The transition from solitariness to collaboration is one of educational reform initiatives (Fullan, 1991). Through enhancing interactions between professionalism and partnerships by different institutes, schools can undergo a process of unlearning and relearning (Fullan, 1991; Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992). The university-school partnership implies a dynamic process of sustained collaboration and dialogue between schools and universities in a symbiosis network of learning system (Goodlad, 1988; Pan, 2007; Schwandt & Marquardt, 2000). The partnership aims for fostering teacher professional development and bringing about the renewal of schools. 

Due to the problems of low educational qualities and decline of student population in remote schools in Taiwan, the Center for Educational Research and Evaluation (CERE) of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) had set up a project of “Evaluation for Systemic School Development (EFSSD)” in 2008. The project was expected to help schools by raising capacities of these schools for data-driven improvement. The data-driven improvement efforts include defining school problems, developing, and evaluating action plans for improvement through a partnership among the local office, university and schools. A model of cyclic actions of evaluating-diagnosing-planning-improving (EDPI) is adopted for facilitating sustainable improvement efforts. 

    This is is two-year collaborative project. The prilimary findings showed the posibilities of school inprovement in remote schools through the university-school partnership. In the pilot study, we found the input of critical resources from the local office and the university was receded and disjointed by external social contexts (the belief of the credentialism) and internal organizational cultures (departmentalism and work overload) at the early stage of the partnership. Affected by these two factors, there existed conflicts and confrontations in terms of resource delivery. However, school staffs could still regenerate limited resources into different kinds of forms into school contexts. This process of transformation and regeneration not only generate more dialogues in the school, but also attract more resources from other institutes (Lin & Chen, 2010).

    Based upon the previous findings, this paper continues on investigating participant schools regarding how the transformations and regenerations of resources affect perceptions and implementations of both institutes in the last year of this project. This paper also draws on the Activity Theory proposed by Engeström (1987) to develop a theoretical framework to examine collaborations and interactions that take place between the university and schools engaged in the joint enterprise of school improvement. Engestrom states that in the process of engaging in an activity, the motive of the activity is reconceptualized, and new forms of activity as well as culturally new patterns of activity are created. 

    Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to illuminate how the collaboration between a university and schools can be useful resource for disadvantage schools to improve schools and students’ learning. The research questions guiding this paper are: (1) What are the developing stages of the university-school partnership found? (2) What strategies are the remote schools and the university taken for school improvement? (3) How have the transformations and regenerations of resources affected perceptions and implementations of both institutes?

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