The national strategy for quality and collaboration in teacher education, Teacher Education 2025 (Ministry of Education and Research, 2017), highlights the importance of establishing stable and mutually beneficial partnerships between teacher education institutions and the early childhood education sector. One area of focus in the strategy is to strengthen practical training and research collaboration through preschool-university partnerships and the establishment of teacher education kindergartens.

University of Agder, UiA, has since 2019 worked in partnership with 3 kindergartens in the surrounding area. These kindergartens are partners in the project “Pilot Lærerutdannings-barnehager” (Pilot Teacher education Kindergartens). Within this partnership, UiA has chosen to focus on the knowledge area of Leadership, Collaboration, and Development (LSU) in the 6^th semester, which is the last semester of the early childhood education teacher training program. Teachers from this knowledge area at UiA are central to the partnership with the teacher education kindergartens.

The guidelines for early childhood education teacher training (DMER, 2018) emphasize the importance of practical studies in transforming a student into a professional. The guidelines also focus on the vital role of practice in ensuring students' progress concerning pedagogical leadership. In the students’ practical period in the 6^th semester, guidance and supervision are important for achieving these goals. This is the last practical period before students go out into the “real world” and take on full responsibility as educators in kindergartens.

Previous endeavors have focused on supervision from a broad perspective or emphasized particular aspects of the kindergartens professional's role (e.g., parent-teacher collaboration and learning environments). The current project has a more targeted focus, formulated in a supervision plan for all teachers involved in the project. This intervention is aimed at creating more meaningful goals for supervision. Bordin (1983) argues that a shared understanding of these goals is necessary. Unclear goals provide a poor basis for cooperation in the supervision context and contribute to the dialog being characterized by “casual talk” and a lack of progression. This weakens the student’s experience of being met and understood (Bordin, 1983).

The purpose of the intervention is to see whether participants more easily identify themselves in the role of kindergarten teacher educators in cooperation with the university. Pedagogical leadership is a central theme in the supervision plan, and the project will aim to strengthen students’ development of their own leadership role in the 6^th semester of the kindergarten teacher training program. Our aim is to co-create and develop a model of supervision methods “tailored” towards three core areas of LSU:

1. Leadership. Strengthening the supervision towards the student’s own leadership role.
2. Cooperation. Strengthening supervision of students’ leadership of cooperation in the preschool.
3. Development. Focus on the ability to lead pedagogical development.

The project is based on an action research design (Moran, 2007) in combination with qualitative focus group interviews. Action research is fundamentally about creating change and contributing to the somewhat ambitious goal of encouraging people and their communities to flourish. For our project, the primary goal is to make a contribution to improving the quality and development of supervision in kindergarten teacher training practices. In addition, it is important in an action research project that the participants find their contributions to be meaningful, and that they carry out the change they are intended to implement. It is therefore important for us to work together with the kindergarten teachers to find an overarching meaning, and overarching goals, within the project (Moran, 2007; Reason & Bradbury, 2001). After the practical period in February 2023, we will conduct qualitative focus group interviews in five kindergarten settings. The aim is to obtain the kindergarten teachers’ experiences in the project. The questions will focus on participants’ firsthand experiences with supervision during the period. In line with Reason and Bradbury (2001), we have an overall goal of creating meaningful changes, and quality improvements that are experienced as meaningful by the participants in the project. Therefore, an important feature of the planned focus group interviews will be to discuss the experience of meaning in connection with the LSU approach. This project links into a Nordic tradition of collaborative action research, with underlying values of democracy and equality. Based on these values, the partnership between the university and the participating kindergartens aims to uphold a strong equality between researchers and practitioners. In our partnership, there is a narrative built upon the premise that the kindergartens are an equal partner in educating teachers. Action researcher in this context involves both acting in the role as an academic researcher, and as a facilitator of professional development (Olin et al., 2016). This possibly poses the classical problem of an action researcher, being too close to a situation, making it difficult to obtain the necessary analytical distance. However, it could also be stated that it is impossible to understand a culture or a situation if you are not a part of it (Hoel, 2000).Our objective is to keep this in mind, and to strive towards a collaborative partnership where equality is present, and still the understanding of the roles is explicit.

This kindergarten university partnership is seen as a strategy to close the gap between theoretical and practical knowledge. As the intervention is in the starting phase, we have not yet collected data concerning the results at this stage. However, in following students during their practice period (February 2021), it became apparent that there was a need to implement a more systematic approach to closing the gap between (a) the research and theory surrounding the LSU themes and (b) how these issues are understood and addressed in partner kindergartens. Through workshops with the kindergarten teachers, collaboration in the workgroup of the pilot project, and through testing and exploring different supervision methods our action research approach revealed these weaknesses. The presentation will elaborate on this process, efforts towards the revised collaborative, activities, and results of the qualitative focus group interviews described above.

Bordin, E.S. (1983). A working alliance-based model of supervision. Counseling Psychologist, 11(1), 35-42. Directorate for the Ministry of Education and Research (2018). National guidelines for early childhood education. Hoel, T. L. (2000). Forskning i eget Klasserom. Noen Praktisk-metodiske Dilemma av Etisk Karakter. [Research in Your Own Classrooms. Some Practical-Methodological Dilemma of Ethics Character]. Nordisk Pedagogik 20 (3): 160–170. Ministry of Education and Research (2017) Teacher Education 2025. National Strategy for Quality and Cooperation in Teacher Education. Government.no https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/larerutdanningene-2025.-nasjonal-strategi-for-kvalitet-og-samarbeid-i-larerutdanningene/id2555622/ Moran, M. J. (2007). Collaborative action research and project work: Promising practices for developing collaborative inquiry among early childhood preservice teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(4), 418-431. Olin, A., Karlberg-Granlund, G. & Furu, E.M. (2016): Facilitating democratic professional development: exploring the double role of being an academic action researcher. Education Action Research, 23:3, 424-441 Russell, C. (2021) Styrkebasert lokalsamfunnsutvikling (ABCD). I D.Heimburg og O.Ness (Red.) Aksjonsforskning. Fagbokforlaget.