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The purpose of this viewpoint article is to share the reflections of school and university leaders on the success of their emerging school–university partnership for the preparation of middle school teachers.

The article is a reflective paper in which the leaders of the school–university partnership discuss the benefits of establishing the initial school–university partnership and reflect on what has helped the partnership experience success in the partnership's first five years of existence.

While the authors describe their school-university partnership as emerging, both the school and the university have experienced successes. Upon reflection, the authors discuss four specific essential elements to their initial partnership success. Communication and collaboration among all stakeholders ensure all voices are heard and valued. Allowing the university to have a physical presence in the middle school encourages the building of trusting relationships. For partnerships to succeed, partners must allow time for the partnership to mature and grow. Finally, when the middle school hires graduates from the partnering university, this benefits both the school and university partners.

As teacher preparation moves further away from the university campus to engage more closely with schools, there are lessons to be learned. Reflection is an essential component of growth. The partners in this school–university partnership believe sharing the partners' experiences will enhance the effectiveness of the partners' own partnership and encourage others that choose to begin this journey.

The National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) recognizes that there is a tendency for the term “PDS” (Professional Development School) to be used as a catch-all for various relationships that constitute school–university partnership work. The intent of this NAPDS statement is to assert the essentials, or fundamental qualities, of a PDS. NAPDS encourages all those working in school–university relationships to embrace the Nine Essentials of PDSs communicated in this statement. The Essentials are written in tangible, rather than abstract, language and represent practical goals toward which work in a PDS should be directed.

Policy statement.

NAPDS maintains that these Nine Essentials need to be present for a school-university relationship to be called a PDS. Without having all nine, the relationship that exists between a school/district and college/university, albeit however strong, would not be a PDS. How individual PDSs meet these essentials will vary from location to location, but they all need to be in place to justify the use of the term “PDS.”

For those in established PDSs, some aspects of this document will be confirmed, while other aspects may be identified as needing attention. For those aspiring to establish PDSs, the authors offer this statement as a useful guide for their work. NAPDS invites individuals involved in school–university partnerships to share this statement with colleagues in the spirit of continuous improvement. By coming to terms with the challenges and opportunities inherent in this statement, the study can collectively fulfill the vision of this remarkable and distinct partnership called PDS.

This policy statement articulates how the Nine Essentials are the foundation of PDS work.

This paper aims to explore a single-institution case study of partnership working between students, the University and Students’ Union, through four student-led sustainability projects. The paper analyses the role and value of these partnerships and provides advice for other institutions on effective partnership working between these stakeholders.

A single case study of partnership working with multiple embedded units of analysis (four projects) is presented based on reflections of practitioners involved in the projects who have different roles within the University and Students’ Union.

The longevity and effectiveness of student-led projects, and disciplinary-breadth of students engaged, can be enhanced by greater collaboration with, and integration into, University and Students’ Union systems. Partnership working between different stakeholders is key to overcoming challenges and the success of student-led projects, helped by key staff “enablers”. These projects provide myriad learning opportunities for developing change agency skills, even where projects are relatively short-lived and could be seen as failures in terms of longevity.

This analysis is based solely on practitioner reflections, with limited direct quantification or qualitative data on the projects’ impacts on the students themselves.

This paper draws together the experiences and reflections of four practitioners with different roles within the University and Students’ Union across four different projects and provides advice to generate student-led sustainability projects which have longevity and impact for wider student populations and future generations of cohorts.

The purpose of this article is to describe the important aspects and provide examples of Essential 5 in the Second Edition of the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) Nine Essentials.

The study aims to review the Nine Essentials.

The authors worked with groups from different conferences to gather data.

A PDS (Professional Development School) is built upon shared, sustainable governance structures that promote collaboration, foster reflection and honor and value all participants’ voices.

Nine Essentials are foundational to PDS work.

Many K-12 teachers teach difficult topics as part of their curricula, and discussions of difficult topics are common across grade levels and content areas. As teachers increasingly engage with difficult topics in their classrooms, the need for high-quality professional learning experiences has also grown. In response, the purpose of this article is to introduce an emerging partnership between the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State and the Red Lion Area School District (Red Lion, Pennsylvania), conceptualized from the outset with an explicit focus on intentionally engaging in collaborative, inquiry-based professional learning surrounding difficult topics in formalized curricula and within educational practice.

