Partnerships in education, particularly between universities and schools, are considered valuable spaces and opportunities for the intersection of different forms of expertise and for the improvement of teaching practice and learning outcomes, professional learning and school cultures, as well as for fostering learning communities and educational research (Avalos 2011; McLaughlin 2006; Postholm 2012; Tsui, Edwards and Lopez-Real 2009). Such partnerships can have diverse configurations, purposes, foci, actors, working dynamics, settings and resources. From an ecological perspective, every partnership is unique and there is no standard blueprint, although they may have general common traits and manifestations (Brisard, Menter and Smith 2005).

Many of such partnerships are based on the idea of collaboration between researchers, sometimes acting as external mediators (Avalos 2011), and schoolteachers in order to surpass the divide between pedagogy and research, this being considered a crucial step to educational and research innovation (Desgagné 1997; Tavignot and Buhot 2010). Particularly in the context of plurilingual and intercultural education, which calls for a more integrative perspective of languages and language teaching, partnerships based on collaborative practices between schoolteachers, and between them and researchers become even more decisive.

Based on this perspective, the project “Towards a Didactics of Plurilingualism in the school context: dynamics of collaboration university-school in the construction of a professional learning community” (SFRH / BPD / 68427 / 2010) was the context for establishing a partnership between a Portuguese university and a local Secondary school, which involved an academic researcher and the school’s Language Department. Two intertwined layers can be pointed out to this partnership:  (i) as the study by Meirink et al. (2010) illustrates, the organization of subject departments in schools does not ensure that teachers will naturally work collaboratively. Therefore, and firstly, one of the partnership’s purposes was to open up the opportunity for the development of a professional learning community within the school’s language department, involving not only the schoolteachers, but also the researcher. The aim was to foster and understand the conditions for creating such a community within a university-school partnership; (ii) secondly, the core dynamics of the community was the exploratory development of interdisciplinary projects in the area of plurilingual and intercultural education, involving all languages taught in school (Portuguese, French, English and Spanish). Associated to this was the intent to understand how the language department could create a more language-friendly environment at school and in the classroom.

Yet, establishing partnerships and communities like this one poses many challenges (see McLaughlin & Talbert 2006 about the topic). Bearing in mind the story of the project so far, this paper will describe in detail the methodological protocol for the partnership and its collaborative scenario and dynamics, in order to provide some answers to following research questions: What are the factors that support and hinder the construction of a professional learning community within a university-school partnership towards a plurilingual and intercultural education? Based on those factors, what are the challenges and conditions for its future success? Which strategies can be designed to meet such challenges?

Avalos, B. (2011). Teacher professional development in Teaching and Teacher Education over ten year. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27, 10-20. Desgagné, S. (1997). Le concept de recherche collaborative : l’idée d’un rapprochement entre chercheurs universitaires et praticiens enseignants. Revue des sciences de l’éducation, XXIII(2), 371-393. Bardin, L. (2000). Análise de conteúdo. Lisboa: Edições 70 (trad., L’analyse de contenu). Blanchet, Ph. & Chardenet, P. (dir.) (2011). Guide pour la recherche en didactique des langues et des cultures. Approches contextualisées. AUF, EAC. Brisard, E., Menter, I. and Smith, I. (2005). Models of partnership in programmes of initial teacher education. Full report. Research Publication no.2, September 2005. General Teaching Council Scotland. Cochran-Smith, M & Demers, K. (2008). How do we know what we know? In M. Cochran-Smith, A. Feiman-Nemser, D. McIntyre & M. Demers (eds.), Handbook of Research on Teacher Education. Enduring Questions in Changing Contexts (pp. 1009-1016). Third edition. NY: Routledge. McLaughlin, C. (2006). Stories from Schools-University Partnership for Educational Research. Taylor and Francis. McLaughlin, M. & Talbert, J (2006). Building school-based teacher learning communities. New York/London: TCP. Meirink, J., Imants, J., Meijer, P. & Verloop, N. (2010). Teacher learning and collaboration in innovative teams. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(2), 161-181. Postholm, M. (2012). Teachers’ professional development: a theoretical review. Educational Research, 54(4), 405-429. Tavignot, P. & Buhot, E. (2010). Collaboration entre équipes d’école et chercheurs. Éducation & Formation, e-293, 38-45. Tsui, A., Edwards, G. & Lopez-Real, F. (2009). Learning in school-university partnerships: Sociocultural perspectives. Routledge.