Re-thinking school–university partnerships: A Swedish case study

All trends in educational reform point away from the traditional isolation of teachers and teacher educators from their colleagues and from other stakeholders towards an increased sense of being in rather than outside the broader community. In the case of relationships between universities and schools, however, co-operation and collaboration is often complicated by their different cultures and traditions. As yet, there have been few systematic attempts to conceptualise the territory for teacher and school level development and change in relation to the sustained strategic roles which universities may play. This paper presents the results of an independent evaluation of an innovative cluster of seven partnership projects between teachers, schools, and researchers and teacher educators in a university in Sweden. It concludes that differentiated strategic partnerships are necessary in order to meet the different, ideological, generative and capacity building needs of schools and teachers.