconnected from the faculty. I then discovered that a recess ‘chat’ with a different colleague each week would help me catch up on essential information. Further initial school difficulties related to the differences in the perception of what the university and the school actually wanted from the SUP. The school generally perceived that the university was benefiting most from the relationship and this was very difficult to navigate. I then began writing report summaries of what had been achieved and the impact of these achievements on the school – this particularly eased the perception that the university was benefitting most. I initially felt very much out of my depth, as the academic jargon, and especially acronyms, were vast, complex, and often had different meanings according to the varied contexts of the school and the university. Communication was therefore on two levels, and I felt that I was misunderstood, and my ideas were disregarded. I was overwhelmed by the textbooks, as I’d not had much access to academic literature since my university days, and had never really entertained the concept of classroom teachers engaging with such resources, perhaps stemming from the notion of the ‘busy’ nature of teaching. I then began working with a university academic, Jessica. I found that as Jessica had been teaching in schools during the previous year, she avoided the complex jargon, was more accepting of organisational differences, and there was somewhat a ‘sense of community’ that she brought to the partnership. Further, my burning interest in academia spurred me to enrol in a Masters by research degree, enhancing my understanding of ‘academic jargon’. The outcomes and visions were clarified and driven mostly by us. As we were able to drive these outcomes, I became passionate about what we were doing, and had time to learn to appreciate the place of ‘textbook theory’ in practice and felt that all classroom teachers should be given ready access to such resources and should be encouraged to work with academics to compose quality texts. Instead of feeling like my voice was not heard, Jessica listened, and our collaboration was mutual – and personality wise, we balanced each other. One thing that I focused on in terms of a personal goal of the SUP was active listening, a skill that now benefits my classroom teaching. Ultimately, there were newly established directions, and a growth mindset in our collaboration. We co-taught and co-redesigned an online subject, consistently composed and discussed professional reflections, and contributed to research; these directions were all of interest to us. Our SUP was then found to be of benefit for pre-service teachers, the school, and the university, and personally, we both invested in the formation of a long-term relationship.

Jessica’s Story: The Teacher Educator Perspective Prior to being involved in the SUP, Jessica had been a school teacher and academic. She began her career as a school teacher, teaching in both government and nongovernment schools in Australia and overseas. In 2014, after years of experience teaching in schools, Jessica began sessional lecturing at a university while continuing to teach in schools. She worked between both schools and universities until 2020

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when she achieved a permanent academic position at a regional University. Here is her story: The SUP was already established as far as an agreement between the university and school long before I began working at the regional university. The head of the project team selected me to join the SUP project team, I believe, because I had previously been a teacher and had recently worked and taught in schools. While I was an academic, I understood the complex nature of schools that I would need to work with and within as part of the SUP. One of my biggest fears moving into the academic world was becoming disconnected from schools and the teachers that work within them. I have always valued both theory and current classroombased practice and believe that the key to successful teaching requires both. So, I was very excited to join an already established SUP project team when I began my permanent position at a regional university. The first challenge I encountered was not being a part of the SUP from its initiation. It was not a simple challenge, finding out where the SUP was at and its principal aims. As time passed, I learnt that various people within the partnership had different ideas about the SUP’s principal aims. I was tasked with understanding the partnership’s history and all the key players. While I was obviously introduced to key stakeholders within the partnership, those on the periphery took time to get to know and understand how they fitted into the bigger picture. This challenge, at times, placed me at a disadvantage, feeling like I was playing catch up, needing explanations of what and who had come before, as well as the intricacies of various relationships. After several weeks, I was in a meeting where names were being thrown around, and again I wondered who some of these people were and how they fitted into the project and partnership. I paused the meeting, pulled out a sheet of paper, and began to map critical stakeholders, the various institutions, and others with whom I would come into contact throughout the project. I also mapped each of their primary roles and aims within the SUP. The map provided me with a visualisation of everyone, how they were all interconnected, and what they were trying to achieve. Moving forward in the SUP, I would frequently pull out my ’map’ as a reference. While this lack of history within the SUP and regional town was initially a challenge, it was also an advantage as I had a fresh perspective at other times. I was also unaware of the politics that existed within the individual institutions and between the institutions. I spent the first few meetings getting to know Bethany, asking questions about her specific school context, her strengths, and what she had already experienced as part of the SUP. We also discussed our expectations of the partnership and one another, as well as what we individually wanted from the partnership and what our institutions wanted from us and the partnership. In turn, this helped us to work towards a common goal within the partnership. Before my appointment at the regional university, I had always identified as a teacher first and an academic/researcher second. I felt very confident in my abilities as a teacher. However, I struggled with my professional identity as an academic, as I did not yet feel accomplished enough in the research space to claim the title. Nevertheless, here I was as the identified ’academic’ within an academic-teacher partnership as part of a SUP. I was cognisant that I needed to step up and take the lead on all things ’academic’ and take a backseat to allow Bethany to be the expert ’teacher’ within the partnership. Initially, I found myself having to consciously restrain myself and stay in my own lane and not tread on Bethany’s toes. At the same time, I found myself lacking confidence in my role as an academic. I felt like an imposter, worried that Bethany would catch me out. As time passed and I developed my identity as an early career researcher and academic, my confidence grew, and I was able to own my title of academic within the partnership. One of the most significant challenges throughout the partnership was a direct result of broader challenges schools face, such as teacher shortages, intensification of work, and rising workload (Garcia & Weiss, 2019; Gavin et al., 2021; Hobbs et al., 2022). There were times

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when parts of our project were cancelled as the school did not have enough staff to release the teachers I was working with. The partnership had funding to release teachers from their classes to participate in research, however due to staff shortages, the school could not get casual teachers to cover, so some days of the project were cancelled. The intensification of workload also presented challenges to how Bethany and I worked together as well as how we worked with other teachers as part of the SUP. There were weeks when she was so stretched and overloaded at school that I had to be responsive to what I expected from her within the partnership. I, too, faced challenges with my own workload as an early career academic and how I prioritised the SUP. At times I felt stretched. Trying to balance teaching and research can be challenging as an academic. It can also be challenging to balance various projects as a researcher. I found tension existed with how I prioritised my workload. I felt that I was letting down Bethany and others within the SUP if that week I needed to prioritise teaching or other research, while at other times, I felt as though I was letting others down if I was prioritising the SUP. For 24 months of the SUP, Wednesdays were ‘quarantined’ solely for SUP work. I found having that dedicated day and time helpful with overcoming this challenge and have since found that difficulties ceased. I appreciate Bethany’s understanding that, like her workload, mine too can be a roller-coaster. She has been incredibly flexible, working around my schedule during my busy periods. When I went into school as an academic as part of the SUP, I encountered guarded, weary, and standoffish teachers. This reaction from teachers is more than understandable. Teachers view academics as separate from them and lack understanding of their job’s dayto-day reality. In response, I found myself immediately having to defend myself and explain my worth and credibility by providing my background and current experience in the school settings. Once they heard that I had not been out of the classroom that long, their guard dropped, and they became warmer to me and made comments such as “Oh, so you get it”, “Oh, so you are real”, and “So you’re not one of those, ‘thinks their better/out of touch’ types,” contrasting me with academics who have little to no practical experience teaching in a school. I immediately observed a change in body language and the way they responded to me in a much warmer manner. Bethany did not have this initial reaction, having been a part of the partnership before my arrival, but also given her understanding of schools and universities needing to work together and respect one another. Bethany and I became a team over a short period of time. Decisions throughout the partnership were made together, and both of us had the opportunity to be heard, and our individual input was valued equally. We co-taught and co-redesigned an online university subject that was linked to pre-service teachers’ school placement. Bethany and I balanced one another well throughout the teaching and redesign of this subject. I learnt from Bethany and her perspective as a current teacher in schools. I feel as though all teacher educator academics should work with current teachers to understand how their ‘theory’ fits into current school contexts and what ‘theory’ looks like in ‘practice’. As time went on and we reflected on our partnership, there were new, agreed-upon directions, including research, and we both continue to cultivate our relationship for a long-term partnership.

Overcoming Challenges There is some regard in the literature for overcoming the barriers to initiating and sustaining effectively functioning SUPs (e.g., Allen et al., 2013; Baumfield & Butterworth, 2007; Gilles et al., 2009; Green et al., 2020; Jones et al., 2016; McDonough, 2014; Ng & Chan, 2012; Sandholtz & Finan, 1998). However, difficulties may be

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contextualised, that is, specific to the setting of each SUP, the individuals and institutions involved, and the social and political expectations of the relevant system; our SUP was no exception. To expand, universally, SUPs have adopted a variety of purposes suited to each site’s government policy, school strategic directions, identified areas for improvement, university policy, needs, course structures, and so forth. Thus, different SUPs may prioritise different focuses, and therefore confront varied challenges, as we did. The difficulty with determining ways to overcome challenges to initiating and sustaining SUPs is therefore acknowledged, although some suggested solutions here may span across sites and can be adapted to suit a variety of SUPs universally. Here, these potential solutions are based on discerning and valuing the “complexity and magnitude of the process of teacher education” (Driscoll et al., 1994, p. 66) and the notion that similarly to the “complex, changing situations” (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009, p. 160) of teaching, approaches within partnerships can be adapted for each SUP setting when relationships, strategies, research focuses, and so forth are consistently developed over time – as occurred in our SUP (Jones et al., 2016; Moreno, 2005).

Roles and Responsibilities When initiating a SUP, it is important to target those who are both willing to contribute to the partnership and have the required knowledge and/or experience, particularly when the SUP is based on a specific key learning or curriculum area (Moreno, 2005). Clear role statements are required to ensure an effective SUP from the outset (Allen et al., 2013; Jones et al., 2016; Oerlemans, 2017). Even though in our case the SUP role statements were not initially clear, we both had a strong desire to participate in a SUP based on our concern for the number of teachers who appeared to be struggling in the profession. In Jessica’s case, mapping critical stakeholders, the various institutions, their primary roles, and aims within the SUP helped visualise how everyone and everything is interconnected, and what they were trying to achieve. Thus, to enhance the success of the partnership, institutions should firstly discern a shared purpose, establish a central team of those leading the partnership from both sites, recognise the visions and needs of both institutions, collaborate on the partnership objectives and goals, and establish equitable funding (Allen et al., 2013; Burns et al., 2016; Green et al., 2020; Jones et al., 2016; Ralston et al., 2016; Wepner et al., 2021). Due to changes in staffing on the school side of our partnership, the central team for our SUP were consistently being updated with different information depending on leadership focuses. In Bethany’s case, the initial Expression of Interest in being involved in the SUP was very much written from the perspective of the school, as opposed to being based on a joint purpose between the school and university. Thus, difficulties in discerning clarity of the roles and responsibilities of individuals involved in the partnership may result in further challenges and ultimately an inability to meet the intended outcomes of the SUP, which was initially the case in the first year of the partnership, before Jessica came on board.

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Partnership roles may vary from co-researcher to co-teacher and co-leader and the consequent layering of identities and fluidity of roles within the relationship may be difficult at times to navigate (Dallmer, 2004). Jessica struggled initially with her professional identity as the ‘academic’ within the partnership as she more strongly identified as a teacher. Jessica had to be conscious of staying within her role of ‘academic’ and not moving into Bethany’s ‘teacher’ role. Bethany, although initially struggling with the multiple identities related to the partnership, grew to appreciate each role as she invested further in academic pursuits. However, initially, Bethany felt that she was not part of the decision making within the SUP, due to the vast distance in communication between those controlling the SUP and herself. Thus, clear roles and responsibilities for a working SUP should also incorporate equal (including classroom teacher) involvement in decision making (Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009; Burns et al., 2016) and therefore joint accountability for each individual (Oerlemans, 2017), as occurred during the latter years of our SUP. Expectations of potentially difficult time constraints, capacity for flexibility, and collaborative learning (Baumfield & Butterworth, 2007; McDonough, 2014; Ralston et al., 2016; Sandholtz & Finan, 1998) should be communicated to avoid, such as in Bethany’s and Jessica’s case, the ‘roller-coaster’ workload. Further, specific collaboration expectations (for meetings, planning, and so forth) and role expectations with regards to subject experience and research involvement should be specific and clear to avoid, in the case of the initial stages of our SUP, people applying who are not suited to the role (Burns et al., 2016; Jones et al., 2016; Ralston et al., 2016). This should be underpinned by the institutions’ common visions and objectives, and the creation of shared and individual goals which, for Bethany, enhanced her interest and dedication to the SUP (Butcher et al., 2011; Jones et al., 2016; Oerlemans, 2017; Ralston et al., 2016). It should be intended that role descriptions be underpinned by teachers investing in the SUP for a balance of personal value, extrinsic reward, and establishment of long-term relationships (Jones et al., 2016; Ralston et al., 2016; Sandholtz, 2002; Sandholtz & Finan, 1998), the latter of which we found most rewarding.

Relationships Research acknowledges that barriers may be addressed via the formation of working relationships, whether between institutions or the individuals involved, where each person and organisation values and respects the other’s differences (Ng & Chan, 2012; Oerlemans, 2017; Ralston et al., 2016). In the case of our SUP, the strongest relationships that were formed were between Jessica and Bethany. With open and consistent collaboration, institutions can work together to overcome barriers such as power inequalities, differences in vision and structure, and conflicting objectives to build trust and shared purposes (Butcher et al., 2011; Jones et al., 2016; Phelps, 2019; Ralston et al., 2016). At times, classroom teachers have perceived the university as slower paced in comparison to a school context, and therefore, it is important to establish a context

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within which stakeholders provide support in a timely manner (Gilles et al., 2009). Such timely assistance should enhance the functionality of the SUP and assist with establishing a supportive environment where each member is valued, mutually contributes, and is accountable to fulfilling the SUP’s vision and purpose (Burns et al., 2016; Jones et al., 2016; Oerlemans, 2017). In Bethany’s case, her adoption of a slower working pace within the school context appeared to be of assistance through the creation of a continuum of approaches between the context of the SUP and the school. Bethany also found this slower pace to be of benefit to her own classroom teaching. Within this supportive environment where assistance is provided in a timely manner, it is also important for all individuals to liberally share ideas, resources, knowledge, and research involvement (Burns et al., 2016; Green et al., 2020; Ng & Chan, 2012; Ralston et al., 2016). In our SUP, this became easier as we formed an increasingly effective working relationship. Collaborative conversations need to be carefully scheduled for all participants so that all are involved in the identification of needs, problem solving, or other forms of purposeful discussion, for an ultimately long-term strengthening of the relationship (Jones et al., 2016; Moreno, 2005; Oerlemans, 2017). Gilles et al. (2009) coins “professional nudging” (p. 108) as accountability gained from increased collaboration resulting in more professional conversations and better teaching due to the presence of others; this was certainly the case as we increased our collaboration in teaching, reflecting, and research-based contexts. Although there may be conflicting perspectives and identities that result in difficult conversations (Clarke & Winslade, 2019), it is encouraged that stakeholders acknowledge ideas and visions during the initial stages of the SUP through conscious understanding of opposing opinions, and recognition of biases and preconceptions about teaching (Driscoll et al., 1994). Such as in our case, this should aid a construction and re-construction of identity that is situated within the ‘third space’ (McDonough, 2014; Zeicher, 2010) and established across a greater discourse of varied experiences (Chan & Clarke, 2014).

Conclusion Research has highlighted the benefits of SUPs and identified many challenges faced when establishing and maintaining a sustainable SUP. This chapter identified the first-hand challenges and offered possible solutions Bethany, a classroom teacher, and Jessica, a teacher educator, navigated concerning their involvement in a SUP. The challenges included competing institutional demands, conflicting visions or understandings, teacher shortages, communication, specific language and jargon, conflicting perceptions of who is benefiting from the SUP, and time constraints. Possible solutions are proposed for these potential barriers that classroom teachers and teacher educators may face when initiating a SUP – focusing on roles and responsibilities, and relationships within a SUP. This chapter provides knowledge of the ways challenges can be understood, addressed, and solutions sustained that could be translated and implemented in other settings through the constant development of

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relationships, strategies, and research over time. While based in a regional Australian context, it is hoped that this chapter adds value to more effectively initiating and sustaining these partnerships universally.

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Bethany H. G. Carter-Sherlock is a secondary and tertiary educator and an early career researcher. She is employed by the NSW Department of Education, Australia, as an English Teacher and works as a casual academic in the School of Education at Charles Sturt University, Australia. In this dual role, Bethany supports beginning and pre-service teachers with transitioning into schools, particularly within the areas of teacher wellbeing, behavioural management and connecting theory to practice. She contributes to the following research areas: teacher mentoring, educational psychology, and school university partnerships. Jessica A. Sears is a lecturer in the School of Education at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She is passionate about teaching, with extensive experience as a school teacher before entering academia. Jessica recently completed her doctoral studies in 2021 and has continued to be involved in schools through several school-university partnerships since 2020. Her current research topics include curriculum evaluation of Health and Physical Education, preservice teacher education, and how school-university partnerships may improve the quality of preservice teacher education.

Part V

Relationships, Compassion, and Leaders

Chapter 20

The Influence of School Culture on School-University Partnerships Corinne A. Green

Background Much of the research literature on school-university partnerships has focused on the actions of university staff (Gutierrez et al., 2019; Manton et al., 2021; Rust, 2019). In contrast, this chapter reports on data from a multiple-case study that prioritised the perspective of teachers and school leaders involved in school-university partnerships (Green, 2021). This chapter will particularly focus on the substantial role that school culture has to play in motivating teachers and school leaders’ involvement in schooluniversity partnerships. The notions of organisational culture and, more pertinent for this chapter, school culture have been extensively explored in research literature and yet remain difficult to define (Kaplan & Owings, 2013; Schein & Schein, 2017). Kaplan and Owings (2013) offer the following insight: “School cultures are the shared orientations, values, norms, and practices that hold an educational unit together, give it a distinctive identity, and vigorously resist change from the outside” (p. 2). In essence, a school’s culture is “the way we do things around here” (Kaplan & Owings, 2013, p. 5) and “shared learning [about] how we talk, what we perceive in our relevant environment, how we think about it, and what makes us feel good or bad” (Schein & Schein, 2017, p. 9). In this chapter, the impact of these shared orientations, values, norms, and practices with regards to school-university partnerships are examined by exploring schools’ leadership (in terms of personnel, styles, and structures), context (such as size, location, and community demographics), philosophy (including the underlying frameworks that drive actions of school staff), and interest in research (regarding engaging with, and in, research). These four elements of school culture were selected based on data analysis detailed in Green (2021). This chapter, like Chapter 2 of this book (Green, 2024), draws on data from a multiple-case study where four Australian school-university partnerships were C. A. Green (B) University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_20

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explored to gain insight into teachers’ and school leaders’ motivation for involvement in the associated school-university partnership (see Table 20.1). Twenty-three participants shared their thoughts through semi-structured interviews; these data were analysed using close reading techniques (Manarin, 2018). Three key themes emerged through this process: the nature of the partnerships (discussed in Green, 2024), the importance of school culture (the focus of this chapter), and teachers’ and school leaders’ commitment to the profession (published in Green & Eady, in press). Further details about the project, which was granted ethics approval by all relevant agencies, can be found in the PhD thesis by Green (2021). Note that pseudonyms are given for all institutions and participants. Schein and Schein (2017) declare that “the basic assumptions of a culture are the deepest, often unconscious part of a group and are, therefore, less tangible and less visible” (p. 10). While it was beyond the scope of this study to fully explore the basic assumptions in each case, it was clear that school culture had a substantial role to play in motivating teachers and school leaders to be involved in school-university partnerships. As Kaplan and Owings (2013) explain, “all educators work within a cultural context that impacts every facet of their work but that is pervasive, elusive, and difficult to define” (p. 5). In line with Stoll’s (2000) assertion that “school culture manifests itself in customs, rituals, symbols, stories and language… [and] is most clearly ‘seen’ in the ways people relate to and work together” (p. 10), this chapter considers the impact of school culture on teachers’ and school leaders’ involvement in school-university partnerships through exploration of each case’s leadership, context, philosophy, and interest in research. The findings from the multiple-case study are combined with a discussion of literature in the following sections, as suggested by Manarin (2018).

