University-based initial teacher education (ITE) has been accused of as inefficient in preparing capable teachers for decades. The long-standing theory-practice dichotomy, or “the two-worlds pitfall” (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985), has led to the historical dispute on “where to prepare teachers”. In face of the mounting criticism, and to overcome the disparity or discontinuity between ITE and the teacher career (Korthagen et al., 2006; Wetzel et al., 2018), policymakers and practitioners across the world have turned to school-university partnerships (hereafter partnerships) as part of the solution. There are advocates who firmly believe that the “workplace learning”, or “on-the-job” training offered by partnerships could help integrate university courses and school realities so as to get teacher candidates better prepared.

The call for partnerships has gained momentum since the 1980s and 1990s among western countries. Under the influence of globalization, knowledge marketization and the increasingly predominant accountability culture, it became part of the “teacher quality” agenda. (Edwards et al., 2009) Although they take different shapes and are under various names in different countries – for example, Professional Development Schools (PDSs) in the U.S. (Holmes Group, 1986, 1990), mandatory school placement in the U.K. (DfE, 1992), or teaching practice school in Australia (see Department of Education, Victoria, 1999 as an example), they share one thing in common: that the responsibility of teacher preparation has been redistributed, and the K-12 schools are bearing more and more significant roles.

However, partnerships could be rather problematic in practice. In fact, they are highly contextualized, and there is no standardized answer for how partnerships should be enacted in terms of its length and depth, forms and contents. Several types of partnership practices – mediated instruction, extended placements, hybrid teacher educators, bringing school staff into the university setting, and community knowledge – are said to facilitate student teachers’ (STs) learning in different ways (Zeichner, 2010). When unfolding the partnerships, a major issue noticed by teacher education researchers is the asymmetrical power relationship between the university and the school, which might impede the diversity or multiplicity of voices and inhibit dialogue among the three parties (UT, MT and ST) on an equal footing. (Edwards & Tsui, 2009)

Researchers have also pointed out gaps in the study of partnerships, such as weakness in research methodology (mainly using self-report data), and insufficient evidence of the learning process of both student teachers and teacher educators. More importantly, there is a lack of systematic examination of how the specific implementation or enactment of partnerships have shaped student teachers’ learning, such as their knowledge, skills or performances. Although a number of literature reviews (Daza et al., 2021; Green et al., 2020; Hunt, 2014; Smedley, 2001; Yendol-Hoppey & Franco, 2014) comprehensively answered the question of “what works and what does not in partnerships”, they seldom take up the “outcome” question, in other words, what and how well student teachers learn to teach in these partnerships, and whether their learning could be facilitated or impeded by the aforementioned components of partnerships. 

Therefore, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) procedures (Moher et al.2009), this study aims to systematically review the empirical evidence reported worldwide in the last decade (2011-2020) on this relationship. The key research questions are:

RQ1: What types of school-university partnership have been developed worldwide in 2010-2020?

RQ2: What do student teachers learn (as indicated by change in dispositions, knowledge, performances) in those school-university partnerships?

To form the literature pool, several databases – ERIC, Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus formed the sources of literature. They were chosen for they are commonly used for educational studies, and that their collections are relatively comprehensive and of high quality. As this study focuses on what student teachers learn in partnership settings, in each database, we used Boolean search and input queries as AB = school university partnership AND AB = (“teacher education” OR “teacher preparation” OR “teacher learning” OR “preservice teachers” OR “pre-service teachers” OR “student teachers”). When searching, the time span was set between Jan.1st,2011and Dec.31st,2020. Abstracts of the articles were searched because they usually contain the main ideas of the study. After the initial search,445entries were found in total. We then downloaded basic information such as title, author and abstract into a Microsoft Excel file for further screening. Three rounds of screening were applied to narrow down the scope of review to our research questions. In the first round, the duplicates were removed so that 211 entries remained. At the same time, we went through all abstracts of the 211 pieces to determine whether the focus of the studies was on student teachers’ learning in partnerships. Those concerned only with the overall designs of partnerships, teacher educators’ roles and responsibilities in partnerships, or the related policy issues were screened out. As a result,135entries were included. In the second round, we reread all abstracts to locate empirical studies that report the learning gains of student teachers in their findings. Therefore, qualitative, quantitative as well as mixed-methods works were remained (n=98). In the third round, we engaged in the careful examination of full texts, and further deleted 31 studies deemed irrelevant or not rigorous enough. Eventually, 67 pieces of work remained as the object of this review, containing 58 journal articles, 7 book chapters, 1 doctoral dissertation and 1 entire book. Throughout the process, the two authors co-decided whether to keep an entry or not to guarantee inter-rater reliability. The coding process of this study mainly followed an inductive manner. Besides descriptive data, to answer RQ1, we went through all the reported program interventions situated in the partnerships. Themes such as “power relationship” and “reflection” emerged from bottom up, leading to constant comparisons until similarities and differences were drawn. For RQ2, we applied the classic categorization of teachers’ learning outcomes – dispositions, knowledge, and performance to inform our coding.

This review first identified different types of partnerships implemented worldwide. Both differences and similarities were observed among reviewed studies. On the one hand, all partnerships differ in their names, durations, locations, as well as their detailed arrangements and nuanced power relationships. On the other hand, there are also a few common characteristics shared by all ITE programs. The first similarity lies in that all partnerships are embodied in the learning activities of STs (be it school-based or university-based). The second similarity of reviewed partnerships is the wide range of tools employed by teacher educators to facilitate STs’ learning to teach in these activities (e.g., learning journals). Among all activities and tools, two common core elements could be distinguished: reflection and dialogue. For RQ2, we also synthesized changes in student teachers’ dispositions, knowledge and performances from 67 studies. While plenty of positive changes took place as expected by practitioners, there were also occasions when unexpected, negative changes occur. To start with, for changes in dispositions, one common conclusion is that the conflicting discourses between the university and the school could bring troublesome outcomes for STs’ development of beliefs, values or identities. However, not all stories are pessimistic – there are also studies documenting growth of STs’ agency, identity and resilience. Secondly, partnerships are viewed as “knowledge processes” or “knowledge relationships” – studies focus on various aspects of knowledge, such as subject matter knowledge or knowledge of learners. In terms of performance, it seems that the more opportunities STs get to conduct classroom teaching and reflect on it afterwards, the quicker they develop relevant skills. Although STs get more exposure to practice in their field experiences, they are still peripherally participating in school communities, which is why evidence of their teaching performance is not as rich as the previous two aspects.

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