School-University partnership : insights from an international doctorate program on teacher education (original) (raw)

2020, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) – University of Szeged, Hungarian-Netherlands School of Educational Management (SZTE, KÖVI)

The volume the reader has in her/his hand or reads on her/his screen is the outcome of a research project realised in 2019 in the framework of the European Doctorate in Teacher Education (EDiTE) project supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. 1 As the introduction of this book explains, EDiTE was run by a consortium of five European universities, each of them providing teacher education, and committed to develop a common doctoral program to train researchers interested in the work and education of teachers. The research program presented in this volume was initiated as part of a work package focusing on "building partnerships", coordinated by ELTE University, Budapest. It aimed at exploring the role of School-University Partnerships (SUPs) in teacher education and educational development. Cooperation between universities and schools in the field of teacher education can be interpreted as a specific form of the "knowledge triangle". 2 This kind of cooperation can provide an ideal framework for linking research, education and innovation in the education sector. Partnership relations between schools and universities can produce various beneficial outcomes. First, and most importantly, they can significantly improve the quality and relevance of university-based teacher education, making it possible for universities to provide the practical training necessary to develop the teaching skills of future teachers. Universities pretend they are capable to train teachers, and most people do not have any doubt in this, but in reality most of them are not, especially when their main mission becomes creating new theoretical knowledge. The skills to teach can be developed only through practicing these skills. Reflecting systematically and scientifically to practice is necessary but this reflection is possible only if teaching practice really occurs. This is why teacher training universities need schools as partners and take the responsibility for educating teachers in cooperation with them. SUPs can also contribute to the improvement of the work of practitioners, especially through improving their innovation, knowledge management and research capacities. Effective SUPs can lead to the emergence of "researching schools" or "professional development schools" operating as intelligent knowledge producing learning organisations. In many education systems governments try to transform schools into intelligent learning organisations, and one of the most effective ways of doing this is to connect them with universities which have always been defined as knowledge producing institutions. Teachers and schools in continuous interaction with academics wo do theoretical research have higher chances of becoming reflective professionals who are capable to see their own practice beyond the daily routines. Furthermore, SUPs can support high quality educational research as they provide stable institutional frameworks for data collections, case studies, action research initiative, classroom observations, advanced experimentations, impact assessments and other forms of research activities. In these frameworks schools may operate similarly to clinics connected with medical 1 Marie-Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement number: 676452. See the website of the EDiTE project here: http://www.edite.eu 2 See: "School-university partnership for effective teacher learning." Issues Paper for the seminar co-hosted by