School Leadership School leaders play a vital role in directing their school, developing staff capacity, and enhancing student outcomes (Hallinger & Kulophas, 2020; Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Leithwood et al., 2020; Slemp et al., 2018). A variety of leadership approaches and styles have been explored in the research literature, including autocratic, democratic, learning-centred, transformational, instructional, and distributed leadership (Hallinger & Kulophas, 2020; Harris & DeFlaminis, 2016; Louws et al., 2020; Slemp et al., 2018). Harris and DeFlaminis (2016) make clear that no given style is inherently good or bad. Instead, researchers advocate for “‘contextually sensitive’ combinations of leadership practices” (Louws et al., 2020, p. 695) considering cultural, economic, and contextual factors that can direct and restrict leaders’ practices (Leithwood et al., 2020). Regardless of which leadership approach or style they employ, the principal and school executive are responsible for providing cohesion across the school, for determining what activities and actions are (or are not) relevant to their school’s context and goals, and for building staff capacity to pursue appropriate avenues of

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Table 20.1 Case information Grevillea Primary School (GS) and Grey Gum University (GU)

Kangaroo Paw High School (KS) and Koala Fern University (KU)

Eucalyptus Primary School (ES) and Emu-Bush University (EU)

Bottlebrush Independent School (BS) and Banksia University (BU)

Location

Major city Queensland

Major city Queensland

Inner regional Tasmania

Major city New South Wales

School type

K-6 (Primary)

7–12 (Secondary)

K-6 (Primary)

K-6 (Primary) in a K-12 school

School sector

Government

Government

Government

Non-government

School size

700 students 60 teachers

2480 students 175 teachers

560 students 40 teachers

520 K-6 students (1150 total K-12) 115 teachers

IRSAD a of school area

8/10

2/10

1/10

6/10

6 km 10-min drive

1.5 km 5-min walk

500 m 5-min walk

Distance between 23 km 30-min institutions drive University sector

Public

Public

Public

Private

Length of partnership

4 years

5 years

20 + years

7 years

Partnership activities

GU pre-service teachers (PSTs) volunteer at GS throughout school year GS exclusively accepts GU PSTs for placements Videos of GS staff discussing their practices used in GU coursework

KS hosts KU PSTs for placements KU PSTs are targeted for employment Early career teacher (ECT) mentoring program at KS, including supervising PSTs on placement Community of practice with KS and KU staff KS staff on KU Advisory Group

ES hosts EU PSTs for placements ES delivers professional learning sessions for PSTs during placement EU PSTs create and teach lessons to ES students (outside of placements) EU English Language students visit ES for special events

BU PSTs volunteer at BS throughout the school year BS teachers lead BU initial teacher education (ITE) tutorials BS hosts BU PSTs for placements A BS staff member is the BU school-based placement liaison for the region

(continued)

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Table 20.1 (continued)

Study participants

Grevillea Primary School (GS) and Grey Gum University (GU)

Kangaroo Paw High School (KS) and Koala Fern University (KU)

Eucalyptus Primary School (ES) and Emu-Bush University (EU)

Bottlebrush Independent School (BS) and Banksia University (BU)

Glenys Georgina Gemma Grace Gavin Gwendolyn Gretchen

Keith Kathryn Kayla Kylie Kaden Kevin Kane

Esther Elizabeth Emily Elena Edward

Brian Bernadette Barbara Bianca

a The

Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD) is a measure of “people’s access to material and social resources, and their ability to participate in society” (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016, n.p.). A low score indicates relatively greater disadvantage and a lack of advantage in general, while a high score indicates a relative lack of disadvantage and greater advantage in general

development (Hallinger & Kulophas, 2020; Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Leithwood et al., 2020). Across the four cases in this study, differing levels of school principal involvement and delegation of partnership-related responsibilities can be seen, indicating that there is no one ‘right’ way to lead a school in a school-university partnership. The leadership approaches and practices that have been identified within each case are presented here to demonstrate the diversity that is possible, rather than to prescribe necessary actions. It is worth acknowledging that leadership roles are not solely reserved for those in executive positions within a school. The notions of ‘middle leaders’ and ‘teacher leaders’ have been gaining ground in research literature (Lipscombe et al., 2021; Louws et al., 2020; Lovett, 2017; Nguyen et al., 2019). Middle leaders are seen as those with formal positions of leadership who remain close to the classroom—often, though not always, maintaining a teaching role alongside their leadership role—and operate between executive staff and teachers (Lipscombe et al., 2021). Conversely, teacher leaders are described as teachers who lead within and beyond their classrooms through influence rather than a formal leadership position (Lipscombe et al., 2021; Nguyen et al., 2019). Both middle leadership and teacher leadership can be avenues for school improvement and professional development throughout a teacher’s career (Buchanan et al., 2020; Lipscombe et al., 2021; Louws et al., 2020; Lovett, 2017; Schott et al., 2020). Across the four cases, different levels of leaders were identified regarding participants’ roles and responsibilities within each school-university partnership: Principals, Middle Leaders, and Teacher Leaders (see Table 20.2). Note that Table 20.2 only represents the participants in this study and their roles within the given schooluniversity partnerships. These leader levels are examined in further detail in the following sections.

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Table 20.2 Leader levels of participants GS-GU partnership

KS-KU partnership

ES-EU partnership

BS-BU partnership

Principals

Glenys

–

Esther

–

Middle leaders

Georgina

Keith

Elizabeth

Brian Bernadette

Teacher leaders who Gemma influence other Gwendolyn teachers

Kathryn Kylie

Emily Elena Edward

Barbara

Teacher leaders who Grace influence PSTs Gavin Gretchen

Kayla Kaden Kevin Kane

–

Bianca

Principals The school principals at Kangaroo Paw High School, Eucalyptus Primary School, and Bottlebrush Independent School had limited involvement in the respective schooluniversity partnerships. Esther, the school principal at Eucalyptus Primary School, acknowledged her minimal knowledge of the school-university partnership, saying, “I can tell you what I think about it, but I am so removed from what [Elizabeth, the in-school co-ordinator] does.” The school principals from KS and BS chose not to participate directly in this study, perhaps anticipating they would be able to give little insight into the school-university partnerships due to the large sizes of these schools and the delegation of responsibilities amongst the executive teams. Instead, other members of the KS and BS school leadership with more intimate knowledge of the partnerships participated in this study. The upper-level leadership styles of these schools may follow a distributive leadership or autonomy support model, where control is decentralised and self-initiation and empowerment of teachers is promoted (Harris & DeFlaminis, 2016; Slemp et al., 2018). Eucalyptus Primary School had a distributed leadership structure with regards to the ES-EU partnership, as well as for the school in general. As the ES principal Esther noted, “we have a large leadership team, so we all have set portfolios around who does what.” The ES-EU partnership activities were each led from the school end by a different person, with oversight from Elizabeth (deputy principal). This approach resulted in a large array of activities and relationships between school staff and university staff, such as Emily working with an EU colleague from the EU English Language Centre to host special events, Elena collaborating with an EU Education colleague to give PSTs a chance to develop and teach a Science lesson to ES students, and Edward collaborating with other EU Education colleagues to do the same within Health and Physical Education. For Bottlebrush Independent School, the leadership structure for the schooluniversity partnership appeared to be somewhat unclear. Bernadette identified herself as the in-school co-ordinator as well as the co-initiator (alongside her BU colleague)

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of the BS-BU partnership about seven years previous. This was supported by Brian (deputy principal), who noted “to a large extent [Bernadette] is the real driver of [the BS-BU partnership] … My job is to go, ‘Okay, sounds good.’” However, Barbara and Bianca stated that “if [Brian] wasn’t sorting it out, we wouldn’t do it” (Barbara) and did not mention Bernadette in the same way. It seems this discrepancy is tied to the differing foci of each interview—while Bernadette primarily discussed the BU PSTs that volunteer at BS for extended periods of time, Barbara and Bianca paid more attention to PST placements and Barbara’s partnership role as a lecturer and tutor of BU ITE coursework. The leadership support that Barbara and Bianca desired and received, therefore, stemmed from Brian (connected to his role as a school-based placement liaison for the region), rather than Bernadette’s role in co-ordinating the BS-BU partnership. At Kangaroo Paw High School, the leadership of the school-university partnership was centred on Keith (deputy principal) who recognised the support he received from the school principal: We’re very lucky in the principal that we have… He is very much a leader that has faith in his staff and does give a high level of autonomy… We’re very lucky that we’ve got someone who is very open minded and very open to allowing staff to try different things.

Interestingly, the KS principal was not mentioned by any of the other KS participants, suggesting that Keith’s leadership was sufficient when they considered what supports their involvement in the KS-KU partnership activities. Kevin noted that “a lot of what we do is supported and run by [Keith],” later adding that Keith “is always there as a resource or a point of contact.” Kaden noted that a factor that helps his involvement in the partnership is KS leaders “giving us the autonomy and trusting us, knowing that we know what to do and how we’re going to do it. And if we have any problems, we can approach [Keith] to problem solve with us.” This is aligned with a distributed leadership approach, in which “those best equipped or skilled or positioned to lead do so, in order to fulfill a particular goal or organisational requirement” (Harris & DeFlaminis, 2016, p. 144). Keith is well equipped and positioned to lead the KS-KU partnership, enabling the KS school principal to facilitate Keith’s work while not becoming directly involved in the school-university partnership or its activities himself. In contrast, the Grevillea Primary School principal (Glenys) worked closely with Georgina (deputy principal) from the beginning of the GS-GU partnership. Georgina made clear their paired involvement in the early phases of the partnership: [Glenys] and I, because we were the leadership team when [the school was] a little bit smaller… it was her and I in the last few years, talking about: We need to get more out of our pre-service teachers… We ended up talking to [our GU colleague]… so [Glenys] and I went to [the GU campus].

Echoing Georgina’s assertion that they are united “as leaders of the school”, Glenys made similar comments regarding the pairing: I’m the type of person, and [Georgina’s] the same, and that’s why we do so well I think, is we’re real, and we’re practical. We know what’s got to happen, and we want to see it in action, and we want to see it happening, and make it a reality.

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Glenys made clear that although the logistics of the partnership falls under Georgina’s portfolio, she was by no means a distant leader. Speaking about the PSTs that visit GS, Glenys declared, I always want to make sure that I do some induction with them, and they know who I am, and they know… I always say to them, ‘If you want me to come and watch a lesson…’ I see them just about every morning when they sign in, and every afternoon… They see me in the classrooms, they know who I am. That’s really important too, that they see my face.

This level of involvement from the school principal appeared well-suited to the leadership styles of Glenys and Georgina. This approach enabled Glenys and Georgina to lead by example, modelling for the rest of the GS staff their expectations of a collaborative culture and contribution to the teaching profession through involvement in the partnership (Hitt & Tucker, 2016).

Middle Leaders In all four cases, strategic decisions had been made by the school executive to ensure that there was a specific individual with the explicit responsibility of co-ordinating the school-university partnership as part of their role description (that is, Georgina, Keith, Elizabeth, and Bernadette). These middle leaders championed the partnership and promoted positive attitudes towards the partnership activities among their colleagues. In some instances, these individuals were formally responsible for establishing new partnerships with universities as school needs dictated. As noted by Hitt and Tucker (2016) in their discussion of leader practices, “effective leaders intervene to protect their [staff’s] time and energies from distractions that detract from mission, vision, and goal attainment. This type of support usually occurs in the form of leaders preserving both instructional time and teacher work time.” (p. 551). Elizabeth made explicit the actions she takes to preserve teachers’ time: The reports [of PST performance during placement] are a bit cumbersome sometimes, but I try to [arrange] it so that it’s assembly, and two of [the ES teachers] can nick off for half an hour, then two more… so they have a little bit of time to do it. The other thing I often do is [the ES teachers] have a lesson off while I go and observe their [PST], so they can get my feedback on what’s happened. But it just gives them a break, and often they’ll write the [placement] report in that break.

Similarly, when a PST was at risk of failing their placement thereby adding burden to their supervising teacher, Georgina recognised that “I need to give that [GS] teacher a bit of a break, so I’d go and take [their] class for an hour… to help them.” Earlier in the interview, speaking about the same situation, Georgina declared, “I’m here to support [the GS teacher]… That’s my role: I take the pressure off them, so they don’t have to do too much.” The actions of these leaders can buffer staff from distractions to their work, enabling them to contribute to partnership activities more easily (Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Lipscombe et al., 2021).

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However, there were some indications that occasionally the teachers were shielded too much from the inner workings of the partnership, leaving them with fragmented understandings. At Bottlebrush Independent School, Barbara and Bianca indicated that the BU PST volunteer program had ceased a few years previous, although in her interview Bernadette made clear that this partnership activity was ongoing. At Kangaroo Paw High School, when asked to describe the KS-KU partnership, Kathryn offered “multi-layered, because I think there’s multiple things that are going on with us and [KU]… I’m not sure of all the other stuff that goes on behind the scenes.” Later in the interview, Kathryn mused, I don’t think it’s really referred to as ‘The Partnership’ [by KS colleagues]… It’s more like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got a [PST on placement],’ ‘I’m presenting this literacy activity at this thing,’ or it’s just something random, one-off things that people do.

While these fragmented understandings did not appear to negatively impact the partnerships nor these teachers’ involvement in the associated activities, such comments serve as a reminder for the importance of leaders’ open and continual communication of the vision and goals of the school and the partnership as well as “about tasks and distribution of power to resolve ambiguity and tensions” (Louws et al., 2020, p. 692). For two of the in-school co-ordinators, Keith and Bernadette, a formal part of their school role involved seeking out partnerships with local universities. Alongside her classroom teaching responsibilities, Bernadette described her school role as “to further and develop local, state, national and international connections with other institutions, organisations, individuals.” At the time of her interview, Bernadette was reaching out to staff at nearby Melaleuca University and Cycad University to explore partnership possibilities with those institutions. In a similar vein, Keith was responsible for enacting “the deliberate [KS] strategy… to reach out to the universities.” The ways that Keith at Kangaroo Paw High School and Bernadette at Bottlebrush Independent School have actively sought out these partnerships with their local universities “helps build a school’s capacity… Partnerships such as these increase teachers’ sense of belonging [and] enable teachers to feel like they are contributing in a meaningful way” (Downes & Roberts, 2018, p. 40).

Teacher Leaders Teacher leaders tend to not have a formal leadership position, “instead lead through influence… [and] may not have formal role descriptions, policies or processes to support or inform their work” (Lipscombe et al., 2021, pp. 7–8). This was the case for each teacher participant in this study, who (without a formal role with regards to the school-university partnership) took “actions that went beyond the formally assigned roles of a classroom teacher” (Nguyen et al., 2019, p. 67) and influenced others. Two tiers within the teacher leader level have been identified in this study: those that influence their colleagues and PSTs, and those that influence PSTs.

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Teacher Leaders Who Influence Other Teachers The teacher leaders in this first tier were typically responsible for organising various partnership activities and/or for encouraging their colleagues to become involved in those activities. At Eucalyptus Primary School, all three teacher participants (Emily, Elena, and Edward) were involved in organising a partnership activity, which meant they were the “ones that get the ball rolling” (Emily) for events that recur each year. Elena indicated that being a teacher leader gave her insight into what might hinder her colleagues from participating in partnership activities: “Because I’m a classroom teacher as well as someone who’s trying to get people to do [partnership activities], I do see that other side of it.” Nguyen et al. (2019) acknowledge that this can be a tension of teacher leadership, with a need to balance one’s own teaching and teacher leadership roles, as well as negotiate relationships with colleagues. In the Grevillea Primary School group interview, the friendly banter between Gemma and Gavin in particular demonstrated Gemma’s influence as a teacher leader: Gavin: This is my second [GU PST]. [Gemma] is my coach at this school… Gemma: Yeah, I was going to say, I have to admit I… Gavin: Very gently twisted my arm into… Gemma: Bullied [Gavin] into… Gavin: Taking [PSTs].

Later in the interview, Gemma gave further detail of this interaction: I genuinely think that when [a teacher steps back from involvement in a partnership activity] most of our teachers will then go up to someone else and say, ‘I’m not going to do it, but you should!’ ‘You should take a [PST], [Gavin]! It would be really great for them to see your practice in action.’

The collegial culture of GS was inextricably linked to Gemma’s and Gwendolyn’s teacher leadership. This echoes Nguyen et al.’s (2019) literature review findings that “the quality of teacher leadership depends on the nature of the relationship between teacher leaders and their peers” (p. 69). At Kangaroo Paw High School, the seniority and prior experience of both Kathryn and Kylie contributed to their teacher leadership. Kylie was the self-confessed “grandma” of their group interview, with 17 years of teaching experience as well as a previous university-based role managing PST placements. Given that she was “interested in that space” of school-university partnerships and PST development, Kylie was informally working alongside Keith to lead her colleagues in their work with PSTs. Kathryn (with seven years teaching experience in varied contexts) was also interested in the teaching and learning area of professional development. Kathryn influenced colleagues through leading the ECT mentoring program and the KS-KU community of practice. Similarly, Barbara at Bottlebrush Independent School had 15 years teaching experience and valued how the BS-BU partnership enabled her to engage with research, “bringing that back and sharing [what I learn] with [my] colleagues. I think for me, that’s what it’s about.” Buchanan et al. (2020) highlight

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the career-spanning nature of teacher leadership, with Louws et al.’s (2020) assertion that teacher leadership “is seen as a potential instrument for teachers to develop professionally” (p. 691) resonating well with Kathryn, Kylie, and Barbara.

