Conference Agenda

With teacher education reform currently a key priority in government agendas, there is a need to better understand the scope, structure and sustainability of partnerships on a global scale (Jackson & Burch, 2019; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education [NCATE], 2010; OECD, 2006; Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group [TEMAG], 2014). By bringing together twenty writing teams across 6 continents through a global project which commenced in 2021, we found striking models of school-university partnerships with innovative applications of policy, research and practice showcasing the breadth, depth and often complex nature of partnerships in action. These examples offer insight into how to implement successful partnerships where there is a common understanding, genuine reciprocity, and a desire to think outside the corporate benefits to consider a higher moral and cultural imperative with a focus on outreach and the development of citizenship.

The importance of school-university partnerships between universities and schools is becoming widely recognised with the purpose and function of such partnerships rapidly evolving (Burton & Greher, 2007). Moving beyond transactional relationships between universities and schools focused solely on the provision of professional experience, progressive models of school university partnerships are driven by innovation and transformation and in many cases able to make a marked impact on society. But this approach is not widespread. Shifting from a one-dimensional transactional relationship to a transformational partnership which values each perspective, takes concerted effort over a sustained period of time.

What we have learned by drawing these papers together from a diverse range of school-university partnerships is that success requires investment from all partners. Partnerships that are driven solely by universities set the tone of the partnership and limit the opportunity for a mutually enriching alliance arising from a shared vision and approach. If we look back over time, partnerships between schools and universities more broadly have served to bridge the practice theory divide which is fundamental in the provision of quality initial teacher education, however this limited view of partnerships may in fact be causing us to miss a fundamental driver that could be the key to successful sustainable partnerships. Moving beyond traditional notions limited to providing placements for pre-service teachers, contemporary understandings of the potential of school-university partnerships opens a myriad of benefits for both schools and universities and society more broadly.

The objectives and approaches that are captured in this symposium challenge us to think about the purpose and sustainability of school-university partnerships and the opportunities to shift from a transactional partnership to one on collaboration, reciprocity, the opportunity for co-design and the ability to impact on multiple levels. Within this symposium, we draw together international scholarship on policy-informed school-university partnerships from across the globe, each paper presenting an in-depth understanding of the policy context and initial teacher education reform agenda which defines their partnership model.

This paper speaks to a novel partnership that was facilitated by Central Queensland University (CQUniversity) through the STEM Central facility, funded through an industry and working alongside schools in the aim to support the learning and teaching of STEM with Indigenous children and their families in the Gladstone region. STEM Central is a purpose-built space for collaboration and research-based learning located at CQUniversity Gladstone Marina campus. Gladstone has Queensland’s largest multi-commodity shipping port, and is home to industries including the world’s largest alumina refineries and a unique combination of large resources industries and the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef provide a niche context for local and contextual science learning experiences to be developed and partnerships to be fostered. There is substantial international and national research that has reinforced the requirement for investment in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and research. STEM education must be relevant, engaging, and innovative to ensure that future generations are well equipped to face an increasingly competitive global economy as new technologies and industries emerge. The core focus of the Buraligim Weiber (place of learning in Gooreng Gooreng) program is to improve linkages to local resources, and to improve engagement, interest and attendance of Indigenous students in Year 3 and Year 4 (7 – 9-year-old) through an innovative Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education program. The program was co-designed, developed and delivered with educators, First Nations people, university, industry and community and has a focus on connection to country through the land and the sea. Within the design and development of this school-university-industry partnership, multiple stakeholder groups provided insight and advice relevant to each of their organisation. Working across a diverse range of stakeholders brought individual expertise that encouraged the inclusion of diverse perspectives in the program’s design. To understand the impact of this partnership, semi-structured interviews of those involved in the development and implementation of the program were conducted. This included the facilitators, school leadership and members of the Gladstone Indigenous community. This paper presents an overview of the development and initial implementation of the Buraligim Weiber program in Gladstone, regional Queensland, and discusses the associated successes, challenges and insights that arose throughout the process of implementation.

Cameron, R., Lewis, J., & Pfeiffer, L. (2014). The FIFO Experience: A Gladstone Case Study. Australian Bulletin of Labour. 40(2), 221-241. Fitzgerald, A., Pfeiffer, L., & Hauesler, C. Eds. (2020). STEM Education in Primary Classrooms: Unravelling Contemporary Approaches in Australia and New Zealand. Routledge Miller, P. M., & Hafner, M. M. (2008). Moving toward dialogical collaboration: A critical examination of a university—school—community partnership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(1), 66-110. Timms, M., Moyle, K., Weldon, P., & Mitchell, P. (2018). Challenges in STEM learning in Australian schools. Australian Council for Educational Research. Tytler R., Symington D., Williams G., White P. (2018) Enlivening STEM education through school-community partnerships. In: R., Jorgensen, K., Larkin (Eds) STEM Education in the Junior Secondary. Springer. Queensland Government. (2020). New centre an investment in Rockhampton’s future. Department of Tourism, Innovation and Sport. https://www.dtis.qld.gov.au/news/latest-news/articles/2020/september/new-centre-an-investment-in-rockhamptons-future Zetlin, A. G., & Macleod, E. (1995). A school-university partnership working toward the restructure of an urban school and community. Education and Urban Society, 27(4), 411-420.

