Sustainable School-University Partnerships: Motivators for Engagement, Enablers, and Constraints

The benefits of school-university partnerships are well documented in academic literature, describing the nature and efficacy of single sites and one-off initiatives. This chapter describes the lifecycle of a multi-phased five-year school-university partnership funded by the New South Wales Department of Education. The stakeholders included a regional NSW university offering teacher education degrees, and a dual-site regional high school proximal to the university. The partnership aimed to enhance the quality of Initial Teacher Education degrees and improve the capacity of high school teachers to provide effective supervision of Initial Teacher Education students. Data were gathered from multiple stakeholders including initial teacher education students, high school teachers, and school leaders to gain diverse perspectives of the projects and their interconnections. Results were informed by interviews, university subject evaluations, reflective journals, artefacts including observation notes, project resources, and participant products. This chapter gives voice to stakeholders’ experiences including their motivations, factors enabling their engagement, and the barriers which constrained the partnership’s intentions. The chapter highlights the genuine capacity of the partnership to be sustained beyond the formal stakeholder funding, and illustrates the need for, and reciprocal benefits of, such partnerships. This chapter showcases the elements required for successful, sustainable school-university partnerships.