Teacher Leaders Who Influence PSTs While not all teacher participants indicated that they influenced their colleagues, all demonstrated teacher leadership by influencing PSTs (Lipscombe et al., 2021; Nguyen et al., 2019). For the early career teachers at Kangaroo Paw High School (Kayla, Kaden, Kevin, and Kane), these leadership opportunities were recognised as unusual for beginning teachers. As Kevin reflected, “talking to my friends… from my [university degree] cohort, not even 5%… would have had an opportunity to have a [PST], [whereas] I’ve had six or seven [PSTs] by now.” The ECT mentoring program at KS and support of colleagues meant that even though hosting PSTs so early in her career “was concerning to me,” Kayla recognised “it’s been a great learning curve for me, too.” These teachers had also taken opportunities to speak to PSTs at Koala Fern University about “my beginning teacher experience and what I’ve picked up from the start of my career here and just try to pass on pieces of advice, really” (Kane). Buchanan et al. (2020) recognise this as one of the benefits of teacher leadership—as “an iterative and recursive process throughout the work lives of teachers” (p. 581), it is something that early career and experienced teachers alike can engage in. Nguyen et al. (2019) identified that teacher leadership is “exercised on the basis of reciprocal collaboration and trust” (p. 67). Grace noted that working with PSTs within the GS-GU partnership gave opportunities where “I learn from them, just as much as they learn from me.” Similarly, Gretchen described a shift in relationship between herself and PSTs: “I think the [PSTs] have come [to see] it as a valuable partnership, not just me being a mentor teacher, but them being… my partner within the room… I think you’ve got to start to think along those lines.” Teacher leadership is a valuable opportunity for professional development and growth (Buchanan et al., 2020; Schott et al., 2020). This is clear in the following comment from Kevin: It gives us an opportunity to experience something that we don’t normally in the classroom… We get that little bit more of a mentor role, which obviously is something we do with the [school students], but it’s completely different when you’re looking at adults, so helps develop us more as well.

Despite the somewhat arbitrary distinction made here between the two tiers of teacher leaders, the findings from this study echo that of Schott et al. (2020) in recognising the wide-reaching benefits of teacher leadership: “Not only teachers themselves seem to benefit from teacher leadership, but also the employing school, students, and even actors beyond school level, such as… professional networks” (p. 8).

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School Context Stoll (2000) makes clear that “school culture is influenced by a school’s external context” (p. 9), including community beliefs about schooling, and political and economic forces. Indeed, a school’s external context (e.g., size, location, socioeconomic status of the area) can have substantial effects on student achievement, staff recruitment, and connections to universities (Cronin et al., 2020; Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Leithwood et al., 2020). Cronin et al. (2020) recognised that “schools in challenging circumstances… may have little or no involvement with university ITE programs” (p. 2) either due to the school’s limited capacity or confidence, or the university’s reluctance to place PSTs in complex situations. Conversely, Downes and Roberts (2018) recommended school-university partnerships in rural locations to “provide [PSTs] with an opportunity to challenge their preconceptions about living and working in a rural place… and reinforce the positives of rural teaching” (p. 37). Lee (2018) suggested that partnerships between school, community, and university can “create a ‘pipeline’ of community-minded teachers committed to teaching in their communities” (p. 118). Similarly, school-university partnerships can represent a long-term strategy for increasing access to higher education opportunities for those from equity groups such as low socio-economic status, Indigenous background, first-in-family, or remote and regional areas (Australian Government Department of Education, Employment & Work Relations, 2009; Wilks & Wilson, 2012). In this study, the contextual differences between the cases (see Table 20.1) correlate to differences in the associated school-university partnerships and teachers’ and school leaders’ motivations for involvement. These elements of context are presented here to give heterogenous examples of contextually responsive school-university partnerships. There is some indication that the size of a school contributes to its capacity for maintaining multiple school-university partnerships. While GS (student population of 700) and ES (student population of 560) were engaged in partnership with one university each, KS (student population of 2480) maintained deep connections with four local universities. Likewise, BS (total student population of 1150) supported multiple partnerships with local and international universities. In addition to the school’s size, the location of the school was also a factor. While KS was in close proximity to multiple universities (7 universities within 30 km), as was BS (10 universities within 5 km), GS had fewer options (3 universities within 30 km) and ES had just one university (i.e., EU) nearby. For the two schools in low socio-economic areas (KS and ES), the demographics of the school community had divergent influences on their involvement in schooluniversity partnerships. Elizabeth, Emily, Elena, and Edward each valued the ESEU partnership for the way it built ES students’ aspirations for further education, recognising that in their context few students viewed university as attainable (Gale et al., 2010; Wilks & Wilson, 2012). Visiting the EU campus and interacting with EU students gave ES students opportunities to “feel what the [EU] campus was like” (Elena) and see EU students as role models of what is achievable—“If they can go

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to university, I can go to university” (Emily). In contrast, teachers at BS (in a much higher socio-economic status area) expected that “a lot of our [BS students] will be going on to university” (Bianca). Even so, they too appreciated how school-university partnerships demonstrated to BS students “that their teachers have those relationships with universities…” (Bianca) “…and value education” (Barbara). With students’ preferences regarding attending university tending to form in late primary school and early high school, school-university partnerships can enable school students to make informed decisions about whether university study is the right choice for them (Australian Government Department of Education, Employment & Work Relations, 2009; Gale et al., 2010; Wilks & Wilson, 2012). While ES participants identified the effect that socio-economic status had on their students, KS participants noted the effect of socio-economic status on staff recruitment. In much the same way that PSTs may have developed “idyllic or hellish images about rural life” (Downes & Roberts, 2018, p. 32) that influence recruitment and retention in rural, remote, and isolated schools, Keith recognised the need to address “the perception versus reality” for PSTs to fill the staffing needs associated with the large (and growing) KS student population. Keith reflected that when PSTs look at the area KS is located, “they’re scared, thinking, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to get here and get stabbed!’ Or, ‘My car will get stolen!’… All of those negative perceptions.” Through the KS-KU partnership and associated activities, KS staff have established “a pipeline of culturally responsive teachers who are trained in their schools, understand the community’s unique context, and appreciate the funds of knowledge from which to draw learning into their teaching practices” (Lee, 2018, p. 120).

School Philosophy and Framework Whether or not it is explicitly stated, schools are likely to have underlying frameworks or philosophies of education that direct the attention and actions of the school staff, such as the Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano, 2007) or collaborative inquiry (Schipper et al., 2020). Schein and Schein (2017) explain that these frameworks “serve the normative or moral function of guiding members of the group as to how to deal with certain key situations as well as in training new members how to behave” (p. 20). In this study, the clearest example of a school’s underlying ideological philosophy was at Grevillea Primary School, where the Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano, 2007) was woven through each interview. This approach integrates research and evidence with teachers’ professional judgements to empower “individual classroom teachers [to] determine which strategies to employ with the right students at the right time” (Marzano, 2007, p. 5). Importantly, GS staff saw strong connections between their school framework and their involvement in the GS-GU partnership. When considering the benefits of the partnership, Georgina pointed out that

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We learn best by teaching. If you have a new skill and you’re teaching it to someone else… That’s what the Art and Science of Teaching is, that’s what [we use with GS students] in the classroom… To me, the benefits are the same [for PSTs].

Similarly, Gwendolyn described how the positive attitudes of GS staff towards the partnership “come out of our pedagogy… because we have a very strong pedagogical frame about what we do here at our school,” referring to the Art and Science of Teaching. While perhaps not as succinctly stated, school philosophies were also evident in other cases in this study. Keith stated that “at this school, our framework… is around the professional standards… We talk APSTs [Australian Professional Standards for Teachers], or APSPs [Australian Professional Standards for Principals], depending on career stage.” This was well aligned with the KS-KU community of practice, where senior KS teachers were supported to develop portfolios for further accreditation at the APST levels of Highly Accomplished Teacher and Lead Teacher (Australian Institute for Teaching & School Leadership, 2011). Another element of the KS philosophy relates to encouraging risk-taking, particularly for PSTs and ECTs. Kane noted that Keith “always says [to PSTs on placement], try things. Don’t be afraid to get out there and try different things.” Kaden extended this idea, noting that “you’ve got to [as a PST], because you’ve got that safe net. And then I think once you get to the end of your second, third, fourth year [as an ECT], you’re starting to do that again.” Teachers and school leaders in this study thereby saw connections between what they were afforded themselves as teaching professionals, or what they offered to their school students, and what they extended to pre-service teachers through involvement in the school-university partnerships. Furthermore, the partnerships were enriched by alignment between the undergirding approaches of the schools and universities. Georgina spoke about this being instrumental to the GS-GU partnership: “We chose to stay with [GU] because we liked the philosophy that [our GU colleague] was talking to us about.” Brian recognised the differences between BS and BU, noting that BU “is quite a conservative… university. We are as far from that as you can possibly imagine… But I quite like [the partnership] because part of that is about diversity.” While Brian identified a “misalignment around values” as a possible hindrance to involvement in the partnership, this was “not so much with [BU], but I can see that potentially being an issue with some places. It’s never been an issue with [BU].” The synergy between schools and universities at the level of their philosophy and values can promote the shared understandings that were found in Green et al.’s (2020) systematic literature review to be critically important to successful school-university partnerships.

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Interest in Research There are increasing calls from both policy and research perspectives for the teaching profession in Australia to be research-rich and for schools to be research-engaged (Dagenais et al., 2012; McAleavy, 2015; Prendergast & Rickinson, 2019; Rickinson et al., 2020). These terms describe educators that engage in research projects (whether formal or informal) and with research evidence, although “the distinction between teachers engaging in and with research can be overstated. The two processes are not mutually exclusive, and in the best examples, they complement each other” (Nelson & O’Beirne, 2014, p. 35, emphasis in original). In contrast to claims by Dagenais et al. (2012) that “school practitioners continue to make little use of educational research in their classroom practice” (p. 286), White et al. (2018) report that “Australia has highly educated and aspirational education professionals, who both value research and are eager to access and participate in research-led and research-informed practice at all levels” (p. 3). Rickinson et al. (2020) highlight the importance of school-based factors that enable teachers to mobilise and implement research, including. senior leadership support for, and modelling of, research use across the school; middle leaders helping other staff to access, understand and apply research ideas; collaborative forums in which staff can discuss research and how to use it in context; resources in terms of time, funds, and training to support research engagement; research engagement being embedded within the ethos of the school; and partnerships with external researchers, coaches and other research-engaged schools. (p. 26)

This indicates an iterative relationship between school culture, leaders’ actions, and a school’s engagement in and with research (McAleavy, 2015; Prendergast & Rickinson, 2019; Rickinson et al., 2020). Additionally, there are clear links between Rickinson et al.’s (2020) factors and the opportunities afforded by school-university partnerships, such as how the KS-KU community of practice gave space for university and school staff to collaboratively discuss, contextualise, and apply research ideas. As with White et al. (2018), participants in this study indicated a high regard for research-informed practices and “identified research as being important in their workplace” (p. 7). Brian mentioned a professional learning course he had recently attended at Harvard University led by Howard Gardner, while Georgina referred to research by John Hattie and others when explaining her teaching philosophy. Barbara found that her partnership role as a lecturer and tutor with BU meant that she was “keeping fresh all the time… You’re reading lots and lots of new [research] papers all the time, and you’re keeping current.” For Elizabeth, partnership activities led ES teachers to “articulate all the time why they’re doing [what they’re doing]… It means that a lot of my teachers keep up to date with current thinking.” Engaging in these reflective and research-informed practices enabled these teachers and school leaders to stay up to date in a “rapidly changing society” (van Schaik et al., 2018, p. 50), in accordance with policy expectations (Australian Institute for Teaching & School Leadership, 2011). Notably, leaders of research-engaged schools “value and encourage research participation and evidence use, model the use of evidence in practice… and set

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the right climate and practice conditions for staff to engage in and with research” (Prendergast & Rickinson, 2019, p. 34). This was seen in the schools in this study, particularly in relation to their interest and engagement with their partner universities. For instance, Georgina mentioned a wide array of data sources, including student assessment results (in national standardised tests as well as school-based reports), parent opinion surveys, and staff surveys, that indicate that GS is “doing something right” as a school community and therefore has something worth sharing with others through their school-university partnership. Brian made clear that he encouraged staff to participate in research projects (with BS staff contributing to “at least three, maybe four PhD studies this year”), while Keith acknowledged that “We do place a fair emphasis on getting research projects” and was therefore happy to participate in this study. Georgina mentioned that GS was exploring involvement in a research project with another university, saying, “At the end of the day… Knowledge is power, isn’t it? So, the more we can gain and understand, the better.” Each school in this study therefore was inclined towards being research-informed, resonating with Sharples et al.’s (2019) assertion that “schools are learning organisations. They continuously strive to do better” (p. 3). Although it is unclear which may have come first—a school’s interest in research, or their involvement in a schooluniversity partnership—this element of these schools’ cultures was clearly aligned with their partnership work (McAleavy, 2015; van Schaik et al., 2018).

Conclusion The teachers and school leaders in this study were motivated and supported to be involved in school-university partnerships by the cultures of their respective schools. Each school’s executive leaders gave explicit responsibility for the partnership to a middle leader, enabling them to champion the partnership and facilitate their colleagues’ involvement. Teachers and leaders valued engagement in and with research, which aligned with their partnership work. Likewise, the underlying beliefs and philosophies of these schools had high degrees of alignment with their partner universities and individuals’ involvement in partnership activities. In other words, participants made clear that their schools’ leadership, context, philosophy, and interest in research—that is, aspects of their schools’ culture—shaped their perspectives, influenced their attitudes, and motivated their decisions and actions regarding school-university partnerships. Kaplan and Owings (2013) note that “Just as water surrounds fish, shaping their world view and influencing where they swim, culture surrounds and envelopes principals, teachers, students, and parents, shaping their perspectives and influencing their beliefs, assumptions, decisions, and actions” (p. 1). Throughout this chapter, examples of how the water of school culture influences and promotes teachers’ and school leaders’ involvement in school-university partnerships have been given. These diverse cases have highlighted the possibilities (instead of prescribing required actions) for each examined element of school culture. In so doing, the chapter offers

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guidance for others to consider regarding how the school’s leadership style may influence the structure of the partnership (e.g., distributed leadership at Eucalyptus Primary School that facilitated connections with multiple people within the partnership), how the demographics of the school community may influence the focus of the partnership (e.g., the KS-KU partnership’s attention to recruitment and retention of staff in a low socio-economic area), how a school’s philosophy permeates partnership activities (e.g., Grevillea Primary School teachers implementing the key tenets of the Art and Science of Teaching with school students, pre-service teachers, and colleagues), and how an interest in research aligns with partnership work (e.g., Bottlebrush Independent School staff seeking to integrate current research with their practice). Probing these deeper elements of school-university partnerships “informs teachers, school leaders, teacher educators, and policy makers to better support school-university partnerships for the continued improvement of the teaching profession” (Green, 2021, p. 25).

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Rickinson, M., Perrotta, C., & Selwyn, N. (2020). Getting Evidence Moving in Schools (GEMS): Research framework. Evidence for Learning. Rust, F. O. C. (2019). Redesign in teacher education: The roles of teacher educators. European Journal of Teacher Education, 42(4), 523–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2019. 1628215 Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5 ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Schipper, T. M., de Vries, S., Goei, S. L., & van Veen, K. (2020). Promoting a professional school culture through lesson study? An examination of school culture, school conditions, and teacher self-efficacy. Professional Development in Education, 46(1), 112–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 19415257.2019.1634627 Schott, C., van Roekel, H., & Tummers, L. G. (2020). Teacher leadership: A systematic review, methodological quality assessment and conceptual framework. Educational Research Review, 31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2020.100352 Sharples, J., Albers, B., & Fraser, S. (2019). Putting evidence to work: A school’s guide to implementation. Evidence for Learning. Slemp, G. R., Kern, M. L., Patrick, K. J., & Ryan, R. M. (2018). Leader autonomy support in the workplace: A meta-analytic review. Motivation and Emotion, 42(5), 706–724. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11031-018-9698-y Stoll, L. (2000). School culture. Set: Research Information for Teachers, (3), 9–14. https://doi.org/ 10.18296/set.0805 van Schaik, P., Volman, M., Admiraal, W., & Schenke, W. (2018). Barriers and conditions for teachers’ utilisation of academic knowledge. International Journal of Educational Research, 90, 50–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2018.05.003 White, S., Nuttall, J., Down, B., Shore, S., Woods, A., Mills, M., & Bussey, K. (2018). Strengthening a research-rich teaching profession for Australia. Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA), Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE), Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE). https://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2020.1737666 Wilks, J., & Wilson, K. (2012). Going on to uni? Access and participation in university for students from backgrounds of disadvantage. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 34(1), 79–90.

Dr. Corinne A. Green is an early career researcher and educator. She is a Lecturer in Academic Development with the Teaching Innovation Unit at the University of South Australia where she prompts educators to be intentional in their approach to teaching and learning. Corinne completed her PhD in teacher education at the University of Wollongong, exploring what motivates teachers and school leaders to be involved in school-university partnerships. She has relished opportunities to collaborate with local and international colleagues on various projects in the field of teacher education and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Chapter 21

Regional School-University Partnerships: Searching for the Sweet Spot—An Inquiry into the Impact of a Pedagogy of Care Sharron L. Jones

and Madeline A. Foran

Introduction This chapter explores the experiences of a small group of regionally located final year pre-service teachers through one cycle of action research. During the last months of their education degree, incorporating course work and final pre-service placement of forty school days, the pre-service teachers, along with their supervising and university teachers, seek to understand the relevance and importance of interpersonal relationships to pre-service teachers’ collegial and pedagogic development. As a framework for this chapter, we draw upon the work of Bier et al. (2012), who suggest that learning to teach is “a complex interweaving of activity, situation, and participation” (p. 128) and much more than “acquiring ideas or behaviors” (p. 128). We explore the intersection of learning between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers in search of what Bier et al. (2012) “colloquially define as the ‘sweet spot’ of collaborative work” (p. 129) to better understand the impact of interpersonal and collegial relationships on regional pre-service teachers’ final placement experience. We draw heavily on Motta and Bennett’s (2018) pedagogy of care, described as recognition, dialogic relationality, and affective and embodied praxis as we move through the action research cycle. Embracing a pedagogy of care positions interpersonal and collegial relationships between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers as central to the teaching and learning process, where participants know each other within and beyond the context of the learning space or location, and where relationships are highly valued and significantly deepen the experience (Motta & Bennett, 2018; Seary & Willans, 2020; Walker & Gleaves, 2016).

S. L. Jones (B) · M. A. Foran University of South Australia, Whyalla, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_21

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Locating the pre-service, supervising, and university teachers’ experiences in the ‘sweet spot’ where collaborative learning takes place, we align our action research with the three broad areas of Motta and Bennett’s (2018) pedagogy of care. The first of these is care as recognition which acknowledges the life experiences and insights the pre-service teachers bring into the learning environment. The second is care as dialogic relationality, acknowledging that emotion and relationships are central to learning; throughout their final placement the pre-service teachers are balancing their emotions with the pressure to successfully complete their placement and their education degree. The third is care as affective and embodied praxis which takes time and commitment to establish. Once it is established, participants can feel safe and welcome, and know that they belong when sharing their personal, and at times challenging, experiences of their final pre-service placements (Motta & Bennett, 2018; Seary & Willans, 2020). This action research project examines the interpersonal and collegial experiences of pre-service, supervising, and university teachers located in six very different school sites across several regional South Australian communities. Encompassing a diverse geographic and contextual footprint, each community has its own distinctive schooluniversity partnership within which the pre-service teachers’ final placements occur. The school sites are a mixture of year level configurations: primary schools catering for students from Reception to Year 6, with children ranging in age from five to twelve years; and large area schools which cater for students from Reception to Year 12, with children ranging in age from five to eighteen years of age. Enrolments at the primary schools range between one and two hundred students, while the area schools’ enrolments are between five hundred and more than a thousand students. It is worth noting three unique features of area schools. Firstly, they usually include a pre-school and/or childcare centre located on or beside the school site. Secondly, they often feature an agricultural or trade training centre focused on supporting local employment needs. Thirdly, area schools provide bus transport, via multiple routes to and from school, for students living in outlying family properties, farms, and communities. The pre-service teachers and university teacher in this partnership are located at a regional university campus on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, centrally located to the schools and communities featured in this study. Some of these schools and communities are located just a few minutes’ drive from the campus, while others are hundreds of kilometres away. For example, the two area schools are more than 250 km away from the university campus, on opposite sides of the Spencer Gulf. When travelling to visit and supervise the pre-service teachers on placement at these area schools, the university teacher is required to stay overnight in the community; so great is the distance between the school and university campus, that a return journey cannot be safely travelled in one day. While it can take hours and hundreds of kilometres to travel between some of these regional communities, they all share a strong common feature; school-university partnerships and the collegial and interpersonal relationships within them are highly valued.

