Search results

The chapters in this book focus on how university-school-community (USC) partnerships are implemented in colleges, universities, school systems, and community organizations around the world. The purpose of these multi-disciplinary programs is to reform teaching and learning experiences for all participants. Using case studies and other empirical research, this volume presents a broad and in-depth overview on a variety of USC partnerships to assist educators in the process of transforming organizations using innovative approaches to improve community and school system development. This chapter will provide an overview to this volume and establish a framework for better understanding the nature of university partnerships to enhance community and school system development.

Partnerships between universities and secondary schools are highly valued for a range of pedagogical, transition and outreach benefits to students, teachers and more broadly, society. Teachers in schools provide a rich insight into how university teaching staff can better engage students and provide them with deeper learning experiences. Universities can provide on-campus student incursions for learning activities, work experience opportunities, research projects with academics and lectures by specialist researchers. This chapter describes the range of benefits arising from a partnership, established in 2009, between the John Monash Science School (JMSS) and Monash University, co-located in outer suburban of Melbourne, Australia. The JMSS–Monash partnership has generated a number of innovative and dynamic educational programmes, which have positively impacted the learning and engagement of students across geographic divides. The partnership is rich, and has broadened and deepened as the partners have learned more about each other’s capacities, and envisioned what is possible in an educational landscape bereft of innovation and challenge to existing norms. By thinking creatively and acting bravely, the partners have shone a light on a brighter future in science for Australian students.

An ever-increasing emphasis is being placed on the concept of cross-institutional educational initiatives. Among these are university–school partnerships, seen as possessing immense multidimensional potential. The model of university–school partnership espouses distinctive advantages: it promotes close collaboration on an array of pedagogical elements, a manifold of opportunities for inter-professional learning, a unique course delivery, and the development of innovative curriculum materials. There is a consensus that effective teaching calls for more than possession of craft skills and knowledge, but should go beyond traditional pedagogical bounds, in which the innovation in new educational models is embedded in a nexus of relationships involving close multi-faceted, cross-institutional collaborations, incorporating elements of informal education. The proposed chapter aims to address the theoretical discourse and practical application of such partnerships, guided by the conviction that an effective partnership constructs new enabling structures that span the boundaries of school/university, placing an increased focus on learning for all stakeholders. It aims to supplement the existing theoretical discourse by presenting an implemented cross-institutional partnership as a case-study – a university class of intercultural competence – undertaken in cooperation among the Institute of European Studies, Jagiellonian University, and High School No. 8 in Kraków. The case study aims to illustrate how a cross-institutional partnership contributed to the development and implementation of innovative and active teaching methods, placing a particular emphasis on elements of informal education. Through a variety of methods, such as outgoing seminars, peer-mediation, and city games, the outlined partnership model serves as an effective example of innovative practices in higher education.

The impact of an effective principal on the quality of teaching and learning has been clearly established. Logically, the next question to be answered is: How can we best prepare principals to lead the improvement of instructional practices and outcomes for students? Partnerships between school districts and universities have shown the capacity to be an effective means of preparing principals, and much has been confirmed about how those partnerships should be structured in order to benefit both partners. This document looks briefly at the literature that describes and supports these partnerships, outlines the framework of a successful partnership in Florida, and provides insightful “lessons learned” throughout the planning, implementation, and evaluation of that partnership.

Since both organizations realize important benefits, constructing a district/university partnership should be easy. However, differences in the professional cultures of the two organizations as well as differences in the demands and constraints they each face make it a challenging task. From finding the right university partner to planning the collaborative work in detail; what was learned in the Florida partnership is described in straightforward terms. In this way, the document provides a road map to a successful district and university partnership.

This chapter considers ways in which lesson study may be introduced and sustained within the school–university partnerships that already exist within an initial teacher education (ITE) course. In particular, the authors describe the challenges and opportunities associated with ITE lesson study partnerships and ways in which lesson study can deepen and even transform the nature of the school–university partnership. The authors draw on third-generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Engeström, 2001) to highlight pre-service teachers’ roles as ‘boundary crossers’ between the activity system of the university ITE course and the activity system of the school department in which they are placed. The authors argue that pre-service teachers, despite their inexperience as teachers, have an important opportunity to introduce the practices of lesson study that they are learning about into the schools in which they are placed. They are also able to promote approaches to lesson planning and observation that support the values of the course and thus, through mentor development, strengthen the school–university partnership more widely than the specific lesson studies carried out. The authors outline three models for productive ITE lesson study partnerships, and argue that even a relatively small number of lesson study events throughout the school year can establish the beginnings of a transformation in the school culture away from a performative focus on evaluating the teacher and towards a more productive focus on school students’ learning. This, in turn, deepens the partnership between university and school by aligning both parties more closely around a shared focus on studying learning.

