Researchers and policy makers have long advocated the importance of school-university partnerships in improving initial teacher education and bridging the research theory nexus. Across countries such as Scotland, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, Federal policy makers have made significant inroads in developing national program standards for the provision of initial teacher education and within this reform agenda, have been able to establish clear benchmarks in practice. Amongst these program level standards is a focus on school-university partnerships. Conventionally limited to a site for professional experience, schools have now become an extension of the university to become essential alliances.

This paper draws together key themes emerging from a two-year project focussed on identifying and analysing examples of school university partnerships from across the globe including Brazil, Vietnam, Scotland, New Zealand, US, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Switzerland, Philippines, Italy and Australia. Drawing on examples of school-university partnerships from across six continents and three Australian states, we identify the differences in approaches, challenges and untapped opportunities that have become visible to us as we worked with scholars to explore the sustainability of school-university partnerships within initial teacher education.

Our project sought to examine the following questions:

1. Do school-university partnerships have the potential to transcend organisational and contextual boundaries and present a broader view of the powerful potential of schools and initial teacher education providers when working together?
2. Can school-university partnerships driven by community needs, work together to address social problems, motivated by civic purpose?

The connecting threads of these partnerships and emergent collective themes explore the importance of autonomy, boundary crossing roles and open and fluid communication. The authors discuss the significance of these themes within a policy reform agenda focussed on promoting, sustaining, and safeguarding school university partnerships for the future.

This project commenced in 2020, with a desire to explore school-university partnerships from around the world. Globally, we have collected examples of school-university partnerships from across six continents which have been collated into two edited volumes (Bradbury & Acquaro, 2022; Acquaro & Bradbury, 2023 forthcoming). Our work has allowed us to understand the driving forces behind the genesis of these partnerships and the strategies they employed to support the needs of each stakeholder group inherent in the partnership design. Using thematic analysis, we identified differences in approaches, challenges and untapped opportunities that have become visible. Within this paper, we consider our findings in relation to school-university partnerships and draw links to Caldwell and Harris (2008) and their theory that includes three kinds of alignment within leadership approaches in autonomous and transformational schools. We then utilise Caldwell and Harris’s (2008) first alignment in the study of school transformation to analyse our findings.

In working with twenty writing teams, it became evident that the purpose of school-university partnerships differed, amongst each group. Aside from the practical benefits to be garnered from a school-university partnership including improving the quality of ITE, and safeguarding placements; benefits could be seen more broadly through increased capacity of mentors, improvement in in-service teacher practices through professional development and broad ranging community benefits resulting from service learning or community outreach projects. Partnerships ranged in size and approach with some emerging organically through a community need, whilst others resulting from government incentives. Our work identified varied approaches and in many cases significant impact on societal outcomes. For example, in a large school-university partnership in Brazil, whose joint efforts resulted in system-wide curriculum restructuring across Rio de Janeiro to include entrepreneurial curriculum and associated teacher-training to support this change. Partnerships within Scotland and the United States of America, responded to teacher shortages and alternate routes into teaching. States including Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales also provided us with insight into the design and delivery of varied approaches to school-university partnerships in their respective contexts. In response to policy and government review of rural and remote state schools in Queensland, stakeholder experiences, particularly those of pre-service teachers, were examined which included their knowledge and understanding of rural and remote contexts. What became increasingly apparent from exploring these partnerships was that each had a driving force, a team at the helm, working to design a vision, mission and road map toward sustainability and perhaps transformation within each model. Successful partnerships were evidenced through shared leadership representing both schools and the university. Policy mandates and financial incentives in many instances initiated partnerships; however the challenge of developing sustainable models not reliant on government financial support remains a key concern in the formation of enduring partnerships.

Acquaro, D. & Bradbury, O.J., (eds) (in print) International Perspectives on School-University Partnerships: Research, Policy and Practice. Springer. Bradbury, O.J., & Acquaro, D. (eds) (2022). School-University Partnerships—Innovation in Initial Teacher Education. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5057-5_7 Caldwell, B. J. (2016). Professional autonomy, school innovation and student achievement in the 21st century. Australian Educational Leader, 38(4), 9-13. Caldwell, B.J., & Harris, J.L. (2008). Why not the best schools? ACER Press. Day, C., Gu, Q., Townsend, A., & Holdich, C. (2021). School-university partnerships in action : The promise of change. Routledge. Herbert, S., Redman, C., & Speldewinde, C. (2018). Sustaining school–university partnerships: threats, challenges and critical success factors. In L. Hobbs, C Campbell & M. Jones (Eds.) School-based partnerships in teacher education (pp. 169–189). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1795-8_9