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Regional School-University Partnerships The school-university partnerships in our regional communities serve a variety of purposes in capacity building for both the university and schools. For the children and young people in our communities, school-university partnerships promote learning and aspiration, highlighting what is possible now and in the future. This connection is consolidated and enacted through the pre-service teachers’ professional placements in local schools and context specific in-situ (i.e., in classroom) relationships between the pre-service, supervising, and university teachers. The wider community sees the connections between schools and the university campus as capacity building for educational aspirations, retaining locally educated young people in the regions, and attracting those from further afield. Primary, secondary, and area schools across the Spencer Gulf and Eyre Peninsula look to the university as a source of regional supply of qualified and skilled teachers to fill their staffing vacancies. Sourcing and retaining teaching staff in regional schools is a challenging and ongoing issue (Burton & Johnson, 2010; Green et al., 2020; Motta & Bennett, 2018; Walker & Gleaves, 2016; Zeichner, 2010). The transition from school to university in our regional communities is deliberate and purposeful. These domains are located side-by-side geographically and conceptually, and undergraduate learning and community experiences are similarly connected. School-university partnerships are also sites of exploration and research before, during, and after undergraduate study, and ultimately they are places of future employment and career development for pre-service, early career, and experienced teachers and school leaders. Governments both internationally and within Australia have advocated the implementation of school-university partnerships that support the development of pre-service teachers. They also advocate for effective partnerships between initial teacher education providers and schools to produce mutually beneficial outcomes and facilitate a close connection between teaching practice and initial teacher education (Green et al., 2020). Both the geographic and conceptual intersection of our local community’s schooluniversity partnerships are fostered and developed through genuine and reciprocated interpersonal relationships. This takes time, commitment, and specific consideration of and for regional diversity. In our communities, relationships matter; improving teacher education through formalised partnerships between schools and our regional campus requires a shared understanding of what is needed and a collaborativecollegial approach to developing clear and realistic steps to achieving educational goals. This involves substantive dialogue and a common vision that is firmly located within the community, where the collegial and pedagogical relationships that underpin them are geographically and conceptually aligned. This includes short, medium, and long-term consideration of the strategies and actions that will meet the needs of pre-service teacher development, consolidation of a rapidly dwindling teacher workforce, and retention of teachers more fully in the profession, particularly in regional communities. Meeting the teaching and learning needs of the children

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and young people in our regional communities depend upon this (Green et al., 2020; Manton et al., 2021; Putman et al., 2022; Walker & Gleaves, 2016; Zeichner, 2010). School-university partnerships that develop capacity among teachers and school leaders, promote professional and school development beyond a scripted and ‘one size fits all’ approach, and embrace innovative and evidence informed practices are required for our regional communities’ future success. Supporting pre-service and beginning teachers to develop and refine their skills, abilities, and confidence to be innovative and dynamic in and beyond their own classrooms is fundamental to this process. Building upon and highly valuing individuals’ different perspectives and goals in promoting a strong foundation to strengthen the education, learning, and skills of all teachers will enhance the teaching and learning opportunities within and beyond our regional communities (Bernay et al., 2020; Chandler & Barron, 2021; Manton et al., 2021; Putman et al., 2022).

Searching for the Sweet Spot While the research exploring the value and benefits of school-university partnerships is extensive, as outlined above, we argue there is a paucity of research that examines these partnerships from the pre-service teachers’ perspective within the crucial window of the final pre-service placement. We believe school-university partnerships that support and enhance the collegial, pedagogic, and interpersonal relationships between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers requires further and deep consideration. This chapter seeks to highlight the value and importance of honest and genuine interpersonal relationships, where collegial and pedagogic learning is built on trust, mutuality, and reciprocity; and the impact this has on pre-service teachers when it is not present. We draw strongly on Bier et al.’s (2012) representation of the ‘sweet spot’, enlarging and enhancing it to tell the story of our regional school-university partnerships. We are in search of the ‘sweet spot’ that highlights the intersection of shared learning between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers in each locationally specific community. We want to understand the value of collegial and pedagogic relationships and what it means to cross the boundary from pre-service to beginning teacher in our regional communities as a geographically and conceptually specific practice. We argue that if collegial and pedagogic relationships between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers are to be intentional, deliberate, collaborative, and non-hierarchical in nature (Green et al., 2020), each school-university partnership must identify and re-locate to its own unique ‘sweet spot’ where the pre-service, supervising, and university teachers’ collaborative work is at the intersection of opportunities to learn from and with, as well as building capacity, in their own communities (Bier et al., 2012).This position is supported by Bernay et al. (2020) who argue that building collaborative partnerships involving a wide range of people in new ways is what pre-service, supervising, and university teachers need to learn to do in learning communities.

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The transformative view of locationally specific school-university partnerships, through the eyes of the pre-service teachers, sharpens the focus on the triangulated relationship between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers, bringing to the forefront the deep contextual understanding of the community in which it is located. Our action research highlights the importance of the non-hierarchical and collegial relationships between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers who want to be connected personally and professionally to the communities in which they teach (Burton & Johnson, 2010). The diversity of these pre-service teachers’ experiences provides a unique insight into the journey from that of pre-service teacher to independent and autonomous beginning teacher. This journey is where professional identities and a sense of agency and empowerment are developed, enabling the new graduates to cross the boundary successfully and confidently from pre-service to beginning teacher (Bernay et al., 2020; Burton & Johnson, 2010; Green et al., 2020; Stahl et al., 2022; Sterrett et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022). Putman et al.’s (2022) work supports our discussion of intentionally designed preservice teaching experiences and partnerships enacted as instructional communities of practice where carefully scaffolded learning experiences, and a common vision of effective teaching, result in pre-service teachers being more prepared to teach in their own classrooms. Banda and Reyes (2022) take this further in their exploration of the importance and value of interpersonal relationships between university teachers and students, where they describe living and teaching within a community as “a caring ethic and being present in the moment to craft pedagogies that are responsive to the particular needs of both the teacher and students” (p. 6, emphasis in original). Living and teaching in our regional communities requires us to search for the ‘sweet spot’ and embrace a pedagogy of care in our school-university partnerships in the creation of new and innovative learning opportunities (Green et al., 2020). Crossing the geographic and conceptual boundaries of school-university partnerships and re-locating interpersonal and collegial relationships in the ‘sweet spot’ provides an opportunity for transformational relationships to develop and enable what Walker and Gleaves (2016) describe as “the active fostering of and maintenance of pedagogic relationships above all else” (p. 1). We posit this both enhances and strengthens school-university partnerships, bringing to the forefront collegial and pedagogic relationships that significantly improve the final placement experience for pre-service teachers’ learning. The final school placement, pre-service teachers’ Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment (GTPA) outcomes, supervising and university teachers’ experiences, as colleagues and mentors, and ultimately employment opportunities and connections with schools and sites across our regional communities are all key elements to ensure our new graduates’ future success as teachers. Our argument supporting community specific school-university partnerships that re-locate collegial and pedagogic relationships between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers within the ‘sweet spot’ is further explored by Bernay et al. (2020). These authors suggest a strong foundation for school-university partnerships where a new space can be created, one that that doesn’t belong to the school or university but is rather a new shared space of learning, where collaboration and joint

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planning can occur (Bernay et al., 2020). In our regional context, we argue that reenvisioning the school-university partnership through the pre-service teacher’s eyes as an intentional, deliberate, and equal member can create this new shared space of learning. Professional connections and interpersonal relationships matter; nonhierarchical and genuine school-university and student partnerships in teaching and learning that include the integration of theory and practice improve the chances of pre-service teachers being ready for their first teaching position (Bernay et al., 2020) and provide various mutually beneficial outcomes for both schools and universities (Manton et al., 2021). Burton and Johnson (2010) take this further suggesting that when teachers are homegrown (i.e., from rural communities), they already have the identity and relationships within the community that will serve them well in their teaching. The identity of these homegrown teachers is rooted in the understanding and connection to the unique nature of teaching in a rural community. Drawing on knowledge of and relationships to the community is believed to help novice teachers overcome some of the unique challenges that teachers in rural communities can face (Burton & Johnson, 2010).

Pedagogies of Care Viewing this regional community’s school-university partnerships through the lens of Motta and Bennett’s (2018) pedagogies of care positions the researchers and the researched as knowers and learners of and within their own context; we view the analysis of our shared experience as being collaboratively created. This positioning of interpersonal and collegial relationships as central to caring pedagogical work and fostering the dialogical co-creation of knowledges underpins the conceptual analysis and understanding of our experiences through this action research. The pre-service teachers’ lived experiences become the narrative. This is further supported by the work of Bernay et al. (2020) who suggest the voices of all members of the partnership, particularly the pre-service teachers’, must be captured to paint a complete picture of the experience. This supports our position that viewing the school-university partnership through the eyes of the pre-service teacher draws the focus of the supervising and university teacher into the ‘sweet spot’ where interpersonal communication, collegial relations, and the pre-service teacher’s pedagogical learning is at the forefront. Motta and Bennett (2018) explore this, stating “care-full pedagogical practice is manifested by teacher-commitment to embracing the whole student, and not reducing them to instrumentalist and homogenised careless motivations and aspirations” (p. 636). Attending to and knowing pre-service teachers as people, learners, and beginning teachers within a regionally specific context is an integral part of the picture. Pedagogies of care require supervising and university teachers to demonstrate an embodied praxis of compassion and empathy to pre-service teachers and show ourselves as human beings who can balance authenticity and care with rigor (Fattore, 2022). We do not need to separate the personal and the professional because we need to be both, as do teachers in schools. Our position is further supported by Fattore

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(2022) who suggests that embracing and enacting a pedagogy of care does not mean oversharing or crossing professional boundaries; rather, our students crave stories that humanize us and connect us to our shared and lived experiences of teaching and learning. Knowing each other as people and learners underpins and adds value to the collegial and pedagogic relationships between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers, and we believe this is integral to the school-university partnerships in our regional communities.

Action Research Kemmis (2009) describes action research as a process that shapes our understandings, practices, and the conditions under which we practice. Our action research project is located in regional South Australia, searching for the ‘sweet spot’ in which to situate the collegial and pedagogic relationships between pre-service, supervising, and university teachers to enhance the pre-service teachers’ final placement. We draw heavily on a pedagogy of care that Motta and Bennett (2018) describe as: (1) recognition, (2) dialogic relationality, and (3) affective and embodied praxis. We focus these elements directly upon the interpersonal relationships of pre-service, supervising, and university teachers through our action research cycle. Each element builds upon the one before it, deepening and strengthening the personal and pedagogic relationships. This is supported by Seary and Willans’ (2020) structural sequencing and elaboration of Motta and Bennett’s (2018) work where these three elements are required to ensure a caring learning environment. Similarly, Schratz’s (1992) exploration of action research as an on-going process of self-reflective enquiry, employed to improve our practice under critical reflection, aligns with our pedagogical challenge of locating the ‘sweet spot’ within the school-university partnership. Repositioning the triangulated relationship between the pre-service, supervising, and university teacher, viewed from the pre-service teacher’s perspective, led to our research question: How might a pedagogy of care transform regional school-university partnerships to enhance pre-service teachers’ final placement? Firstly, we wanted to understand how pre-service teachers’ previous placement experiences shaped their expectations and dispositions leading into their final preservice placement. Prior to their final school placement, seven pre-service teachers completed an online survey asking them to rate their satisfaction with the placement supervision they had received in the first three years of their four-year education degree. With those experiences in mind, the pre-service teachers were asked to provide advice about the support required from their supervising and university teachers for their final placements. It is important to note here that the scope and timeline of the action research project was not sufficient to include supervising teachers’ perspectives; we view this as a limitation of the project. Secondly, exploring how the quality of interpersonal and collegial relationships between pre-service teachers and supervising teachers impacted the final pre-service placement experience dives deeply into the emotion of the experience. We also

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wondered what the role of the university teacher could be in this process. During the pre-service teachers’ placement block of seven consecutive school weeks, semistructured interviews were conducted asking the seven pre-service teachers how they were feeling, to describe their highlights and challenges, and to articulate how the relationship with their supervising teacher was progressing. These interviews took place between the second and sixth weeks of the placement blocks. Because it was a regional experience, the pre-service teachers were located across multiple communities, from the lower mid-north of South Australia, all the way up and around the Spencer Gulf, down onto the lower Eyre Peninsula. The semi-structured interviews were conducted in a variety of modalities; face-to-face during placement visits, via video-conference software, over the phone, and via email or SMS when pre-service teachers had reflected on the semi-structured interview and wanted to add more detail to their responses. Finally, to better understand the relevance and importance of interpersonal relationships to pre-service teachers’ collegial and pedagogic development during their final pre-service placement, pre-service teachers shared their placement experiences during an on-campus debrief session and via journal entries kept throughout the action research project. This research was granted institutional ethics approval (Ethics application no.: 204315).

Prior to Placement—Recognition Care as recognition acknowledges students’ life experiences and insights into the learning environment (Motta & Bennett, 2018; Seary & Willans, 2020). The preservice teachers completed an online survey prior to their final placement, seeking to understand their level of satisfaction with the university teacher’s supervision of their previous pre-service placement experiences. For each previous year of their four-year degree, the pre-service teachers were asked to respond with strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree to the following statement: I was satisfied with the placement supervision I received from my university supervisor during my first year (2019), second year (2020), and third year (2021) placement (see Fig. 21.1). The graph shows the pre-service teachers’ satisfaction rating with previous placement experiences, and for most pre-service teachers, their first- and second-year experiences were less than positive. By their third-year placement, satisfaction ratings with the placement supervision provided by their university teacher were increasing. It is worth noting that in 2020 education experiences for everyone—children, young people, pre-service, supervising and university teachers—were impacted by COVID19. Teaching and learning online, working and learning from home, and using a hybrid of teaching platforms, are all factors that impacted upon teaching and learning relationships. While the quantitative responses showed that pre-service teachers were less satisfied with support received in previous placement experiences, the qualitative responses paint a picture of developmental feedback that was both specific and

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Fig. 21.1 Graph of pre-service teachers’ responses to online survey

supportive. In response to the text-based question, “What was the most useful feedback/support you were provided by your university teacher and/or supervising teacher on placement?” one pre-service teacher responded with the following: “Learning how to differentiate [and] support children with additional needs”. Another pre-service teacher identified classroom management strategies as the most useful: “Improv[ing] behaviour management [is] beneficial to understand specifics regarding the students’ needs, ability levels, triggers and issues that may arise”. And another focused on affirmative support from their supervising teacher as being the most beneficial saying: “Learning to trust myself and my support system.” Pre-service teachers’ responses acknowledge their understanding of the importance of their academic learning and how this can be directly connected to its application in practice during their final placement. It also highlights what it means to ‘cross the boundary’ from pre-service to beginning teacher. Of equal importance is the emerging development of an independent teacher identity and the confidence in developing collegial relationships that are seen from the pre-service teacher’s perspective as being reciprocated, collaborative, and non-hierarchical (Green et al., 2020) with a focus on pedagogic relationships (Walker & Gleaves, 2016). Collegial and pedagogical relationships are integral to a successful transition from preservice to beginning teacher. Drawing strength from their personal relationships which supports their own well-being as they embark on their final placement and building upon care as recognition (Motta & Bennett, 2018) to include pre-service teachers’ experiences of prior placements in shaping their advice to their supervising teachers in the lead up to their final placement, pre-service teachers shared: “Feedback on my planning process, how my lessons and units were put into practice,” and “Don’t just focus on the negative of my teaching, point out what I did really well”. Reflecting on the importance of immediate, constructive, and developmental feedback during placement, one pre-service teacher responded: “Having someone

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watch me teach and provide extensive feedback helped me understand my teaching abilities; consistent debriefing conversations after lessons—how can I improve?”. In addition, advice from pre-service teachers to their university teacher highlights the importance of locating the triangulated relationship between pre-service, supervising, and university teacher within the geographically and conceptually aligned ‘sweet spot’ of every school-university partnership. Pre-service teachers’ recommendations included: “Better communication and more connections with the schools,” and “Constant check ins and not just speak to us on the day they visit”. The strong emphasis on in person visits was supported by all pre-service teachers, with one adding: “Maintaining contact, continual check ins and be[ing] willing to have random de-briefs on how my GTPA is going”. The importance of collegial and pedagogic relationships between the pre-service, supervising, and university teacher is highlighted by this pre-service teacher: “University supervisor witnessing my teaching [and] speaking with my supervising teacher was majorly beneficial”. In the weeks leading up to their final pre-service placement, pre-service teachers attended on-campus classes focusing on the key elements of the Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment (GTPA). These sessions focused on planning and using data, teaching and learning, assessing, feedback and professional judgement, reflection on teaching, and appraising impact of teaching. The GTPA is an “authentic summative assessment completed during a final-year professional experience placement … linking practice and theory so that practice itself becomes the subject of critical inquiry within disciplinary specialisations” (Institute for Learning Sciences & Teacher Education, 2022, p. 3). The pre-service teachers’ reflections and recommendations about how the GTPA and course content aligned with and prepared them for their final pre-service placement are insightful: “Theory (which is needed) but more guidance on how theory LOOKS in school environment,” and “More guidance on how schools actually work”. Pre-service teachers further reflected: “Focus more on how theory translates to the classroom—course content doesn’t take into consideration the regional experience”. Another pre-service teacher said: During my third-year placement I worried a lot about my ability to teach and my university teacher provided me comfort by reminding me that I have spent three years preparing to teach and I just have to get in and do it. You learn the most by doing.

To summarise the online survey data: pre-service teachers clearly stated the feedback and support that was most useful to them on their previous placements was inextricably linked to the interpersonal communication and collegial relationships they had with their supervising teacher, and this was further supported by the in-person visits from their university teacher. In addition, the advice they gave to improve or enhance their upcoming pre-service placement experience were congruent with what was most beneficial: better communication, interpersonal and collegial connections, in-person visits by their university teacher, and course content and learning that connected theory and practice.

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During Placement—Dialogic Relationality Care as dialogic relationality acknowledges that emotion is central to learning (Motta & Bennett, 2018; Seary & Willans, 2020); and “[p]racticing love and care in our classrooms and relations with others is a life learning process” (Flores & Alfaro, 2022, p. 393). Walker and Gleaves (2016) support this position, describing this positive and enabling learning as “the active fostering of and maintenance of pedagogic relationships above all else” (p. 1). During the pre-service teachers’ final placement, the university teacher reflected: What really keeps me awake at night is thinking about the pressures and demands placed on our final year pre-service teachers as students and individuals with lives and commitments outside of university; and how, to a large degree, the success of their final placement hinges on the quality of the pedagogic relationships between the pre-service teachers and supervising teachers, school sites, and the connections with the university teacher.

