Teacher Education’s Challenge of Changing Research Relationships - With Schools - AERA Open Vol. 1 No. 4

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cart

Teacher education faces a major challenge in reshaping relationships between higher education institutions, teacher educators, and schools toward more collaborative teaching and research. This mixed-method study investigates how knowledge is developed, shared, and used when school and higher-education partners form research networks within master’s programs for in-service teachers. Using a social network perspective and cross-case analysis, the study draws on two school networks, 36 personal networks, and 124 critical incidents from logs and interviews.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages24

Reading Time1 h 0 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Teacher education partnership trends

Models for collaborative research and learning

Informal social network dimension

AERA Open October-December 2015, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 1–24 DOI: 10. 1177/2332858415617753 © The Author(s) 2015. [http://ero.sagepub.com](http://ero.sagepub.com) Teacher Education’s Challenge of Changing Research Relationships With Schools Frank Cornelissen University of Cambridge University of California San Diego Yi-Hwa Liou National Taipei University of Education Alan J. Daly University of California San Diego Jacqueline van Swet Fontys University of Applied Sciences Douwe Beijaard Theo Bergen Eindhoven University of Technology Esther T. Canrinus University of Oslo Globally, teacher education (TE) is challenged to change relationships with schools and teachers and become more collaborative in teaching and research. This study examined the way knowledge is developed, shared, and used when school and institution of higher education (IHE) partners create research networks in the context of master’s programs for in-service teachers. These knowledge processes were studied from a social network perspective and compared in two different TE contexts. During 10 months, this mixed method study obtained two school networks and 36 personal networks and 124 critical incidents from 36 individual logs and interviews. Cross-case analyses provide insight in the social network structures, interpersonal relationships, and knowledge processes among IHE’s and school’s partners as well as the challenges in developing closer research relationships in a TE context. Keywords: school-university partnership Introduction A central issue in the global debate about teacher education (TE) is the nature of the relationship between an institution of higher education (IHE) and schools (Avalos, 2011; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Furlong, Cochran-Smith, & Brennan, 2013; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2013; Zeichner, 2012) . IHEs are challenged to change their relationships with schools and teachers in teaching and research. Teacher educators are urged to extend their involvement with practitioners “on the ground” and work in closer partnership with teachers and schools (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Handscomb, Gu, & Varley, 2014; OECD, 2013) . This is reflected in two major partnership trends. First, in many countries, the trend of establishing TE programs in schools co-created by IHEs, schools, and school districts is increasing. Examples of these TE partnerships can be found in the rapidly growing alternative TE programs in the United States and the recently established Teaching Schools in the United Kingdom in which IHEs and schools collaborate on training and professional development of educators and conduct school-based research (Beauchamp, Clarke, Hulme, & Murray, 2015; Department for Education, 2013; Greany & Brown, 2015; Grossman & McDonald, 2008) . Second, school-university partnerships have been created, as reflected in professional development schools, school-university (research) partnerships, and school-university networks (Darling-Hammond, 2005; Goodlad, 1994; McLaughlin & Black-Hawkins, 2007; Sachs & Groundwater-Smith, 1999; Veugelers & O’Hair, 2005) . The recent debate in TE centers on the type of model designed for better collaborative research and learning between IHEs and schools. Efforts have primarily been made regarding the idea of (re)structuring the partnership Creative Commons CC-BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ([http://](http://)[ ](http://)[www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/](www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open)access-at-sage) . Cornelissen et al. from centered on the university to more school-centered or hybrid types (e.g., Beauchamp

FAQs

What problem in teacher education does the study focus on?

It focuses on the challenge of changing relationships between higher education institutions and schools toward more collaborative teaching and research.

How did the researchers study knowledge development in partnerships?

They examined how knowledge is developed, shared, and used through research networks, using a social network perspective and cross-case analysis.

What data sources and scope did the study use?

Over 10 months, it generated two school networks, 36 personal networks, and 124 critical incidents based on 36 individual logs and interviews.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cart