This chapter advocates for schools and universities to work together to create a state of policy readiness for local-level partnerships. Here, policy is defined as the formalization of norms and structures that undergird the partnership and set the conditions for a thriving and sustainable collaboration. This chapter presents several policy readiness factors for school–university partnerships (SUPs), exemplified through a case study of the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis and Indianapolis Public Schools SUP. This chapter starts with a discussion of how Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework can help school and university leaders proactively engage in the policy readiness process. Next it offers a framework for policy readiness for all levels of local school/university partnerships. Finally, it provides evidence of a long-term sustainable partnership in practice.

Randi Weingarten, tireless advocate for community schools, states, “Improving student learning and educational equity require strong, consistent, and sustained collaboration among parents, teachers, school boards, superintendents and administrators, business leaders and the community” (Weingarten, 2013). The authors of the four chapters in this section argue that institutions of higher education (IHEs) are best suited to not only be partners in such collaboratives, but to actively pursue, develop and facilitate them, including educating their staff and evaluating these efforts for success. Since the mid-1960s, colleges and universities have taken on more central roles in a wide array of community partnerships, seeing their jobs as increasingly “mission driven” (Harkavy & Puckett, 1994, p. 313). Building on the early work of John Dewey and Jane Addams, among others, and with the leadership of the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center, many universities have found community schools to be among the best ways to focus this mission for a democratic, just society.

Leadership at all levels is pivotal as school–university partnerships (SUPs) seek to cultivate a culture of collaboration. Leaders across roles – be they school principals, university faculty and administrators, or teacher leaders – act as linchpins who not only facilitate the flow of knowledge and resources between institutions, but also engender a sense of shared vision and purpose. Leadership requires navigating the complexities of differing institutional norms, aligning diverse stakeholder interests, and fostering an environment conducive to collaborative innovation. The complex endeavor of developing dynamic leadership and robust partnerships between schools and universities underscores the pivotal work of partnerships seeking simultaneous renewal. This part of the handbook includes four compelling chapters that delineate both conceptual understanding of the work of leaders as well as the practical ramifications of leadership within SUPs.

The chapters in this section represent timely and relevant research related to justice in school–university partnerships (SUPs). Each chapter frames the effect of SUPs on the adults, as school-based and university-based educators, and their effect on the quality of teaching and learning in schools. In a broad review of the literature, D. Polly and E. Colonnese’s chapter reveals patterns linking SUPs and student learning outcomes. I value their call for more robust research about equity and student learning in SUPs. Simply, we need not be afraid to conduct more research closely examining student outcomes in SUPs. The authors beckon for research that draws on more alternative methodologies (beyond descriptive approaches) to show effects on a wide variety of student learning outcomes including but not limited to student’s grades, student self-reported data, attendance data, graduation data, student behavior data, researcher or teacher created assessments.

The education landscape is rich with partnerships between K-12 schools and colleges of education (Handscomb et al., 2014). The challenges that both institutions face are daunting. These partnerships arguably do an adequate job of facilitating a set of transactional activities that both schools and universities require to perform their objective functions. Policy recommendations need to lean into places where partnerships make sense; funding needs to follow and align; and while there will always be politics, we would hope for autonomy and deregulation so that ideas and people can flourish.

While not ignoring individual differences, this book assumes that generalizations can be made across the different processes of school adjustment. Following a short overview of the history of schooling, this chapter discusses what the term “school” stands for and the essential features that turn any setting into “school.” The origin of the word is the Greek word scholē, which stands for “leisure.” However, in most modern schools the emphasis is on working hard and gaining knowledge. Interestingly, across the various formats, goals, and articulations of school throughout history, several aspects are common: institutional life, adults’ decisions, transfer of knowledge, skills acquisition, fluency in languages, delivery of values, exposure to social life, and invasion into students’ private life. The differences between schools appear in the level of intensity that each of the components gains within a given school, rather than a completely different conceptualization of what the term school stands for. Thus, these suggested universal components are of special importance to understand students’ school adjustment.