As the pre-service teachers immersed themselves in their final placement experiences, they identified how specific, clear, and constructive feedback provided in-situ by their supervising and university teachers enhanced the collegial relationship and pedagogic learning. During the pre-service teachers’ placement, they were asked several semi-structured interview questions, such as: How are you feeling about placement so far? What have been the highlights? What have been the challenges? Pre-service teachers shared: “Every afternoon we sit down and reflect verbally and it’s positive and constructive,” and “I’m having the time of my life … rough but it feels good”. Reflecting on feedback received: “[It’s] written and verbal, sometimes after the lesson, at recess time, a summary and then follow up later,” and “[I’m more] confident in my ability to teach, relieved and proud that I’ve overcome challenges”. Another pre-service teacher admitted, “I lost confidence for a while, my supervising teacher suggested I go back and focus on relationships—it worked!”. And at the other end of the relationship and feedback spectrum, pre-service teachers highlighted the impact of challenges with interpersonal relationships and communication, reflecting: “Sometimes I take it [feedback] badly—it’s hard hearing it and I feel annoyed,” and from another “[I feel] stressed, multiple pressures, worried about how [teaching] my [GTPA] unit will go, it’s a big thing and I’m in charge of everything”. A pre-service teacher commented that [I’m] not [receiving] a lot of feedback and [it’s] hard to build a relationship; [I’m] very different from my supervising teacher in personality and style. I don’t want to come down on the children like a tonne of bricks like she says I should.

Other pre-service teachers shared: “Maths concepts are more complex, [I’m] second guessing myself and not being confident even though I know I can teach it”. When relationships between pre-service and supervising teachers are not established it has a significant impact on the placement experience: “[I] rare[ly receive] verbal feedback [and it] is not constructive and written feedback is not shared in a timely manner. [T]he multifaceted role of supervising teacher means I’m not a priority”.

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A pedagogy of care is integral to successful interpersonal and collegial relationships between pre-service and supervising teachers, within and beyond the classroom (Motta & Bennett, 2018; Seary & Willans, 2020). When this does not occur, as described above by the pre-service teachers, it has a significant and detrimental impact. While pre-service teachers mostly talked about how relationships and collegiality with their supervising teachers enhanced their final placement experiences, it was not without challenges. These challenges are connected to interpersonal communication and relationships, and the pre-service teachers’ developing confidence as practitioners. Reflecting upon the semi-structured interviews with the pre-service teachers, the university teacher reflected: While I’d love to say it was the highlights that featured during our semi-structured interviews – that was not the case. The challenges dominated our conversations, and almost all communication I had with students during their final placement related to relationship and communication challenges and the [mis]alignment of pedagogical beliefs and practice as the students began to develop and enact their professional personas. They did not need or want me to ‘fix or intervene’ in their challenge – they just needed me to listen.

To summarise the semi-structured interviews: teachers—pre-service, supervising, university, beginning, or otherwise—are relational beings. Locating the ‘sweet spot’ in school-university partnerships, where interpersonal and collegial relationships can foster and grow, requires effort and a shared commitment by all. Seary and Willans (2020) articulate this clearly: To build a positive student/teacher relationship, the educator needs to take an interest in their students as individuals and exhibit behaviours that indicate they care about them as people, not just as learners. They need to ensure each learner in their learning community feels connected, appreciated, accepted and integral to the community. (p. 15)

After Placement—Affective and Embodied Praxis Care as affective and embodied praxis takes time; people need to feel safe, welcome, and know that they belong (Motta & Bennett, 2018; Seary & Willans, 2020). This sense of belonging, of being seen and accepted as a “co-teach[er] offers community and collaboration that can sustain the holistic well-being” (Banda & Reyes, 2022, p. 2) of pre-service, supervising, and university teachers. Reflecting on the experience, the university teacher says: Our debrief day was a highlight for me! The students shared poignant moments from their placement experience, their successes, favourite anecdotes, and their confidence as beginning teachers was a joy and a privilege to see and hear. Their responses can be captured in three main themes, reflecting the ebb and flow of this action research project: relationships, collegiality, and the joy and challenges of being a teacher.

The reflections of the pre-service teachers, captured during our final class on campus, epitomise the essence of a pedagogy of care (Motta & Bennett, 2018). In our shared experiences, the challenges and highlights of interpersonal, collegial,

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and pedagogical relationships are as important to the supervising and university teachers as they are to the pre-service teachers, and the children they teach. This is evident in the pre-service teachers’ reflections following placement: “Relationships with the children and staff and [the] collegiality of my supervising teacher—it’s like I’m already a teacher,” and from another “Team teaching, and a sense of community, nurturing, I love it!” Pre-service teachers also reflected deeply on relationships developed with their students: “[The children] really respect and trust you and want to tell you everything—what you actually get to know about the children as a teacher can be shocking!” and “Children’s resilience is amazing; the experiences of their lives can be distressing”. The curriculum and pedagogy also featured in pre-service teachers’ reflections: “Seeing the children learn and apply the things I taught them; seeing an idea I’ve had in my head come to life in the classroom”. This action research project, and the preservice teachers’ final placement of forty school days within it, captures the final few months of our time together as a small group of regional pre-service teachers and a university teacher. The experience is best captured by one pre-service teachers’ reflection following the university teacher’s placement visit: “We were so excited when you came to see us—and sharing this with the children”. It is also important to acknowledge the work and commitment of the supervising teachers in schools across the regions who enabled and supported these preservice placements. These supervising teachers were significant contributors to the successful outcomes of and for the pre-service teachers. As we acknowledged earlier, these supervising teachers’ voices and reflections of their experiences are not explicitly captured in the action research project, and we reflect upon that as a significant limitation. Embracing a pedagogy of care (Motta & Bennett, 2018), and borrowing from Pollard (1985), we immersed ourselves in the role of participant-observer; perfectly describing our very close and empathic identification as subjects of the research. The articulation of our experiences and reflections paints a picture of both personal and professional connections within our regional communities as we sought to understand the relevance of our interpersonal relationships and collegial and pedagogic experiences (Burton & Johnson, 2010). What led us to this point and continued to drive us every day for the duration of the action research project is best described by Walker and Gleaves (2016) as interpersonal and professional relationships comprising of two main pedagogic elements: the active fostering of and maintenance of pedagogic relationships above all else, and within these, the privileging of trust, acceptance, diligence, and individual attentiveness. This is where we live and work, across the regional communities of South Australia.

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Conclusion—Implications for Future Practice This action research project has been the first step in a much bigger journey and was not without its limitations. Like the time and focus required to travel the long distances between the regional communities in which we live and work, locating the ‘sweet spot’ within these geographically diverse communities is a nuanced and locationally specific task. Building interpersonal and collegial relationships requires time and shared commitment. On their own, these relationships are not enough to build effective and sustainable school-university partnerships. These require what Motta and Bennett (2018) describe as an ‘affective turn’ to critically consider pedagogy both in our locationally specific context and how this is located within the broader and wholistic sense of education as a relational dynamic. The limitations noted in our action research project go to the heart of the challenges we face. Our semi-structured interviews did not capture every pre-service teacher’s perspective and were difficult to schedule across broad geographic distances. Our regional South Australian communities are locationally and conceptually diverse; what works in one might not be suitable or even appropriate in another. We also found that we were not able to gather and reflect the supervising teachers’ perspective to accurately portray the importance of their position within and beyond the triangulated pedagogic relationships explored in our action research. This is a significant limitation; teachers’ voices must be heard. Establishing and fostering locationally specific school-university partnerships with school sites across geographically diverse regions take time to develop and foster, the relationships that underpin them are impacted by staff changeover in regional areas, and while this is not a new or recent phenomenon, the rapidly increasing teacher shortage in regional areas adds to the complexity of this. In conclusion, we draw upon the seminal work of Zeichner (2010), still highly relevant and pressing more than a decade on, to inform our next steps. We propose embracing a pedagogy of care (Motta & Bennett, 2018) that supports and fosters genuine, reciprocated, and non-hierarchical relationships (Green et al., 2020) with and for our pre-service and newly graduated regional teachers. Following Zeichner’s (2010) lead, we will drive a shift in the epistemology of teacher education from a situation where academic knowledge is seen as the authoritative source of knowledge about teaching to one where different aspects of expertise that exist in schools and communities are brought into teacher education and coexist on a more equal plane with academic knowledge. (p. 95)

In doing so, we aim to firmly locate the needs of regional schools, communities, and the families and students within them in the ‘sweet spot’ (Bier et al., 2012).

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References Banda, R. M. & Reyes, G. (2022). Caring for students by caring for ourselves first: Comadre coteaching during times of crisis. Teaching in Higher Education, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13562517.2022.2103668 Bernay, R., Stringer, P., Milne, J., & Jhagroo, J. (2020). Three models of effective school-university partnerships. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 55, 133–148. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s40841-020-00171-3 Bier, M. L., Horn, I., Campbell, S. S., Kazemi, E., Hintz, A., Kelley-Petersen, M., Stevens, R., Saxena, A., & Peck, C. (2012). Designs for simultaneous renewal in university-public school partnerships: Hitting the “Sweet Spot”. Teacher Education Quarterly, 39(3), 127–141. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/23479686 Burton, M. & Johnson, S.A. (2010). “Where else would we teach?”: Portraits of two teachers in the rural south. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(4), 376–386. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1177/0022487110372362 Chandler, P.T. & Barron, L. (Eds.) (2021). Rethinking school-university partnerships: A new way forward. IAP. Fattore, C. (2022). Creating rapport in online classes through a pedagogy of care and authenticity. Journal of Political Science Education, 18(4), 624–634. https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2022. 2115920 Flores, J., & Alfaro, A. R. (2022). Critical pedagogy: Loving and caring within and beyond the classroom. Curriculum Inquiry, 52(3), 385–396. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2022.207 2665 Green, C. A., Tindall-Ford, S. K., & Eady, M. J. (2020). School-university partnerships in Australia: A systematic literature review. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 48(4), 403–435. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2019.1651822 Institute for Learning Sciences & Teacher Education (2022). Graduate teacher performance assessment: Preservice teacher booklet. Australian Catholic University. Kemmis, S. (2009). Action research as a practice-based practice. Educational Action Research, 17(3), 463–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790903093284 Manton, C., Heffernan, T., Kostogriz, A., & Seddon, T. (2021). Australian school-university partnerships: The (Dis)integrated work of teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 49(3), 334–346. Motta, S. C., & Bennett, A. (2018). Pedagogies of care, care-full epistemological practice and ‘other’ caring subjectivities in enabling education. Teaching in Higher Education, 23(5), 631–646. Pollard, A. (1985). Opportunities and difficulties of a teacher-ethnographer: A personal account. In R.G. Burgess (Ed.), Field methods in the study of education. The Falmer Press. Putman, S. M., Polly, D., & Fitzgerald, M. (2022). Innovative school-university partnerships: Insights and understandings from a year-long internship. PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice, 17(1), 31–37. Schratz, M. (1992). Researching while teaching: An action research approach in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 17(1), 81–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079212331382786 Seary, K., & Willans, J. (2020). Pastoral care and the caring teacher-value adding to enabling education. Student Success, 11(1), 12–22. Stahl, G., Brock, C., Sharplin, E., Caldwell, D., Young, J. & Boyd, F. (2022). “Because the rules out there are different…”: A case study of pre-service teachers’ experiences in remote Australian Indigenous education. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/021 88791.2022.2071213 Sterrett, W. L., Pohlman, K., Hill-Black, S., Lewis, S., Jennings, L., Hebert, J., Sidbury, K., Horgan, A., Sukhera, S., Norvell, J., Brooks, A., Conti, J., & Williams, J. (2022). Learning and leadership through sustainability education: school-university partnerships supporting collaboration and student voice. PDS Partners: Bridging Research to Practice, 17(2), 50–66.

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Walker, C., & Gleaves, A. (2016). Constructing the caring higher education teacher: A theoretical framework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 54, 65–76. Wang, L., Kimura, Y., & Yurita, M. (2022). One Step Further: Advancing lesson study practice through collaborative inquiry school-university partnerships. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 42(1), 124–137. Zeichner, K. (2010). University based teacher education: Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college-and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 89–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347671

Sharron L. Jones is an experienced teacher and school leader, now tertiary educator and early career researcher. She is a Lecturer and Regional Education Coordinator at the University of South Australia’s Whyalla Campus where she relishes the opportunity to actively engage with pre-service teachers, school sites, and the broader community. Sharron completed her Master of Teaching at Flinders University, exploring the impact of racism on Aboriginal children’s school and community life. She is motivated and inspired by living and working in regional communities. Madeline A. Foran is an early career teacher and researcher. She is a classroom teacher at Samaritan College, Saint Teresa’s Campus in Whyalla, South Australia where she embraces strong and reciprocated relationships with her students. Madeline actively engages with collegial collaboration to further develop her skills, knowledge and understandings as an early career teacher. She highly values the opportunity to engage in the research process.

Chapter 22

The Role of the School Leader in Professional Experience School–University Partnership Models Jennifer Clifton

and Kathy Jordan

Introduction In recent years there has been an increased call for the development of school–university partnerships by policymakers, school communities, and researchers (Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG), 2015). This increase has correlated with criticism of the quality of initial teacher education (ITE) programs and concern about graduates’ preparedness to teach (Ure et al., 2017). For example, the Top of the Class report (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education & Vocational Training, 2007) and the Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers report (TEMAG, 2015) both recommend school–university partnerships to improve ITE programs. More recently, the Australian Government’s (2022) Next Steps: Report of the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review (QITE) advocated that “innovative solutions and partnerships between higher education providers and schools should be supported” (p. 55). Within Australia, these reports led to national accreditation standards and procedures, requiring providers to form enduring partnerships with schools. Formal written partnerships for every professional experience school/site are now mandated as part of the ITE accreditation process (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), 2015). Partnerships must specify the components of placements, planned experiences, as well as identified roles and responsibilities for both parties. Some formal partnership examples include the Teacher Education Centre of Excellence (TECE) in Queensland (Willis et al., 2012) and the Teaching Academy of Professional Practice in Victoria (TAPP) (Gutierrez & Nailer, 2021; Kertesz & Downing, 2016). J. Clifton (B) Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia e-mail: [email protected] K. Jordan RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_22

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This advocation of school-university partnerships is not unique to the Australian context. For example, all ITE providers in Finland are linked to schools to support pre-service teachers in gaining classroom teaching practice (Sahlberg, 2012). In the United States, residency models (Klein et al., 2013) and Professional Development Schools (Garin & Burns, 2020; Hunzicker, 2019) have been developed to support pre-service teachers to become part of the school community. Professional experience, also known as practicum, placement, or field experience, is a highly valued component of ITE programs and is influential in the development of teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2006, 2010; Le Cornu, 2015; White & Forgasz, 2016). It is often seen as a genuine place to address the concerns about the theory/ practice divide raised by policy, communities, and researchers, as pre-service teachers gain valuable practical experience teaching in schools and are provided with the opportunity to learn and practise teachers’ work. To date, research has tended to focus on the roles and responsibilities of preservice teachers (Gutierrez & Nailer, 2021), mentor/supervising teachers (Allen et al., 2013), and the university liaison (Manton et al., 2021). While being recognised as instrumental in forming and sustaining school–university partnerships, the school leader’s role has been underrepresented in the research (Le Cornu, 2012; Nettleton & Barnett, 2016). Aligned with the growth of partnership models in professional experience, there has been increased research interest in hybrid and boundary-spanner roles performed by those interacting across different sites such as schools and the university (Clifton & Jordan, 2019; White, 2019). The school leader has been underrepresented in the research (Le Cornu, 2012; Nettleton & Barnett, 2016). However, the school leader is instrumental in forming and sustaining formal school–university partnerships in professional experience, as they are often essential to the partnership’s implementation, development, and sustainability. This chapter addresses the following research question: What is the role of the school leader in the implementation and sustainability of school–university partnerships? This chapter draws upon interviews with two school leaders (deputy principals) to learn more about how they defined partnerships, their reasons for forming and remaining in school–university partnerships, their role, and the enablers and barriers of school–university partnerships.

The School Leader in Professional Experience Partnerships This research is influenced by three related fields: (1) professional experience, (2) school–university partnerships, and (3) school leaders. This literature review considers these areas in relation to the research and policy directions.

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The Role of Professional Experience Professional experience provides pre-service teachers opportunities to apply theoretical knowledge, be mentored into the profession, and create new knowledge (Le Cornu, 2015; White & Forgasz, 2016; Zeichner, 2010). It plays an important role in supporting pre-service teachers’ development, including making theory/practice connections and learning in context (Curtis et al., 2019; Ell et al., 2017). Many pre-service teachers argue that it has the most significant impact on their learning to teach (Adoniou, 2013; Hastings, 2010; Le Cornu, 2015). Despite its importance, how professional experience should be designed and implemented, and its relationship to university coursework, is highly contested and often the subject of critique and calls for change (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education & Vocational Training, 2007). Significant national reports and reviews in countries such as the United States (e.g., the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) Teacher Prep Review, Greenberg et al., 2013), and the United Kingdom Ofsted reports (Wood, 2019) have identified professional experience as crucial to the effectiveness of ITE programs and preparing classroom-ready teachers. While the focus of these reports varies, professional experience is consistently identified as problematic, particularly in relation to a perceived disconnect between theory and practice. The three most recent Australian reports on ITE programs share similar sentiments. In chronological order, the Top of the Class report (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education & Vocational Training, 2007) argued that professional experience was a long-standing concern: The problems with practicum have been outlined in nearly every report addressing teacher education in the last decade. The fact that these problems have still drawn so much attention in this inquiry indicates the need for major reform in this area, involving all players and all aspects of the system. (p. 73)

The Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers report (TEMAG, 2015) called for quality, accountability, and integration of professional experience with the theoretical component of the university. The more recent Next Steps: Report of the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review (Australian Government, 2022) asserted that ITE should not just “facilitate professional experience” but also “bridge the gap between theory and practice and connect teachers and academic staff in a meaningful way” (p. 59). This concern around the theory–practice divide in ITE is often raised in the research (Grossman et al., 2009; Grudnoff et al., 2016). As Allen and Wright (2014) suggest, professional experience is where this tension between theory and practice is played out. School–university partnerships are often advocated as a solution or a means to attend to the issues related to the theory–practice divide in ITE (Clifton & Jordan, 2022; Green et al., 2020; White et al., 2018).

