Equal partnerships have been one of the Norwegian government`s fundamental strategies in improving both TEs and schools and making the TE more relevant for the teacher students (Lærerutdanning 2025, 2017). Leadership of the different partnership arrangements is enhanced in policy documents, however guidelines on how to carry out the leadership of partnerships are more general and somewhat normative (Hermansen & Mausethagen, 2023). In addition, leadership in TE is increasingly influenced by more superior and less detailed steering, but often replaced by other, more locally based frameworks, such as funding and organization (Ekspertgruppen om styring av lærerutdanningene, 2023). One of many challenges in partnerships is the interactions between different levels of governance (Baumfield & Butterworth, 2007), such as different leaders within the TE interacting with actors from the practice field such as teachers, school leaders and school organisers. This study investigates partnerships in TE from a leadership perspective. I seek to understand how leaders operationalise leadership within the partnership context. More specifically, I ask the following research questions:

What characterizes leadership strategies in partnership in the TE?

How do institutional practices influence the leaders` boundary work?

Lillejord & Børte`s (2016) research mapping about partnerships in teacher education and argue for strategic, competent, academic leadership in the line of establishing, facilitation and innovation associated with relational productive learning between the partners. To secure productive learning between the partners, Taylor et al. (2014) suggest breaking down hierarchies and co-establishing of a community of knowledge containing distributed and shared authority, responsibility and agency. However, co-establishing a community of knowledge will only succeed through democratic pedagogical partnership (Farrell, 2021). The democratic pedagogical partnerships is challenged when leaders are establishing goals for the partnership with school organisers from the municipalities and not the teachers or the principal (Benerdal & Westman, 2023). Since equal partnerships is a normative term and calls for negotiations (Hermansen & Mausethagen, 2023), it ultimately becomes a matter of whose question will be heard and raised (Benerdal & Westman, 2023). According to Daza et al. (2021) these ongoing negotiations deal with goals, roles, identities and language where all voices need to be included. The question is how leaders work on including all voices to meet the partnership expectations.  

To provide a deeper understanding of the complex contexts the leaders manoeuvre within and across, it might be helpful to use the analytical terms institutional practices (Hedegaard, 2014) and boundary work (Langley et al., 2019; Liu, 2015). Institutional practices refer to historically, socially situated and established patterns of behaviour (Hedegaard, 2014; Hermansen, 2020). Using institutional practices as an analytical framework might provide a broader understanding of the TE as a historical and traditionally developed institution and this study focuses on how the leaders are influenced by three different institutional practices: governmental, epistemic and organisational practices (Hedegaard, 2014; Hermansen, 2020; Hermansen & Mausethagen, 2023).

When leaders cross own institutional boundaries (Tuomi-Gröhn et al., 2003) to engage with schools, the analytical term boundary work might provide a deeper understanding of the complexity in establishing partnerships across institutional boundaries (Risan, 2023). Langley (2019) suggests that boundary work is a three-part concept: competitive boundary work, which explains establishing and maintaining boundaries, collaborative boundary work where boundaries are negotiated and re-established to enable cooperation, and configurative boundary work explaining when organisational structures are influenced by external boundaries. Moreover, Liu (2015) argues that boundary work can take different shapes, boundary making, boundary making and boundary blurring. Since the Norwegian policy documents give the leaders flexibility to establish equal partnerships, boundary blurring (Liu, 2015) stands out as an important analytical term since it refers to blurring existing social boundaries.

This study is based on a group interview and observations of two leaders in a larger TE in Norway and were carried out from 2023 to 2024.Group interview was chosen to bring out in-depth descriptions (Tracy, 2010) of leadership strategies in the partnership and to produce more descriptions through dialogue than individual interviews can provide (Flick, 2018). Semi-structured interview guide was used, and the interview was recorded, transcribed and went on for 45-60 minutes. This study includes observations to get an insight of the work in situ (Silverman, 2014). Observations as a method can provide information about what the leaders do in addition to what they say they do (Jerolmack & Khan, 2014). The data material in this article consists of 18 hours of observations from several partnership meetings. Due to unpredictable time schedules, one leader was observed less than the other. The observations took place from the front row in the corner with notes on a PC. The focus in the notes was what kind of language they used in leading the partnership activities. Reflections and interpretations were separated from the rest of notes and were investigated and transcribed immediately after each observation in addition to a log consisting of descriptions of the action, own impressions and overarching reflections related to the research aim. Throughout the analytical process a reflexive and abductive approach with critical examination was chosen to investigate own interpretations (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2018) and to ensure openness for the surprising and the unexpected. During the analytical work an overarching thematic division (Braun & Clarke, 2022) was developed. The data have been read and discussed multiple times, also called “revisiting data” (Berger, 2015). The data has been coded and grouped in themes influenced by the research questions and the analytical terms connected to leadership strategies. For example, when the leaders were talking about how they plan the different activities and approaches or when actions in meetings illustrate planning, it was coded as facilitation. The findings are presented in three themes: facilitations, negotiations and networking. The researcher has discussed analysis with other researchers and colleagues and received input and suggestions during the process. To ensure validity and reliability, preliminary findings have been presented and received informal peer review (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015) at conferences and research group meetings. Preliminary analysis has been presented several research communities (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015; Lincoln & Guba, 2000).

The data in this study have been coded and grouped into three overarching themes: facilitations, negotiations and networking. These themes demonstrate leadership strategies and show how institutional practices influence the leaders` boundary work in operationalising the partnership expectations. The informants highlight individual, customised approach as their overarching facilitation strategy when they cross institutional boundaries. The leaders ground their approach in epistemic practices while arranging meetings and talk about collective outcome and experience sharing as boundary blurring. The customised approach led to ongoing negotiations within, and outside own institution and the leaders are challenged by historical and traditionally developed institutional practices. The analysis show that recruitment of future teachers might be a motivation, especially towards more sceptical school organisers when negotiating the approach. By sharing good examples and “fighting upwards, the leaders negotiate the epistemic and organisational practices in the institution to blur the boundaries between the TE and the schools. To negotiate the customised approach and to break down hierarchies including all voices, the leaders rely on their networking skills to get closer to the schools TE and networking experiences influence the organisational practices in own institutions. However, they call for the ability to cooperate more strategically with other TEs since there are multiple institutions involved in different partnership arrangements and activities. This study shows that working together with schools on the students` pre-service teacher training and master thesis appears promising, however the leaders are challenged by somewhat conflicting institutional practices such as what counts as knowledge. The process of developing a common language in the partnership is evolving, but further research is needed on how partnership knowledge is distributed and implemented in the TE.

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