Scotland has a population of around 5.46 million.The country has a mature educational infrastructure which includes: university provision of all initial teacher education as well as Master-level provision for continuing teacher education; local authorities which employ teachers and also provide continuing professional development for teachers; a school inspectorate; an independent regulator – known as the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS); teacher trades unions as well as other professional bodies serving the needs of teachers and head teachers. Education is one of the most important issues over which Scotland, one of the constituent nations of the UK has complete control in its devolved Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh (inter alia Redford 2013). The partnership model of teacher education at the University of Glasgow became an enabling structure for two key Scottish Government policy objectives: professionalizing initial teacher education as recommended in Teaching Scotland’s Future (Donaldson, 2011) and closing the poverty-related attainment gap through the Scottish Attainment Challenge (2015). The partnership model anticipated the need for sites of teacher education to co-exist in a mutually beneficial relationship for staff in both universities and schools. The model, ever-changing, has evolved to respond to the need for teachers within the Scottish context who are able to create pedagogical approaches which will support the narrowing of the poverty-related attainment gap. The school-university partnership is funded by the Scottish Government and operated by the University of Glasgow and Glasgow City Council (the local authority which employs teachers). The project developed into a mature relationship between the university and 10 local authorities. The curriculum for the practicum partnership comprised both classroom experience, intellectual engagement with appropriate literature, peer and staff observations, learning conversations and a holistic assessment of student performance over the full 18 weeks school practicum. The School Experience curriculum honoured the expertise of school teachers and university lecturers as academic knowledge was considered one appropriate knowledge alongside professional knowledge which was also necessary and appropriate (Zeichner, 2010). School teachers were viewed as experts in classroom pedagogy while university lecturers were seen as having access to contemporary research on issues relating to classroom practice. The ambition of both partners was to create a robust and sustainable model of teacher education This paper will outline how the partnership came about; its structure and roles; its funding; its evaluation; and its evolution.

Bain, Y., Bruce, J. & Weir, D. (2016) ‘Changing the landscape of school/university partnership in Northern Scotland’, Professional Development in Education. Available at: https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.lib.gla.ac.uk/doi/abs/10.1080/19415257.2016.1231132 (Accessed: 30 June 2021). Boland, M. & Doherty, C. (2020) ‘Learning from practitioner enquiries.’ Scottish Council for Deans of Education. http://www.scde.ac.uk/wp- content/uploads/2020/01/UofGReport.pdf (Accessed 1 July 2021). Dickson, B. (2020) ITE Reform at the University of Glasgow: Principles, Research-basis and Implications. Wales Journal of Education, 22 (1), pp.247-270. Donaldson, G. (2011) Teaching Scotland’s future. Edinburgh, Scottish Government. General Teaching Council Scotland. (2012) Standard for career-long professional learning. Available at: http://www.gtcs.org.uk/web/FILES/the-standards/standard-for-career-long-professional-learning-1212.pdf (Accessed: 1 July 2021). Menter, I. & Hulme, M. (2008) ‘Is small beautiful? Policy‐making in teacher education in Scotland’, Teachers and Teaching, 14(4), 319–330. doi: 10.1080/13540600802037744. Redford, M. (2013) The Political Administration of Scottish Education. In: T.G.K. Bryce, W.M. Humes, D. Gillies and A. Kennedy. (Eds.), Scottish Education 4th ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (pp.153-163). Scottish Government (2020). Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020 - gov.scot. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/collections/scottish-index-of-multiple-deprivation-2020/ (Accessed: 29 June 2021). 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. doi: 10.1177/0022487109347671.

The educational reform of high school in Brazil, implemented in 2017, aimed to offer more flexibility of content and better connection to the job market in line with the needs and desires of students. To accomplish this, a common core curriculum was established in order to contemplate a flexible part, in which young people can deepen their knowledge according to their interests through formative itineraries, and the essential knowledge foreseen in the common part of the curriculum. The formative itineraries are articulated with four structuring axes: scientific research, mediation and sociocultural intervention, creative processes, and entrepreneurship (Brasil, 2017; Brasil, 2018). One of the central challenges for the success of the reform is to ensure that teachers are able to teach the new content included in the curriculum, especially those that are not part of their initial training. Brazil is a federation of 27 states that have the autonomy to implement the reform. This paper focuses on the partnership established between a public university, represented by one of its departments, and the basic education secretariat of the state of Rio de Janeiro to prepare teachers to teach entrepreneurship education. The state of Rio has 1,189 public high schools, serving 441,169 students and 43,631 teachers, of whom 97.1% have completed higher education, but have no previous training on entrepreneurship (INEP, 2022). In Brazil, it is common for partnerships between universities and schools (represented by their education secretariats) to be discontinued with changes in government, which occur every four years, or in priorities, challenging the sustainability of teacher training initiatives carried out through partnerships. Thus, this paper discusses the strategies used to ensure the sustainability of the partnership over time to complete the teacher training cycle. As well as to structure a community of practice of entrepreneurship teachers within the state of Rio de Janeiro with the capability to support the training of new teachers as well as to develop new educational materials and disseminate entrepreneurship related content throughout the network.