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The Role of School–University Partnerships Following the Top of the Class report (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education & Vocational Training, 2007) and the subsequent development of national accreditation in Australia through TEMAG reforms, the school–university partnership space shifted. As the AITSL commissioned report commented, the “TEMAG reforms have lifted partnerships to a pivotal role in all ITE. They are now integral not only to the professional experience element of courses but also in course design, assessment of readiness to teach, and evaluation of impact” (TEMAG, 2018, p. 4). The emphasis on partnerships in the literature and national accreditation mandates has increased advocacy for system level partnerships. The school–university partnerships documented in the literature vary in size, scope, length, commitment and involvement, degree of integration of the school and university contexts, and focus. As Davis and Sumara (2012) declared, “there is no one-size-fits-all (or even one-sizefits-most) model” (p. 39). Nettleton and Barnett (2016) highlight that school–university partnerships often “reflect the social–historical context of the university and community” (p. 21) and therefore vary. Indeed, there is evidence in the literature of a multitude of partnerships, from system-level school–university-system partnerships (Winslade et al., 2020), school–university partnerships (Young, 2020), to bespoke school–university partnerships targeting a specific area of need such as teaching area (e.g., science education (Jones et al., 2016)) or educational system need (e.g., rural professional experience (White et al., 2018)). The literature to date demonstrates that school–university partnerships have tended to be limited to pockets of change and disruption rather than systematic shifts, which in part has been influenced by the complexity and challenges of such relationships. Partnerships rely on the goodwill of all partners and individual teacher educators, school leaders, and teachers, and this may shift over time (Grudnoff et al., 2016; Le Cornu, 2015). There are also challenges, including a clash of priorities among partners (Bloomfield & Nguyen, 2015), different research agendas (Walsh & Backe, 2013), accreditation standards (Bloomfield & Nguyen, 2015), and perceived theory and practice divide (Allen & Wright, 2014). The partnership space can also be undervalued, with teacher educators needing to legitimise their work and the value of the partnership (Clifton & Jordan, 2019; Gutierrez et al., 2019). There is also considerable literature that documents the characteristics of effective school–university partnerships (Arnold et al., 2013; Elsden-Clifton et al., 2016; Forgasz et al., 2018; Maheady et al., 2016). Kruger et al. (2009) argue that successful partnerships are “characterised by trust, mutuality, and reciprocity among pre-service teachers, teachers, and other school colleagues and teacher educators” (p. 10). Walsh and Backe (2013) also suggested that sound operational strategies and evaluation were important. The influence of funding on the success of school–university partnerships was mixed. Some argue that funding was unnecessary (Green et al., 2020) and could impact the authenticity of the partnership. Others claimed that funding demonstrated commitment and supported the sustainability of the partnership (Walsh &

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Backe, 2013). There are concerns that school–university partnerships are often positioned as simple endeavours and fail to account for the complexity of change, time, effort, and the ongoing commitment of partners and stakeholders (Kamler et al., 2009; Lemon et al., 2018; Lowery et al., 2018). Given these differences, it is difficult to define the field and the various roles and responsibilities of those involved, as well as provide clear and accurate comparisons and draw from an agreed set of industry standards that capture the complexity of the intersection of school–university partnership and professional experience. In response to the complexity and recognition of their importance in partnerships, hybrid teacher educators (Clifton & Jordan, 2019; Martin et al., 2011) or school– university boundary-crossing roles (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) have increased. In simple terms, hybrid teacher educators work across the boundaries of schools and universities to provide a connection between theory and practice. Burns and Baker (2016) described hybrid roles as the ‘heartbeat’ in partnerships, and Andreasen (2023) claims they are vital in establishing authentic relationships. Goldring and Sims (2005) identified that they are instrumental in developing trust, supporting cross-institutional collaboration, facilitating channels of communication, and ensuring “turf wars never emerged” (p. 245). However, the challenges and complexity of this role have also been documented (Akkerman & Bruining, 2016; Burns & Baker, 2016; Williams & Berry, 2016). For example, Martin et al. (2011) describe the hybrid teacher educator as being in a “web of relationships”, and Korthagen et al. (2006) argue that this role is complex as they are required to consider competing perspectives. However, there is an acknowledgement that this role also involves intensive emotional work, including negotiating conflicts and tensions and navigating the difficulties of not belonging in either space of universities or schools (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Clifton & Jordan, 2019; Flynn et al., 2016).

The Role of the School Leader School leaders, principals, assistant principals, and others in senior roles in schools play an important role in professional experience (Le Cornu, 2015; Montecinos et al., 2015). Le Cornu (2012), however, claims the school leader in professional experience partnerships is under-theorised, and Nettleton and Barnett (2016) argue that their contributions are “often unnoticed or disregarded” and “often dismissed as an extra in the partnership” (p. 27). Rather they argue that school leaders such as the principal are “the lynchpin of the partnership” (p. 27). The literature highlights that school leaders establish the professional boundaries of the partnerships and that when the “principal supports the partnership, it becomes a priority” (Nettleton & Barnett, 2016, p. 27). Green’s (2021) research investigating school leaders’ motivation for involvement in school–university partnerships identified that school leaders are interested in partnering to improve the teaching profession.

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The research highlights the multitude of (and often complex and hidden) roles and responsibilities the school leader may undertake in forming and maintaining partnerships. These may include (but are not limited to): being responsible for networking and seeking out partnership opportunities (Green, 2021); setting the tone, promoting the partnership, and nurturing the relationship (Le Cornu & Peters, 2009); establishing expectations and determining the level of commitment (Grudnoff et al., 2016); governing access to personnel and resources (Lowery et al., 2018); providing philosophical and financial support (Elsden-Clifton et al., 2016); negotiating difficulties and terminating partnerships arrangements (Teitel, 1998); and being open to new ways of working, taking risks, and supporting local and systematic change (Zeichner et al., 2015). Given their importance, this research explores the school leaders’ role and place within school–university professional experience partnerships as part of the RMIT Teaching Academy of Professional Practice (TAPP) professional experience model.

The RMIT Teaching Academy The school–university professional experience partnership this chapter discusses has been reported elsewhere (Clifton & Jordan, 2019, 2022; Elsden-Clifton et al., 2016; Sulistiyo et al., 2022). The Victorian Government developed the Teaching Academies of Professional Practice (TAPP) initiative for the purpose of improving ITE. The RMIT Teaching Academy of Professional Practice involved a partnership with 12 primary schools in the northern corridor of Melbourne. Partner schools hosted small groups of pre-service teachers (around 3–18) and released a teaching staff member to be the school-based coach (appointed by the school leader) who taught part of the course Professional Experience: Connected Classrooms on site, localising course content to the school context. The model involved all secondyear Bachelor of Education (Primary, Early Childhood, Special Needs) pre-service teachers who also undertook a 20-day placement in partner schools. This school–university partnership focused on pre-service teachers setting individual goals and designing lesson sequences emphasising using ICT in practice. While on placement, each pre-service teacher had a teacher mentor who hosted the pre-service teachers in their classroom and performed a supervisory role. They were also supported by a school-based coach, a hybrid teacher educator role designed to support the partnership. The school-based coach was a practising teacher employed by the school who coached pre-service teachers to review and modify their goals based on the specific school and classroom context. In this reconceptualised professional experience model, the school leader was the key person initially approached to join the partnership. They were instrumental in co-designing the partnership, explaining the model to their staff, and appointing resources and personnel. At the time of the research, this partnership had operated for

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four years. The roles, responsibilities, expectations, and processes had been established and refined, so it was timely to research school leaders’ expectations and experiences of the partnership.

Research Methods This research forms part of a larger multi-faceted research project around the RMIT Teaching Academy of Professional Practice (TAPP). Over 12 months, semistructured interviews were held with various stakeholders. This chapter reports on the school leader’s role and is based on interviews with two deputy principals from two different primary schools. It addresses the main research question: What is the role of the school leader in implementing and sustaining school–university partnerships? Each interview was semi-structured, with questions and prompts rephrased where necessary, and further questions asked as judged relevant at the time. A sample of the interview questions includes: 1. How do you define school–university partnerships? 2. Why did you become involved in school–university professional experience partnerships? 3. How do you define the roles and responsibilities of those involved in school– university partnerships? 4. What, if any, were your concerns or aspects you found challenging as part of being involved in a school–university partnership? 5. What were the benefits and enabling factors that supported the sustainability of the partnership? Transcripts were generated and reviewed, checking for accuracy. Pseudonyms were assigned to ensure the anonymity of participants. Transcripts were then reread, and key themes were identified and later used as a framework or scaffold for discussion (Merriam, 1988). The two deputy principals, Dianne and Veronica, had a strong relationship with the university. Both had provided staff for guest lectures, served on industry-university panels, and been involved in accreditation processes. Both had also been closely involved in the professional experience program, placing several pre-service teachers in their schools each year. At the time of the interview, Dianne and Veronica had been active in the RMIT TAPP for four years.

Findings After analysis of the interviews, three themes emerged: (1) school leaders’ conceptualisation of school–university professional experience partnerships, (2) the roles and responsibilities of a school leader in a school–university partnership, and (3)

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perceived enablers and barriers of school–university partnerships identified by school leaders.

Conceptualising School–University Partnerships When asked to describe the key characteristics of a school–university partnership, both leaders spoke about the importance of trust. Veronica, for example, commented that it was important that she trusted the university to respond to her concerns, communications, and needs. As she described it, “I have to trust the university that when I say, you know what, we’ve got a problem here, someone will come and help us”. The two leaders commented that without trust, or if the trust was broken, the partnership itself was jeopardised. Both leaders also commented that a shared commitment to the partnership was needed and that they would question the viability of the partnership if it was absent. As Veronica explained, “There’s got to be a commitment, absolute commitment. It’s no use having a commitment on one side of the partnership if it is not on the other”. Mutual benefits were also seen as important, with Dianne commenting, “there is always going to be some give and take. But you have to know that there’s a win– win. Yeah, sometimes you might lose, but long term, you’re going to win. That’s the bottom line. That’s really important”. Of note, both school leaders discussed their existing relationship with the university and appreciated the opportunity to strengthen the relationship and improve professional experience. Veronica noted that the partnership was a “natural progression” from the existing relationship. Her reasoning for her involvement with university was, “I’ve always believed that the closer you are with the university, the more input you have into working with pre-service teachers, the better teachers you get and, therefore, the better student learning outcomes.” Dianne commented similarly, We were already involved with the university, so when [the university teacher educator] first came out and had conversations, it just sounded like something we were willing and interested in, particularly with the knowledge that there would be a lot more contact with the university – just seemed a much better way to go in terms of pre-service teacher program.

However, their reasoning for remaining in the partnership shifted as they noticed the positive impact on their teachers. Veronica focused on how the school-based coach appointment helped her to identify and build middle management in her school. As she said, Coaching is such an important aspect of getting the best out of people. If we could get some coaching skills developed in some of the staff and then pass it on, we could then identify which of the coaches have the greatest potential and allow them to take on other responsibilities in the school.

Veronica also noticed the development of skills of her school-based coach, which had benefits for the coach and the school,

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I think it’s allowed [the school-based coach] to develop and think. It allowed her to see beyond her classroom and expand; the first opportunity she had to do that was through coaching. So, yeah, selfishly, that was a great thing for the school.

Dianne noticed that the model, with an emphasis and requirement that ICT be utilised, helped build her staff’s ICT competence. She commented, “That was a good thing because [the mentor teachers] couldn’t avoid using the technology. Technology had to be part of whatever they were doing, so it really pushed them that way”. As she went on to elaborate, I guess it also dragged along some teachers that were lagging in the technology realm, so if I placed a student with a teacher, a mentor teacher who was probably struggling a little bit with technology, it gave them the impetus to improve because they had to mentor someone and encourage them to embed technology.

The Role of the School Leaders in School–University Partnerships Dianne described her role in the partnership as “it’s up to us [school leaders] to open our doors”. Veronica saw her role as “driving” and promoting the initiative in the school to encourage involvement. As she said, It is my remit to embed [the partnership model] in school culture, so people understand it. But if you can link it to student learning outcomes and everything in this school is about the children, then the teachers are happy, accept it, and embrace it.

Both school leaders saw their role as a conduit between the school and the university. Dianne described the hybrid role she felt she occupied, which included “having meetings with [the university-based teacher educator], attending professional development often at the university, attending events”. She also felt that her role involved developing relationships with key university personnel, as she commented, I’ve got to know [the university-based teacher educator] over these last three or four or five years. To develop that relationship and be able to talk to them about lots of things, it just makes it more personal. They’re not just a faceless academic. I know them.

Veronica noted that these hybrid opportunities also allowed her to grow professionally, I’ve just looked upon it as something else that allows me to be involved and find out more and learn from others like the university and other schools. So, it’s exciting for me to get out and find out other things. This was another way for me to go and find out, well, what’s happening; not just around our area, but across the whole of the state and what’s happening at other universities. Yeah, so in that way, for me, it’s been a great opportunity to grow.

When implementing the partnership model, Veronica and Dianne described having a key role in selecting who was involved. Veronica commented that she thought the school-based coach was important in supporting the pre-service teacher learning and providing valuable leadership to the school and took an “active role

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in coach selection”. Dianne similarly commented that she was now selective when allocating the school-based coach: I looked at people who hadn’t been given an opportunity to grow and thought, well, here’s an opportunity, this is their chance; they can either take it and fly, but if they take it and mark time, or drop backwards, they won’t be asked to do the coaching again, or other leadership roles.

Both leaders spoke about ensuring the school-based coach they selected had the required skillset, for example, “being able to work with people and not give them all the answers and ask them questions” (Veronica). Dianne was also mindful to ensure the school-based coach had adequate experience to work with their colleagues: I can think of a few staff members here, but they’re the youngest. I don’t think it’s fair for them at this point in their career to suddenly ask them to take on this role as they’ll be working with people who have a lot of knowledge and know their craft.

The careful selection of personnel also extended to the choice of teacher mentors. Veronica spoke about how she took this role more seriously in the partnership than previously as a school coordinator. As she commented, I’ve got very discerning now. Once, I used to say, ‘Is anybody interested in mentoring?’ I’ve become a bit more discerning, and I will speak to people and say, look, we need somebody for the RMIT Academy, so I now match PST [pre-service teacher] needs and skills to mentors.

The school leader also saw their role as evaluating the effectiveness of the partnership and determining if it was meeting their school’s needs; if not, they felt their role would be to seek change or dissolve the partnership. Dianne explained how her judgement would influence the continuation of the partnership, If I felt that the university wasn’t supporting the school, I’d have serious doubts about continuing it. If I had a bad year with my mentor-teachers not happy and the support lacking from the university, then I’d rethink and go, this isn’t working. We need to change.

As highlighted by Veronica, she also felt that her role as a school leader was about evolving with and working on the partnership. She commented, “to maintain any partnership, you’ve got to grow together. If you don’t grow together, you grow apart, and then it falls apart”.

Enablers and Barriers of School–University Partnerships The school leaders identified several enablers and barriers in forming and sustaining the partnership.

School-Based Coach Both Veronica and Dianne identified the importance of the hybrid role. One leader noted that the coach “supported the pre-service teachers and gave them what they

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need” (Veronica). Dianne claimed that the school-based coach was “actually the conduit. They joined the university to the school”. Veronica also felt they alleviated some of the administrative and emotional burdens of professional experience: I used to have to carry all the placements, but that is just one of my jobs. I now work more in partnership with the coaches; rather than always on me, they’ll chat and run it past me if there are any concerns. They take responsibility, and that’s a great thing too, to see people empowered to take it on and run with it.

Greater Connection to the University and Support of Professional Experience in the School Both leaders commented that a motivating factor for joining the partnership was that it would foster more contact with the university generally, and specifically when pre-service teachers are completing professional experience. Veronica commented, “I believe that the university and us, we need to be, be a unit when students are on placement, and I think that this has probably helped us become more of a unit”, and “We see them [the university] as part of us and part of our community”. Dianne noted that this resulted in a more productive professional experience. As she explained: Universities ask you to take their students but not send anyone out to see them throughout the placement, or they’d ring up, and it’ll be a conversation over the phone rather than coming. This model meant that the university had a stronger role.

Funding Funding was seen as an enabler by both leaders as it ensured adequate resourcing and “incentivised joining” (Dianne). As noted by Veronica, “That old saying, ‘put your money where your mouth is’. So, the funding showed that there was support and provided a sense of seriousness. You think, well yeah, there is something; it’s serious, so it’s worth pursuing”.

Sustainability The school leaders outlined several barriers or concerns related to sustainability and long-term partnership aspirations. Dianne expressed a concern about finding appropriate school-based coaches with adequate skills and experience each year. Veronica was concerned about the project’s sustainability and worried it could “fizz out”. As she expands, Should the partnership have a use-by date? I don’t think so, but like everything, we need to be open to change. You’ve made me think, well, what do we need to do to adapt to make it meet our needs? We haven’t really talked about it, to be honest.

Veronica also recognised from her previous experience that partnerships have a limited life and that they “come and go”. She spoke about how it was difficult

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to sustain ongoing partnerships as these required ongoing commitments. Veronica commented that she has “had to work really hard to have the relationship that we have with RMIT University.” Veronica was also mindful that the partnership relied on key people and had concerns if they left or took on different roles: I think relationships, relationships, relationships are the most important thing. But what if [the university-based teacher educator] goes and [the school leader] goes, well, what’s going to happen with the relationship between RMIT University and [our school]? That’s why it’s got to be part of the culture of the school and part of the culture of the university.