The article briefly describes how the partners came together, then provides a high-level overview of how they approached their first year of collaboration. Next, the partners’ adaptation of inquiry-based professional learning is outlined. The article concludes by discussing lessons learned from the first year of partnering and implications for scholarship in the areas of school-university partnerships, inquiry-based professional learning, and difficult topics.

The article observes that it took educators participating in a difficult-topics inquiry community an entire year to begin shifting ownership of inquiry to K-12 students. It illustrates how school-university partnerships can be used to support difficult-topics inquiry and raises new questions about the role of difficult topics in partnership work.

The article contributes an original example to the literature that demonstrates how inquiry-based professional learning focused on difficult topics can provide a powerful basis for forming a school-university partnership.

The purpose of this article is to describe the key aspects of and provide examples about Essential Nine of the Second Edition of the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) Nine Essentials.

The ever-changing educational landscape, exacerbated by recent events surrounding COVID, political and cultural unrest, necessitates educators who are antifragile, able to withstand pressures and thrive amidst uncertainty. To this end, the pilot study reported here aims to examine mathematics educators’ initial reflections on what it means to be a risk-taker in the classroom, what prevents them from engaging in instructional risks and what would support their instructional risk-taking.

The pilot study utilized interviews with participants, including four pre-service teachers who were enrolled at the university and seven in-service teachers who were employed on active PDS campuses within the school district.

Preliminary findings suggest teacher beliefs concerning risk-taking, the barriers to engaging in such behaviors and the support needed to be able to take instructional risks. Results highlight the role of school–university partnerships in cultivating a culture of risk-taking through active collaboration and dialogue.

These findings have important implications for universities and PDS partners engaged in preparing teachers for an educational field that is unpredictable and continually changing. Additional research should be completed in varying PDS settings.

Findings highlight the role of school–university partnerships in cultivating a culture of risk-taking through active collaboration and dialogue.

Educators are currently faced with an unprecedented instructional landscape. Antifragile, risk-taking teachers are needed who are adaptable and innovative, thus better equipped to enter the challenging and uncertain realities of education.

The paper aims to examine how a professional development school-district (PDS-D) partnership, enacting an improvement science stance, collectively explored social-emotional learning (SEL) during collaboratively designed professional learning experiences.

This qualitative study, guided by an improvement science orientation, enacted an iterative research design. Data sources consisted of anecdotal field notes and artifacts from 12 professional learning sessions. Using a constant comparative method, the authors applied an inductive thematic analysis to identify salient themes across data related to teacher wonderings and identified goals.

The paper illuminates teachers' voices while highlighting information gleaned from participant wonderings, their identified goals and how this information informed the iterative development of future professional learning experiences within a district-university partnership.

Due to the chosen research approaches and limited number of participants, the research results may lack generalizability.

This paper provides original insight into collaborative development of recursive professional learning experiences within partnership spaces.

Climate change poses risks to society and the demand for carbon literacy within small and medium-sized enterprises is increasing. Skills and knowledge are required for organizational greenhouse gas accounting and science-based decisions to help businesses reduce transitional risks. At the University of Copenhagen and the University of Northern British Columbia, two carbon management courses have been developed to respond to this growing need. Using an action-based co-learning model, students and business are paired to quantify and report emissions and develop climate plans and communication strategies.

This paper draws on surveys of businesses that have partnered with the co-learning model, designed to provide insight on carbon reductions and the impacts of co-learning. Data collected from 12 respondents in Denmark and 19 respondents in Canada allow for cross-institutional and international comparison in a Global North context.

Results show that while co-learning for carbon literacy is welcomed, companies identify limitations: time and resources; solution feasibility; governance and reporting structures; and communication methods. Findings reveal a need for extension, both forwards and backwards in time, indicating that the collaborations need to be lengthened and/or intensified. Balancing academic requirements detracts from usability for businesses, and while municipal and national policy and emission targets help generate a general societal understanding of the issue, there is no concrete guidance on how businesses can implement operational changes based on inventory results.

The research brings new knowledge to the field of transitional climate risks and does so with a focus on both small businesses and universities as important co-learning actors in low-carbon transitions. The comparison across geographies and institutions contributes an international solution perspective to climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.