Brasil. (2017). Ministério da Educação – MEC. Portaria Nº 727, de 13 de Junho de 2017. Estabelece novas diretrizes, novos parâmetros e critérios para o Programa de Fomento às Escolas de Ensino Médio em Tempo Integral - EMTI. Brasil. (2018). Lei nº 13.415, de 16 de Fevereiro de 2017. Institui a Política de Fomento à Implementação de Escolas de Ensino Médio em Tempo Integral. Caetano, M. R. (2017). Relações entre o público e o privado: Influências do setor privado na gestão da educação pública. E agora?, O público e o privado, 30(1), 209–226. https://revistas.uece.br/index.php/opublicoeoprivado/article/view/2153/2262 Lackéus, M. (2015). Entrepreneurship in education: What, why, when, how. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). https://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/BGP_Entrepreneurship-in-Education.pdf Raizer, L., & Caregnato, C. E. (2019). Secondary education in Brazil: A system that persists in social reproduction. Journal of the Brazilian Sociological Society, 5(2), 92–106. https://www.sbsociologia.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/8-Secondary-Education-in-Brazil-a-system-that-persists-in-social-reproduction.pdf Silvestre, H., Marques, R., & Gomes, R. (2018). Joined-up government of utilities: A meta-review on a public-public partnership and inter-municipal cooperation in the water and wastewater industries. Public Management Review, 20(4), 607–631. Vergara, D., Paredes-Velasco, M., Chivite, C., & Fernández-Arias, P. (2020). The challenge of increasing the effectiveness of learning by using active methodologies. Sustainability, 12(20), 2–16. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12208702

Within the Scottish education system, initial teacher education (ITE) is based within universities, who work closely in partnership with schools and teachers across Scotland to offer the practicum element of the first stage of teacher education, normally a Professional Graduate or Postgraduate Diploma in Education comprising 18 weeks of on campus study and 18 weeks of practicum. In the last decade, there was a diversification of approaches to the partnership aspect of university initial teacher education (ITE) in Scotland from this standard 36-week model. Beginning in academic session 2017/18, the Scottish Government supported a range of new or ‘alternative’ university-based routes into teaching in Scotland (Scottish Government, 2020). Emerging through the ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’ report in 2011, concerns over shortages in particular geographical locations and subjects motivated this support for more diverse approaches. A University of Dundee model, funded for a three-year pilot beginning in January 2018, offered a route into teaching in secondary schools in Chemistry, Computing, Home Economics, Mathematics or Physics. This Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) (secondary) with supported induction route (the ‘SIR’) was founded on multi-layered partnership across the development and implementation: with Scottish Government and the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), local authorities and the schools and teachers within them, and with former students whose voices shaped the SIR and its implementation. This integral partnership work was intended to create a sustainable partnership model, to build on the knowledge and expertise of school-based teacher educators alongside that of university-based teacher educators and wider system partners. In this paper, we will reflect upon this innovative partnership approach and some of the data that was derived from the research which accompanied the pilot. Challenges of creating sustained partnership in the Scottish context will be explored as we consider the learning and experiences of students, school-based and university-based teacher educators and wider partners involved in the three-year pilot.

Beck, A., & Adams, P. (2020). The Donaldson Report, Partnership and Teacher Education. In R. Shanks (Ed.), Teacher Preparation in Scotland (pp. 63-78). Emerald Publishing Limited. Boath, L. (2019). Children's aspirations and perceptions of science learning beyond the teacher-led. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin. http://www.tara.tcd.ie/handle/2262/86036 Campbell, L. (2019). Pedagogical bricolage and teacher agency: towards a culture of creative professionalism. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(1), 31-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1425992 Cochran-Smith, M., Villegas, A. M., Abrams, L., Chavez-Moreno, L., Mills, T., & Stern, R. (2015). Critiquing teacher preparation research: an overview of the field, Part II. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2). doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.gla.ac.uk/10.1177/0022487114558268 Jasman, A. (2009). A critical analysis of initial teacher education policy in Australia and England: past, present and possible futures. Teacher Development, 13(4), 321-333. https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530903578264 Lundy, L., & McEvoy, L. (2011, 09). Children’s rights and research processes: Assisting children to (in)formed views. Childhood, 19(1), 129-144. doi: 10.1177/0907568211409078 Murphy, C. (2016). Coteaching in Teacher Education: Innovative Pedagogy for Excellence. Northwich: Critical Publishing. Scottish Government. (2020). Alternative Routes into Teaching. Retrieved 17 May 2021, from https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2020/02/alternative-routes-into-teaching-february-2020/documents/alternatives-routes-into-teaching-february-2020/alternatives-routes-into-teaching-february-2020/govsc Smith, I. (2010). Reviewing Scottish Teacher Education for the 21st Century: Let Collaborative Partnership Flourish. Scottish Educational Review, 42(2), 33-56. Retrieved 05 21, 2021, from https://www.scotedreview.org.uk/media/microsites/scottish-educational-review/documents/312.pdf