Discussion This research aimed to learn more about the role of the school leader in implementing and sustaining school–university partnerships. The school leaders interviewed could articulate what makes a positive partnership, identifying the key characteristics of trust, mutual benefits, and shared commitment. Their views are mirrored in the broader literature about school–university partnerships (Kamler et al., 2009). The school leaders interviewed could be described as lynchpins for the success of this school–university partnership—from inception, implementation, and evaluation of the continuation of the partnership (Nettleton & Barnett, 2016). For example, they described their role as “open[ing] doors”, influencing the selection of personnel involved, such as the coach and mentors, and evaluating the continuation of their school in the partnership. They demonstrated a clear commitment to wanting to work with universities which aligned with Le Cornu’s (2012) claim that leaders set the tone of the relationship and enabled the “ongoing partnership with the university to endure in such a productive manner” (p. 28). Both school leaders also gave similar reasons to those reported in the literature for dissolving a partnership if needed (Bloomfield & Nguyen, 2015). A theme in the data was the importance of establishing prior relationships between the school and the university; this typically occurred around professional experience. This theme is not as widely reflected in the literature and requires further investigation. For the school leaders interviewed, previous relationships between the school and university influenced their involvement and made the formal partnership easier to navigate as it was more of a “natural progression” (Veronica). This finding highlights the importance of professional experience (including academic and administrative staff involvement and clearly documented processes) in forming school–university partnerships. The two leaders interviewed were long-term school leaders, were part of the school–university partnership inception, and had consistent involvement over the four years. It does raise the question regarding what extent the security of their role within the school and university may have influenced their support of the partnership and appetite to take risks to do things differently. Both Dianne and Veronica acknowledged that they understood that being part of the partnership may have “wins” and

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“losses” and that it might involve “hard work” (Veronica). However, they were still involved as they could see value for the profession. Of note were the differences between the school leaders’ motivations for initially joining the partnership and their reasoning for remaining. A similar phenomenon was identified by Jones et al. (2016), who stated that relationships evolved and strengthened and “as partnerships mature, there tends to be a greater willingness to commit to a more active involvement” (p. 114). For example, both school leaders commented that they joined the partnership to support pre-service teachers and give back to the profession, similar to the motivations identified in Green’s (2021) research. However, as the partnership evolved, the school leaders could identify benefits for their teaching staff. As Veronica commented, the partnership provided the “impetus” to improve teaching at the school, enabling them to “test” the leadership potential of teachers. Dianne also reflected that the partnership provided her with a “great opportunity to grow”. Indeed, when establishing school–university professional experience partnerships, these values and benefits could be more widely promoted. Both school leaders had concerns about the sustainability of finding suitable staff, funding, and the consequences of key personnel leaving the partnership. Veronica called for a clearer process for ending or procedures for leaving a partnership; more research is needed in this area. The school leader is not often described as a hybrid school-based teacher educator in the literature. However, the roles and responsibilities undertaken by Veronica and Dianne suggest otherwise. For instance, they were instrumental in developing trust, involved in a web of relationships, held different perspectives simultaneously, and provided evaluation and feedback, which is often reported in the literature about hybrid roles (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Martin et al., 2011; White, 2019). They noted that their role in the partnership differed from their role when involved in professional experience processes outside partnership models. While there are differing views in the literature about the need for funding to support school–university partnerships (Green, 2021), Veronica and Dianne saw funding as important. Similar to Walsh and Backe’s (2013) claim, the university and system-level funding demonstrated commitment and the partnership’s seriousness, and it supported the sustainability of the partnership. Importantly, the funding provided opportunities for strategies such as employment of a school-based coach that increased trust, mutual benefits, and connections between the university and the school, and shared the emotional work involved in professional experience. The school leaders highly valued the school-based coach’s role, as they appreciated the sharing of the responsibility of supporting the pre-service teacher and teacher mentors. School leaders could instead focus on higher-level strategic partnership work and attending events that supported the collaboration.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we were interested in investigating the role of the school leader as we realised that this role was important to the success of the school-university partnership. The school leader is currently under-theorised in the partnership literature (Le Cornu, 2012). While this research represents a small sample, it showed that the school leader’s importance is amplified in school–university professional experience partnerships, which tend to be complex and steeped in policy expectations and processes. Indeed, given the impact of school leaders on forming and sustaining partnerships, selecting teaching staff to work with pre-service teachers, and promoting the university priorities, they have considerable influence on the direction of ITE. We would argue that more should be done to capture their role and provide suitable recognition for their work in this space. The findings from this study highlighted promoting the development potential of partnerships for teachers as a potential engagement strategy for school leaders. It also highlighted the importance of existing relationships established through positive professional experience encounters. As school–university professional experience partnerships require philosophical and organisational change, the existing relationships were important in terms of trusting key personnel and the university. For school leaders, the reasoning for staying involved in the partnership shifted over time. Embracing this evolution, we identify it as a key feature of effective partnerships. Both Veronica and Dianne placed considerable value on the partnership, seeing close relationships between institutions as vital to preparing the next generation of teachers. This chapter reports on our efforts to better understand the school leader’s role in a school–university partnership within professional experience, to acknowledge their contribution to partnership work, and to inform future practice and policy direction. The data showed that the role of the school leader should not be underestimated in professional experience school–university partnerships—be it their influence on the formation and sustainability of the partnership, the potential impact on pre-service teachers, and the place of universities in schooling environments. As this research demonstrates, this school–university partnership’s success depended on the goodwill of many stakeholders, including school leaders such as Veronica and Dianne, who opened their doors to the idea of doing things differently.

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Kertesz, J. L., & Downing, J. (2016). Piloting teacher education practicum partnerships: Teaching alliances for professional practice (TAPP). Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 41(12). https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2016v41n12.2 Klein, E. J., Taylor, M., Onore, C., Strom, K., & Abrams, L. (2013). Finding a third space in teacher education: Creating an urban teacher residency. Teaching Education, 24(1), 27–57. https://doi. org/10.1080/10476210.2012.711305 Korthagen, F., Loughran, J., & Russell, T. (2006). Developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(8), 1020–1041. https:// doi.org/10.1016/jtate.2006.04.022 Kruger, T., Davies, A., Eckersley, B., Newell, F., & Cherednichenko, B. (2009). Effective and sustainable university-school partnerships: Beyond determined efforts by inspired individuals. Teaching Australia. http://hdl.voced.edu.au/10707/144200. Le Cornu, R. J. (2012). School co-ordinators: Leaders of learning in professional experience. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37(3). https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2012v37n3.5 Le Cornu, R. J. (2015). Key components of effective professional experience in initial teacher education in Australia. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/tools-resources/resource/key-components-of-effective-professio nal-experience-in-initial-teacher-education-in-australia Le Cornu, R. J., & Peters, J. (2009). Sustaining school-university collaboration for reciprocal learning. International Journal of Learning, 16(9). https://doi.org/10.18848/1447-9494/CGP/ v16i09/58755 Lemon, N., Wilson, A., Oxworth, C., Zavros-Orr, A., & Wood, B. (2018). Lines of school-university partnership: Perception, sensation and meshwork reshaping of pre-service teachers’ experiences. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43(10). https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2018v43.n10.5 Lowery, C. L., Hess, M. E., Hartman, S. L., Kennedy, C., & Mazid, I. (2018). Establishing partnership spaces: Reflections of educational leaders on founding professional development schools. Education Leadership Review, 19(1), 92–110. Maheady, L., Magiera, K., & Simmons, R. (2016). Building and sustaining school-university partnerships in rural settings: One approach for improving special education service delivery. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 35(2), 33–40. https://doi.org/10.1177/875687051603500205 Manton, C., Heffernan, T., Kostogriz, A., & Seddon, T. (2021). Australian school–university partnerships: The (dis)integrated work of teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 49(3), 334–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2020.1780563 Martin, S. D., Snow, J. L., & Franklin Torrez, C. A. (2011). Navigating the terrain of third space: Tensions with/in relationships in school–university partnerships. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(3), 299–311. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487110396096 Merriam, S. B. (1988). Case study research in education: A qualitative approach. Jossey-Bass. Montecinos, C., Cortez, M., & Walker, H. (2015). School administrators’ understandings and management of barriers for the school’s involvement in the practicum component of initial teacher education in Chile. International Journal of Educational Development, 43, 100–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.05.009 Nettleton, K. F., & Barnett, D. (2016). Gatekeeper or lynchpin? The role of the principal in schooluniversity partnerships. School-University Partnerships, 9(1), 20–29. Sahlberg, P. (2012). The most wanted: Teachers and teacher education in Finland. In L. DarlingHammond & A. Lieberman (Eds.), Teacher education around the world: Changing policies and practices (pp. 1–21). Routledge. Sulistiyo, U., Rusdi, M., Clifton, J., Fehring, H., & Jordan, K. (2022). The implementation of the coaching approach to professional experience (CAPE) model in Indonesian initial teacher education: The participants’ perspectives. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(3), 20– 35. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2021v46n3.2 Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG). (2015). Action now: Classroom ready teachers. Australian Government. https://www.education.gov.au/teaching-and-school-lea dership/resources/action-now-classroom-ready-teachers-report-0

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Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG). (2018). TEMAG evaluation: Schooluniversity partnerships. AITSL. Teitel, L. (1998). Separations, divorces, and open marriages in professional development school partnerships. Journal of Teacher Education, 49(2), 85–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/002248719 8049002002 Ure, C., Hay, I., Ledger, S., Morrison, C., Sweeney, T-A., & Szandura, A. (2017). Professional experience in initial teacher education: A review of current practices in Australian ITE. Australian Government Department of Education and Training. http://www.acde.edu.au/acde-releases-rep ort-on-professional-experience/ Walsh, M. E., & Backe, S. (2013). School–university partnerships: Reflections and opportunities. Peabody Journal of Education, 88(5), 594–607. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2013. 835158 White, S. (2019). Once were teachers? Australian teacher education policy and shifting boundaries for teacher educators. European Journal of Teacher Education, 42(4), 447–458. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/02619768.2019.1628214 White, S., & Forgasz, R. (2016). The practicum: The place of experience? In J. Loughran & M. Hamilton (Eds.), International Handbook of Teacher Education (pp. 231–266). Springer. White, S., Tindall-Ford, S., Heck, D., & Ledger, S. (2018). Exploring the Australian teacher education ‘partnership’ policy landscape: Four case studies. In J. Kriewaldt, A. Ambrosetti, D. Rorrison, & R. Capeness (Eds.), Educating future teachers: Innovative perspectives in professional experience (pp. 13–31). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5484-6_2 Williams, J., & Berry, A. (2016). Boundary crossing and the professional learning of teacher educators in new international contexts. Studying Teacher Education, 12(2), 135–151. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/17425964.2016.1192031 Willis, J., Bahr, N., Bannah, J., & Welch, A. (2012, July 1–4). Becoming partners: Partnerships reshaping preservice teachers’ preparation to teach in rural Queensland schools [Conference paper]. ‘Going for gold! Reshaping teacher education for the future’, annual conference of the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA), Adelaide, Australia. Winslade, M., Daniel, G., & Auhl, G. (2020). Preparing for practice: Building positive universityschool partnerships. International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies, 11(4), 302–316. https:// doi.org/10.1504/IJTCS.2020.112738 Wood, E (2019). Unbalanced and unbalancing acts in the Early Years Foundation Stage: a critical discourse analysis of policy-led evidence on teaching and play from the office for standards in education in England (Ofsted), Education 3–13, 47(7), 784–795. https://doi.org/10.1080/030 04279.2019.1622494 Young, K. (2020). Innovation in initial teacher education through a school-university partnership. Journal of Curriculum and Teaching, 9(1), 15–29. https://doi.org/10.5430/jct.v9n1p15 Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 89–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347671 Zeichner, K., Payne, K. A., & Brayko, K. (2015). Democratizing teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2), 122–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487114560908

Jennifer Clifton is an Associate Professor at QUT and has a strong background and national standing in initial teacher education. Jen is well renowned for alternative models of professional experience based on school-university partnership, which focuses on shared responsibility and the employability of graduates. She has a comprehensive research profile of researching with industry in the field of work-integrated learning and theorising partnership. She is the Educators, Teachers, and Professionalism theme leader for the Digital Learning for Change (DL4C) Research Group.

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Kathy Jordan is an experienced teacher and teacher educator at RMIT University. She has published widely in books, journals, and conferences. Kathy has strong research interests in teacher education, including the changing policy context, national standards and procedures, and the importance of work-integrated-learning to pre-service teacher development, focusing on negotiating theory and practice and developing and implementing innovative approaches using partnerships, shared responsibility, and site-based learning.

Part VI

Enduring Possibilities

Chapter 23

School-University Partnerships: A Richly Woven Tapestry to Share and Continue Michelle J. Eady and Corinne A. Green

The purpose of this book, Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful SchoolUniversity Partnerships: Building Connections Across Diverse Educational Systems, is to delve deeper into school-university partnerships and provide examples of successful and sustained collaborations in the third space around the world. As discussed in Chap. 1, this book emanates from Corinne’s Ph.D. research (Green, 2021) which explored what motivates teachers’ and school leaders’ involvement in school-university partnerships. Building on Zeichner’s (2010) concept of third space in teacher education, Corinne conducted a systematic literature review (Green et al., 2020) that identified elements of successful school-university partnerships: shared understandings and a common vision for the partnership; key relationships between stakeholders; and resources (such as investments of time and funding) to support partnership activities. Corinne went on to conduct a multiplecase study with case-quintain analysis and established three themes that were foundational to the teachers’ and school leaders’ involvement in school-university partnerships. Firstly, the partnerships were sensitive to their contexts and met the needs of their stakeholders (see Chap. 2 by Green, 2024b). Secondly, the partnerships were aligned with and enabled by each school’s culture, as explored through their leadership, context, philosophy, and interest in research (see Chap. 20 by Green, 2024a). Finally, the teachers and school leaders viewed their involvement in the partnerships as part of their commitment to the teaching profession (see Green & Eady, in press). Corinne concluded her Ph.D. thesis (Green, 2021) with the assertion that schooluniversity partnerships have profound value in teacher education—for pre-service

M. J. Eady University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia e-mail: [email protected] C. A. Green (B) University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 C. A. Green and M. J. Eady (eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and Enhancing Purposeful School-University Partnerships, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-8838-9_23

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teachers and initial teacher education (ITE), for in-service teachers and their ongoing development, and for teacher educators and researchers. This book continues to build on this body of research, with chapters from around the world that demonstrate how and why building connections across diverse educational settings through intentional partnerships can be so powerful in teacher education. The contributing authors who have carefully crafted the presented chapters provide valuable insights into the importance of all stakeholders in building and sustaining meaningful and relevant third space partnerships that go beyond the traditional placement agreements. These examples of partnerships have involved university staff, school leaders, teachers, pre-service teachers (PSTs), and school students, all working together to create collaborative and mutually beneficial educational environments. The contributing authors have shown that partnerships offer valuable benefits and lead to the improvement of education systems. Their insights shed light on the contributions that encourage success and longevity of these partnerships, playing an integral role in partnerships in education. Collectively, they emphasise the need for stakeholders, including teachers, school leaders, universities, and researchers, to actively engage in building and sustaining school-university partnerships. By fostering collaborative relationships, flexible structures, and reciprocal connections, these stakeholders can create enduring partnerships that benefit all involved and contribute to the advancement of education. There are five key themes that arise from the chapters in this book: (1) fostering trust, (2) reciprocal benefits, (3) embracing flexibility, (4) commitment to ongoing improvement, and (5) transformative change.

Theme 1: Fostering Trust Trust and mutual commitment are essential elements in establishing and maintaining effective partnerships. Open communication, collaboration, and the sharing of knowledge and resources are facilitated when there is a foundation of trust among stakeholders. This trust is fostered through ongoing dialogue, transparency, and a shared vision for the partnership’s goals and outcomes. For example, Chap. 5 by Susan F. Westraad, Julie F. Mathews, and Caitlin R. Munday emphasises the importance of shared commitment and vision in a collaborative partnership between independent schools and a private University College. By fostering trust and a shared vision, the partnership enabled innovative, immersive, and sustainable teacher education. In Chap. 2, “The Nature of School-University Partnerships,” Corinne A. Green focuses on the importance of context and meeting the needs of stakeholders in successful school-university partnerships. It provides examples of deep singular partnerships where a school has a relationship with a university through key personnel, as well as broad multiple partnerships where several school staff members are connected to various partner universities. The chapter highlights the significance of relationships that foster trust and result in voluntary participation. Corinne emphasises that

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school-university partnerships should be sensitive to their specific contexts to ensure relevance for all stakeholders involved. Wendy Mackey, Lisa Lunney Borden, and Shelley MacLean describe a universityschool district partnership rooted in respectful relationships and focused on equity and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) in Chap. 12. The partnership, involving St. Francis Xavier University (StFX) Faculty of Education and a large school district in Nova Scotia, Canada, aims to enhance success for Mi’kmaw and Black learners. The authors share the story of how this partnership evolved, grew, and continues to expand through a relational approach to trust and collaboration. They draw upon Indigenous and decolonising methodologies, foregrounding the lived experience of relationality in research partnerships. The chapter not only highlights the guiding principles of ethical relationality but also showcases how these principles sustain and nurture the partnership. The university-school district partnership discussed in this chapter exemplifies the transformative potential of working in a relational way, rooted in ethical principles and mutual respect and trust. Part 5 of the book focuses on the role of relationships, compassion, and leadership within school-university partnerships. Chapters like “The Role of the School Leader in Professional Experience School-University Partnership Models” by Jennifer Clifton and Kathy Jordan (Chap. 22) emphasise the importance of school leaders in initiating and sustaining partnerships. Jennifer and Kathy shed light on the oftenoverlooked role of school leaders in school-university partnerships. While existing literature has primarily focused on the responsibilities of PSTs, mentor/supervising teachers, and university liaisons, these authors recognise the significance of school leaders, such as principals and deputy/assistant principals, in these partnerships. This chapter highlights that school leaders place significant value on these partnerships and that their perception of value evolves over time. The success and sustainability of the partnerships are influenced by factors such as trust, mutual commitment, funding, and the adoption of hybrid roles that facilitate collaboration. The chapter underscores the essential role of school leaders in initiating and maintaining school-university partnerships, emphasising their integral part in partnerships. By recognising and addressing the responsibilities and perspectives of school leaders, this research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of successful school-university partnerships. Likewise, Chap. 21 by Sharron L. Jones and Madeline A. Foran also highlights trust when implementing pedagogy of care in the context of regional communities, where educators have the opportunity to build strong relationships with their students and connect with the local community. Sharron and Madeline analyse the experiences of final-year PSTs in regional areas as they navigate the development of collegial and pedagogic relationships during their transition from pre-service to beginning teachers. The action research study aims to explore the relevance and importance of interpersonal relationships in the professional development of PSTs. Through this inquiry, the authors seek to understand the impact of a pedagogy of care on PSTs’ collegial and pedagogic development in regional settings.

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Theme 2: Reciprocal Benefits Reciprocity is another important aspect emphasised in the chapters. All stakeholders should have opportunities for professional growth, learning, and development. Creating a supportive and collaborative environment where knowledge exchange is valued ensures that everyone involved benefits from the partnership. For instance, Chap. 20 by Corinne A. Green discusses the role of school culture in motivating teachers and school leaders to engage in school-university partnerships. Corinne offers heterogenous examples to explore how each school’s leadership, context, philosophy, and interest in research enabled and inspired teachers’ and school leaders’ involvement in school-university partnerships. By creating an environment that values collaboration and professional learning, stakeholders can foster reciprocal relationships and benefit from the partnership’s outcomes. Chapter 7 “Professional Partners in Practice: Enhancing Institutional Partnership Connections in Early Childhood through an Embedded University Mentorship Program” by Karen Tonge, Gai Lindsay, Jane Warren, Lynette Cronin and Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett addresses the importance of quality learning experiences in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and the challenges faced by the Australian early childhood profession. This chapter focuses on the Bachelor of Education—The Early Years degree at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and how it has responded to the workforce crisis in the early childhood profession. The chapter highlights the significance of formalised and collaborative partnerships that provide reciprocal benefits for both PSTs and mentors through the development of an embedded mentorship program aimed at building student capacity, professionalism, and partnerships with the ECE sector. These partnerships allow PSTs to connect theory and practice, develop their professional identity, and gain valuable insights from experienced mentors. In turn, mentors have the opportunity to share their expertise, contribute to the resilience and capacity of future teachers, and strengthen the overall ECE sector. The chapter reports on the development of the mentorship program, taking into account input and benefits experienced by everyone involved. It discusses the elements, challenges, and implications for future practice associated with the program. Jane L. Hunter in Chap. 3 demonstrates the wide-ranging benefits for stakeholders in three distinct school-university partnerships focused on teacher professional learning related to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education. These partnerships incorporated inquiry-based interventions in early and primary school contexts (students aged 4–12) using the High Possibility Classrooms framework that Jane had previously developed. Teachers reported increased professional capacity and confidence in STEM teaching and learning, with experienced teachers appreciating the opportunity for them to keep learning. Teachers also noticed the flow-on effects for their students’ confidence in STEM. Principals recognised the way that working with research partners (from the university) supported experimentation amongst their staff with pedagogy and STEM content. Middle leaders who, through partnership activities, were supported to coach their colleagues’ capacity

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in STEM overcame their initial apprehensions and embraced the reflexivity and innovative practices promoted through the partnership. The insights provided in this chapter demonstrate the varied and widespread benefits experienced by partnership stakeholders. Chapter 8 titled “The ‘Butterfly Effect’ of Mentoring Practices in SchoolUniversity Partnerships” by Amanda Mooney, Matthew K. E. Thomas, and Damian Blake explores the lasting impacts and unexpected outcomes for leaders involved in large-scale school-university partnerships focused on mentor training for teachers. The ‘butterfly effect’ metaphor highlights how small, unintended actions can have significant and far-reaching consequences. The chapter is part of a broader research program that examines the dynamics of mentoring among PSTs, mentors, and established school leaders. Specifically, it focuses on the development of school mentors through a multi-stage mentor development program in the state of Victoria, Australia. Improving mentoring practices is seen as a means to enhance teacher efficacy and support sustainable, long-term changes that promote graduate capability. The chapter discusses a co-designed model that maximises the impact of the school-university partnership, particularly in the context of the emerging challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic within the teaching profession. As issues related to teacher workforce supply in Australia continue to escalate, the importance of effective mentoring practices through school-university partnerships is emphasised as a crucial component of retention strategies for teachers now and in the future. Selina L. Bartels and Benjamin Boche in Chap. 9 discuss the implementation and impact of a networked professional learning community (NPLC) involving two midwestern US school districts and a university. The primary focus of the research was to examine how the NPLC influenced the practicum experiences of PSTs and the experiences of cooperating teachers within this community. The stakeholders involved in the study included university faculty, PSTs, and cooperating teachers. The chapter underscores the potential of NPLCs in bridging the gap between university coursework and classroom practice for PSTs. It also emphasizes the significance of ongoing support and communication between all stakeholders to optimise the benefits of such professional learning communities for all stakeholders involved.