In 2008 the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Department of Education (TasED) entered into a high-level Partnership agreement. The Partnership in Teaching Excellence, funded by the Federal Smarter Schools National Partnerships – Improving Teacher Quality agreement, included higher education funded places for teachers wishing to complete a Master’s degree, and at the other end of the profession, an innovative alternative teacher education pathway for final-year pre-service teachers (PSTs), run as a competitive scholarship program. The intent of the program was threefold, to assist PSTs in becoming quality reflective practitioners with the capacity to work in high needs schools, explore ways of improving mentor teachers and PSTs’ reciprocal relationships, and increase the retention of teachers in TasED schools. Begun at a time of intense industrial action, the Partnership program appeared rather one-sided with little apparent benefit conferring to the University and was at all times highly contentious.

Using Kagan’s six stages of collaboration as a framework, and drawing on interviews with the first cohort of scholarship PSTs, and a range of personal files documenting the beginnings of the Partnership, including minutes of meetings, PST results, and unpublished reviews commissioned by the TasED, this chapter explores the beginnings of the Partnership, as together those on the ground worked out what “Partnership” meant. It presents an evaluation of those initial successful first years, including the learning outcomes of the PSTs and discusses the lessons learned for establishing future university/school Partnership. The Partnership program continued to 2013, when Federal funding for the project was discontinued.

This chapter provides an overview of the development of a USDE SLP-funded leadership preparation partnership between a local school division and our university. We specifically describe our efforts to cultivate an authentic and purposeful partnership that would allow us to move beyond the limitations of the traditional leadership preparation programs that have been so widely criticized in the literature. This chapter describes the research and development efforts which involved iterative cycles of design, implementation, reflection, and redesign that helped to identify problems of practice and develop meaningful solutions to these identified areas of need. We also discuss four key elements of effective university–school partnerships that grew out of our efforts to build and refine an effective partnership.

It has been well documented that the successful use of technology in K-12 education improves student achievement. However, both K-12 schools and higher education institutions have not been able to systematically provide preservice and inservice teachers with adequate training and support. This chapter will examine the K-12 school–university partnership literature, and identify critical support elements that are necessary for successful change related to technology both in higher education and the K-12 classrooms. Additionally, we will introduce two characteristics from the NCATE Partnership Standards and how schools and universities can use them to guide relationships and how they approach the school technology reform process.

The contribution explores the methodology, strategies and activities of inter-institutional partnership among university, school, territory initiated by the Degree Courses in Primary Education Sciences of the University of L’Aquila. It illustrates the experiences of an active partnership undertaken at the five-year, single-cycle Degree Course after the reform introduced in Italy by the law 249 of September 2010 aimed at encouraging local development in a national and international perspective (Bologna Process, 1999). These activities focus on the need to strengthen the cultural and professional profile of future teachers through curricular and extracurricular activities involving the use of cultural heritage goods, tangible and intangible, of the territory. The aim is to renew methodological approaches to ‘science teaching’ through the use of appropriate technologies that make it possible to realize the process of teaching-learning adequate to provide the multi-lettered of the XXI Century with sets of skills and knowledge more and more updated. The contribution focuses, in particular, on the project titled ‘Museum in … click! – Cognitive processes and new technologies applied to archaeological heritage in museums for cultural fruition qualitatively appreciable’. This project involved University, Superintendence of Archaeological Heritage (SAH) of Abruzzo and local schools in a partnership where teachers and students from schools of the territory were busy in direct training to build educational proposals and multimedia products for their peers to improve the quality of use of cultural goods involved. The project, funded by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism – Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo (MIBACT), provides a good example of practices within a partnership model that feeds a teaching system where the different skills of the stakeholders interact inside a common cultural area pursuing the same goals.

This chapter will take a case study approach to partnership in Higher Education (HE), highlighting good practice and showcasing FOCUS West as a model of innovative collaboration. FOCUS West is a government-funded, regional access organisation in the west of Scotland (http://www.focuswest.org.uk). The region comprises roughly 5,000 square miles with a population of around 2.2 million. Delivered by a partnership of the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde and the West of Scotland, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) it works with schools and local education authorities to increase progression to HE from the 37 lowest progression secondary schools in the area. It delivers a programme of guidance and support to pupils from S3 to S6 (14–18 year olds), targeting activity to those young people who have potential to achieve HE entry. FOCUS West, as a partnership organisation, addresses vital issues of social mobility in Scotland, where progression to university and all of the attendant opportunities, remains stubbornly linked to socio-economic circumstances.