The aim of this paper is to provide for an understanding of a university-school partnership as an important aspect of teachers professional development.

In the last decade, schools have been more and more subject to globalization and there has been a trend towards increased interest in measuring the quality of schools and thereby also of teaching. In this context, teachers professional development has also been subject to consideration, different perspectives has been brought forth for understanding  teacher professional development (Helleve, 2010). And the power of a bottom-up, long-term, reflective, differential, contextualized, collaborative, and pedagogical approach related models of teacher professional development has been stressed (Hargreaves, 2006; Villegas-Reimers, 2003). One important trend has been to consider how teachers develop in their practice, during teacher education and beyond, in their work alone or with colleagues. In this paper, one attempt to create collegial bounds between teachers education students, teacher educators and teachers is investigated. Focus in the paper is on teachers working in teacher education whilst still being active in schools, working as supervisors of student practicum periods and trying to provide the practical aspects of an otherwise theoretical teacher education.

The faculty board of the teacher education at Mid Sweden University has initiated two kinds of enterprises to provide for a university-school partnership in relation to student teachers practicum periods. One is called didactical networks, and consists of student teachers, teacher educators and teachers in different subjects, organized in subject specific networks. The other initiative is related to specific practicum periods and is called clinical seminars, seminars in which student teachers, teacher educators and teachers discuss in seminars different aspects of knowledge related to teacher education courses as well as to teachers work and teaching. The underlying idea is that the different parts should form and work as learning communities (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) helping the student teachers towards a better understanding of the teaching practice. But these initiatives are also important for the teachers acting as supervisors during the practicum periods. In this paper it is explored how these initiatives also can be seen as points of departure for teachers professional development and important means for reflecting on the teaching practice for the involved teachers.

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