Theme 3: Embracing Flexibility Flexibility and adaptability are also crucial in navigating the complexities of schooluniversity partnerships. Stakeholders must be responsive to changing circumstances and open to innovative approaches. Embracing new pedagogical practices, incorporating technology, and staying informed about evolving educational trends contribute to the partnership’s relevance and effectiveness. The case study presented by Sharron Jones and Madeline Foran (Chap. 21) explores how educators in regional communities develop strong interpersonal relationships with students, demonstrating their adaptability in meeting the unique needs of their context. We must follow this lead by embracing our capabilities to be flexible and adaptable moving forward in our work

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together and recognise the fluidity and organic growth as our partnerships develop and flourish. Amanda Gutierrez in Chap. 18 delves into the complexity of multi-system partnerships by reflecting on two partnership cases that Amanda developed and coordinated over a ten-year period. The chapter presents a theoretical framework that combines complexity theory concepts with Bakhtinian theories on dialogism, enabling an understanding of the intersections that arise in multi-voiced partnerships and how they give rise to complex systems that are in a constant state of change. The survival of partnership systems depends on their ability to adapt to these changes. Through a reflective account of the two partnerships, the chapter analyses the complexities inherent in such systems. The analysis highlights the significance of creating space for dialogic negotiation and the importance of actors’ flexibility and adaptability in handling change. Amanda illustrates that partnerships, as complex systems, exist within a space of perpetual tension as they strive to find stability in an unpredictable and diverse society. Part 3 focuses on the dynamic nature of school-university partnerships over time. For example, Chap. 10 by Nick Hopwood, Kimberley Pressick-Kilborn, Binod Prasad Pant, Parbat Dhungana, Drishty Shrestha, Rina Shahi, Sonam Dorji W, Tandin Khorlo Wangchuk, Thinley Wangchuk, Tshering Zangmo, and Sonam Choden delves into the remarkable experiences of international partnerships between an Australian university and educational institutions in Nepal and Bhutan. By employing CulturalHistorical Activity Theory (CHAT), the authors illustrate how these collaborations resulted in lasting positive changes that challenged and transformed existing educational practices. The partnerships encouraged the co-creation of new knowledge and the development of innovative teaching approaches. Crucially, the chapter highlights the significance of reconciling conflicting motives, such as the tension between promoting engaging pedagogies and meeting curriculum requirements. The participants successfully navigated these conflicts, leading to the implementation of new practices that were previously considered unviable. The chapter serves as a testament to the potential of school-university partnerships to transcend boundaries, transgress conventional norms, and create transformative educational experiences. Also in Part 3, Chap. 13 by Amanda McGraw and Amy Walker confronts the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and teacher workforce shortages on their embedded school-university partnerships. Amanda and Amy argue that adaptive expertise—the capacity to respond to new and unfamiliar situations in innovative ways—is essential for teachers, school leaders, and teacher educators. Through beautifully vulnerable vignettes (both narrative and poetic) Amanda and Amy show how they attempted to apply adaptive expertise to counter the external forces that disrupted their school-university partnerships. In analysing these vignettes, Amanda and Amy reflect on their experiences of losing their third space, the associated feelings of grief and loss, and how they have examined their own adaptive expertise. This chapter illuminates how school-university partnerships need to embrace flexibility and honour the complex circumstances of those involved.

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In a similar vein, Chap. 6 by Mellita M. Jones presents a school-university partnership that has been stymied by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Ballarat Embedded Settings Teacher Education Partnership (BESTEP) was first implemented in early 2020 after a year of careful planning and co-design, before being abruptly halted. The BESTEP partnership not only embraced flexibility in the face of COVID-19 disruptions, it also demonstrated adaptability with regards to its model for initial teacher education. Mellita shares how the partnership eschews traditional structures—such as block placements and lecture/tutorial sessions—in favour of embedded practices that suit the needs of pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and teacher educators. Although its initial implementation was curtailed, Mellita reports that all stakeholders are interested in its re-initiation, with anticipated adjustments to the partnership informed by participant feedback.

Theme 4: Commitment to Ongoing Improvement Sustaining meaningful and relevant third space school-university partnerships require ongoing commitment and effort. Continuous evaluation, reflection, and improvement are necessary to ensure that the partnership remains effective and beneficial. Assessing the impact of the partnership on student learning outcomes, PST preparation, and the professional development of teachers helps in identifying areas for improvement and growth. Through alignment with policy, institutional interests, and individual needs, stakeholders can ensure that the partnership evolves and remains relevant in addressing challenges in ITE. Bethany H. G. Carter-Sherlock and Jessica A. Sears in Chap. 19 use autoethnography to examine the initial challenges that they encountered within a schooluniversity partnership, such as tensions related to roles and responsibilities of those involved. They align their experiences with broader literature to discuss the contrasting political and educational demands, the interpersonal challenges, and the personal challenges associated with creating and sustaining purposeful schooluniversity partnerships. Bethany and Jessica’s narrative vignettes and ensuing analysis offer practical solutions that can be adapted to suit other school-university partnerships to support their continued development over time. In Chap. 11, Anthony Malone examines the Teaching and Learning for the twentyfirst century (TL21) program, a school-university partnership in Ireland that focuses on professional learning for secondary school teachers. The program emphasises innovative pedagogical practices and operates within professional learning communities. Through longitudinal qualitative data gathered over twenty years, Anthony identifies adaptive flexibility and authentic, dialogic engagement as essential elements of the program’s success. Anthony explores the motivating factors that sustain participant involvement and the support structures that contribute to the program’s longevity. The chapter also highlights the professional benefits of the TL21 partnership and discusses how program partners have fostered connections across various educational

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settings. This approach empowers teachers, enabling them to engage in self-critique, reflection, and positive professional growth. Likewise, in Chap. 15 Stacey E. Jones and Deb Clarke reflect on the multiple phases of their school-university partnership and how the aims of the partnership have broadened over time. For each phase, Stacey and Deb consider why the partnership moved in that direction, the enabling factors that supported sustainability, and the constraints that threatened stakeholders’ engagement. The initial focus for the school-university partnership related to preparing pre-service teachers for the realities of their placement and future workplaces as well as building leadership opportunities for in-service teachers. To this end, university academics and school teachers co-designed and team-taught PST’s university coursework, incorporating schoolbased immersion activities and assessments that mirror accreditation requirements for beginning teachers. As these activities led to stronger relationships within the partnership, a new phase commenced that shifted the focus towards building capacity in supervising teachers as mentors for pre-service teachers on placement. This, in turn, sparked a third phase centred on the role of the Professional Experience Co-ordinator, a leadership position related to placements and, by extension, the school-university partnership. Showcasing how the partnership has shifted and developed over time, this chapter explores sustainability through ongoing transformation. Melanie Nash, Allison Byth, Emilio Kardaris, Nerinda Hodgson, Angela Fitzgerald, and Simone White present a case study of a school-university partnership in Australia in Chap. 14, focusing on the co-design process and its impact on the professional experience of PSTs and the professional learning of classroom teachers. The study highlights the importance of collaborative partnerships in bridging the gap between research and practice in education. Specifically, the chapter examines the co-designed partnership model from the perspectives of university-based teacher educators and a school-based educator, emphasising the enrichment of the PSTs’ placement experiences and the enhancement of mentoring practices. The chapter identifies three key considerations: the co-design model itself, the relational agency of PSTs, and the coaching approach employed by school-based educators. By offering insights and lessons learned from this case study, the chapter encourages collaborative discourse and the establishment of new partnerships to generate meaningful learning opportunities.

Theme 5: Transformative Change The stories of school-university partnerships that are found throughout this book are filled with hoped-for and realised transformative change. This can be seen at the individual and organisational levels for those directly involved in partnerships, as well as at broader levels of sectors and systems as the effects of partnership approaches ripple out.

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In Chap. 4 by Sandra Lapointe and Catherine Klausen, the emphasis is on knowledge mobilisation and the transformative potential of school-university collaborations. Their project, The/La Collaborative Inquiry, provides an online platform that facilitates collaborations between current teachers and university-based researchers to support inquiry-based learning for school students. This example demonstrates how stakeholders can work together to mobilise academic knowledge and create cross-sectoral synergies. This model demonstrates the potential for transformative change at a systems level. Another compelling example of transformative change can be found in Chap. 12 by Wendy Mackey, Lisa Lunney Borden, and Shelley MacLean. This chapter explores the power of building strong relationships as the foundation for effective schooluniversity partnerships. The authors present a case study of a partnership between a university and a school district, highlighting the transformative impact that can be achieved when collaboration is rooted in authentic relationships. Through ongoing dialogue, shared goals, and a commitment to reciprocal learning, the partnership has fostered meaningful connections between university faculty, school administrators, and teachers. This collaborative approach has led to transformative changes in instructional practices, curriculum development, and professional development opportunities for educators. The example demonstrates how transformative change can occur when stakeholders in school-university partnerships prioritise building relationships, cultivate a shared vision, and work collaboratively towards common goals. Chapter 16 by Helena Berglund, Elna Sivhed, Martin Granbom, Linda Smidfelt, and Sinikka Neuhaus focuses on the prerequisites for effective school-university partnerships in Sweden, specifically in the context of teacher education for upper secondary school. While teacher education in Sweden is primarily university-based, there are school-based components to the program. In order to address challenges related to pre-service teacher placements and enhance collaboration in terms of quality and research, a new national policy is being implemented to reshape the conditions for partnerships between schools and universities. The chapter provides an overview of how policy and practice influence the incentives and goals of different stakeholders involved in collaborations between schools and Lund University. By exploring an example of practicing teachers taking ownership of research, the chapter highlights the conditions and possibilities for such initiatives to bridge the gaps between schools and the university. Challenges may arise due to differences in regulations, prerequisites, and perspectives on knowledge, creating tensions within the partnerships. The chapter aims to navigate these tensions by leveraging the new policy as a foundation. Drawing on frame-factor perspectives, the authors reflect on how to align various incentives and goals in policy and practice and foster a sense of shared responsibility for students’ school-based education and collaborative research. The chapter stresses the importance of proactive long-term planning to address concerns and mitigate tensions in order to strengthen school-university partnerships in Sweden. In Chap. 17, Carmen Heckmann, Ina Alexandra Machura, Holger Horz, Nicole Lustig, Yvonne Nünlist, and Cora Stein speak of the transformative change possible

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through the TELLUS (Team Lehrende, Lernende, und Studierende) partnership. This chapter presents a multidisciplinary, ongoing, and expanding partnership between school, university, and community partners. The partnership is deeply rooted in the needs of its community as it seeks to holistically support refugee and immigrant youth. By bringing together university students from various disciplines (including education, psychology, and social work) in service learning activities with school students, supported by university academics and community organisations, the TELLUS partnership promotes insights into learning and teaching while also leading to transformative change for the possible futures of the school and university students involved.

Conclusion In summary, the chapters in this book align with both Zeichner’s (2010) seminal article and Green’s (2021) exploration into motivations in school-university partnerships. The identified themes connect to previous work and emphasise the importance of trust, flexibility, reciprocal benefits, commitment to ongoing improvement, and transformative change through school-university partnerships globally. By embracing the five themes presented in this chapter, meaningful school-university partnerships can be created, thrive, and sustain into the future. The chapters collectively demonstrate that stakeholders in school-university partnerships play a critical role in building and sustaining meaningful and relevant third space experiences. Through clear roles and responsibilities, trust and mutual commitment, flexibility and adaptability, reciprocity, and ongoing improvement, stakeholders contribute to the success and longevity of these partnerships that influence transformational change. All of the authors that have contributed to this book have shared the positive impact that school-university partnerships can have on educational outcomes for all stakeholders. Overall, the sections of the book offer a comprehensive exploration of schooluniversity partnerships, covering various dimensions, challenges, and opportunities. They provide a holistic view of the topic and contribute to the understanding and advancement of effective school-university partnerships. As we reflect on the diverse and insightful chapters presented in this book, it becomes evident that school-university partnerships hold immense potential for transforming education and shaping the future. The stories shared by researchers, educators, and practitioners inspire us to envision a future where collaboration, innovation, and mutual learning thrive. It is clear that we need to continue building and sustaining meaningful and relevant third space experiences that benefit all involved. We must foster strong relationships, embrace flexibility, and promote a culture of trust and shared vision. By doing so, we can create an educational landscape where schools and universities work hand in hand, leveraging their unique strengths to nurture the next generation of teachers and learners. Let us seize this opportunity to push boundaries, challenge

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existing paradigms, and create a brighter future through dynamic and impactful school-university partnerships. Together, we can weave a tapestry of a collaborative educational ecosystem that prepares all students for success in an ever-evolving world.

References Bartels, S. L., & Boche, B. (2024). Using a networked professional learning community to prepare pre-service teachers. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Berglund, H., Sivhed, E., Granbom, M., Smidfelt, L., & Neuhaus, S. (2024). Prerequisites for policy and practice in school–university partnerships in Sweden: Short- and long- term incentives for taking responsibility. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Carter-Sherlock, B. H. G., & Sears, J. A. (2024). A classroom teacher’s and teacher educator’s perspective of the barriers to their involvement in a school-university partnership. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Clifton, J., & Jordan, K. (2024). The role of the school leader in professional experience school– university partnership models. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Eady, M. J., & Green, C. A. (2024). School-university partnerships: A richly woven tapestry to share and continue. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Green, C. A. (2021). Partnering in the third space: What motivates teachers’ and school leaders’ involvement in school-university partnerships? [Ph.D. thesis, University of Wollongong]. https:// ro.uow.edu.au/theses1/1158/ Green, C. A. (2024a). The Influence of School Culture on School-University Partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Green, C. A. (2024b). The Nature of School-University Partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Green, C. A., & Eady, M. J. (in press). Australian school-university partnerships: Shining examples that meet and exceed policy discourse. In J. Dresden, J. Ferrara, J. E. Neapolitan, D. YendolHoppey, J. S. Beck, M. Z. Faison, S. Janis, L. Provinzano, & L. Rutten (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of school-university partnerships. Cambridge University Press. Green, C. A., & Eady, M. J. (2024). Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: An introduction. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Green, C. A., Tindall-Ford, S. K., & Eady, M. J. (2020). School-university partnerships in Australia: A systematic literature review. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 48(4), 403–435. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2019.1651822

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Gutierrez, A. (2024). Exploring Complexity in Multi-System Partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Heckmann, C., Machura, I. A., Horz, H., Lustig, N., Nünlist, Y., & Stein, C. (2024). Multilateral partnerships supporting community engagement among pre-service teachers: The TELLUS partnership In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, Sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Hopwood, N., Pressick-Kilborn, K., Pant, B. P., Dhungana, P., Shrestha, D., Shahi, R., Dorji W, S., Wangchuk, T. K., Wangchuk, T., Zangmo, T., & Choden, S. (2024). School-university partnerships on the edge of possibility: Expansive learning and practice transformation across Australia, Nepal, and Bhutan. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Hunter, J. L. (2024). Invitations, impact, and involvement: Tales from successful school-university partnerships in STEM and STEAM in Australian Schools. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Jones, M. M. (2024). The co-design of an embedded school-university partnership: An application of Dewey’s laboratory style approach to PST experiences in schools. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Jones, S., & Foran, M. (2024). Regional school-university partnerships: Searching for the sweet spot—An inquiry into the impact of a pedagogy of care. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Jones, S. E., & Clarke, D. (2024). Sustainable school-university partnerships: Motivators for engagement, enablers, and constraints In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Lapointe, S., & Klausen, C. (2024). A new model for school-university collaborations: Mobilising academic knowledge and building cross sectoral synergies around inquiry learning. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Mackey, W., Lunney Borden, L., & MacLean, S. (2024). Rooted in relationships, building universityschool district partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Malone, A. (2024). Dialectic realities and loose coupling in secondary teacher professional learning in Ireland: The case of TL21. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. McGraw, A., & Walker, A. (2024). The role of adaptive expertise in sustaining school-university partnerships in increasingly complex times. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Mooney, A., Thomas, M. K. E., & Blake, D. (2024). The ‘Butterfly Effect’ of mentoring practices in school-university partnerships. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Nash, M., Byth, A., Kardaris, E., Hodgson, N., Fitzgerald, A., & White, S. (2024). Leveraging a school-university partnership model through the process of co-design: A case study of one Australian school—university partnership and its developmental stages. In C. A. Green & M.

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J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Tonge, K., Lindsay, G., Warren, J., Cronin, L., & Neilsen-Hewett, C. (2024). Professional partners in practice: enhancing institutional partnership connections in early childhood through an embedded university mentorship program. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Westraad, S. F., Mathews, J. F., & Munday, C. R. (2024). Creating shared spaces: A collaborative partnership model that prepares initial teacher education students for effective practice. In C. A. Green & M. J. Eady (Eds.), Creating, sustaining, and enhancing purposeful school-university partnerships: Building connections across diverse educational systems. Springer. Zeichner, K. M. (2010). Rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college- and university-based teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 89–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487109347671

Michelle J. Eady is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She is a Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) and International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) fellow, and a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA). Michelle, the current president of ISSOTL, holds a national teaching citation for her work in quality teacher preparation. Her research interests include the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), Work integrated learning (WIL), Indigenous Studies and current issues in Education. Michelle has spoken at conferences worldwide and looks forward to collaborations with colleagues who have a passion for teaching and learning. Corinne A. Green is an early career researcher and educator. She is a Lecturer in Academic Development with the Teaching Innovation Unit at the University of South Australia where she prompts educators to be intentional in their approach to teaching and learning. Corinne completed her Ph.D. in teacher education at the University of Wollongong, exploring what motivates teachers and school leaders to be involved in school-university partnerships. She has relished opportunities to collaborate with local and international colleagues on various projects in the field of teacher education and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.