Following on the heels of the publication A Nation at Risk (1983) and formation of the Holmes Group (1986), the author explores the development and evolution of school–university partnership as essential to quality teacher education. Select aspects of the empirical and conceptual work of John Goodlad and his colleagues are described as especially helpful for understanding partnership and addressing its considerable challenges. Among the most significant of these is the idea of “simultaneous renewal,” a reminder of the need to think ecologically about institutional change, and of “The Agenda for Education in a Democracy” as a response to the imperative need for clarity about the social purposes of education and attentiveness to the character and quality of human relationships, of how partners ought to treat one another. The author argues for focus on the “manners of democracy” as a way of life that include hospitality, attuned listening, voice, reflectivity and evidential discernment.

Nearly thirty years ago, the Holmes Partnership Group (1995) envisioned educators of color as essential to school–university partnerships (SUPs), to the transformation of teacher education, and to achieving equity in public schools. This chapter asserts that the Holmes Partnership Group linked together culture, pedagogy, and the proportional representation of educators of color as a core conceptual foundation of SUPs. Using their final report, Tomorrow’s Schools of Education, as a key SUP policy and governance document, the author provides a retrospective examination of literature on today’s racially and ethnically diverse PK-20 educator pipeline as connected to the goals of cultural pluralism within a democracy and equitable access and opportunity in student learning. The chapter concludes with implications for future research that connects SUPs, social justice teacher education, and the well-being and sustainability of educators of color.

There is a need for culturally responsive pedagogy in school–university partnerships to prepare teachers for working with Micronesian Islanders in the state of Hawai’i. As United States public schools become more culturally diverse, there is a need for teacher education programs to better prepare candidates for working with demographically diverse students. Situated in the Hawai’i public school context, we explain how teacher preparation programs may better prepare teacher candidates for working effectively with culturally and linguistically diverse students. An empirical study details how the literature informed our efforts as teacher educators to promote teacher candidates’ understandings of culturally responsive pedagogy to work effectively with Micronesian Islanders; a historically marginalized student population in Hawaii’s public schools. The chapter concludes with suggestions for research, practice, and policy surrounding increased the use of culturally responsive pedagogy in school–university partnerships to prepare teacher candidates for working with historically marginalized student populations.

Having relevant indicator(s) of students’ school adjustment is the basis for making educational decisions with regard to an enormous scope of topics that refer to either individual students, a specific class, or even the entire school level. Thus, a major cornerstone in the effort to promote students’ school adjustment is the ability to correctly and accurately measure it. The problem of defining a given student’s state is a multi-aspect and multi-level challenge that is shaped by the local authorities’ guidelines, cultural norms, economic circumstances, and the student’s intellectual qualifications and personal characteristics. The existing literature suggests a rich list of measurements of the student’s feelings and the teacher’s evaluation of the student’s academic achievements, but parental and peer reflections are relatively underrepresented. This chapter advocates the priority of students’ subjective evaluations. Such measurements appear under various titles: students’ belonging, engagement, attitude, feelings, satisfaction, well-being, liking, burnout, sentiment, and more. In order to conduct routine evaluations of students’ school adjustment there is a need for a short and easily administered scale. For this end, the School Adjustment Questionnaire (SAQ) is presented as a possible example.

This review of research on school–university partnerships (SUPs) begins by presenting an overview of the relevant literature including scoping reviews, research mapping, systematic reviews and traditional literature reviews published between 1997 and 2023. The review found three questions were typically addressed in the studies; the first focused on the characteristics of successful partnerships, the second on the outcomes of partnership work and the third on the extent to which partnerships focused on issues of equity. In addition, the review noted that since the earliest reviews of research on PDSs there has been a concern with the quality of that research. A number of suggestions are offered to improve the quality of research including attention to the development of appropriate measures for evaluation, an appreciation for complexity, a close investigation of local context, and a stance of patience and humility. The chapter closes with technical and ethical guidelines for future research.

School–university partnerships lie at the heart of pre-service teacher education programmes, though there are “disconnect[s] between what students are taught in campus courses and their opportunities for learning to enact these practices” (Zeichner 2010, p.91). At the heart of school–university partnerships is a conception of the type of teacher that the teacher education programme expects. Drawing on the UK context, we explore ways programme integration can be achieved through research-informed clinical practice, enabling programs “to facilitate and deepen the interplay between the different kinds of knowledge that are generated and validated within the different contexts of school and university” (Burn & Mutton, 2015, p.217). Central to this is the process of “practical theorising,” although this approach also presents a number of challenges. We conclude by exploring the potential for enhanced school–university partnerships to extend beyond pre-service teacher education to in-service teachers’ engagement with research and researchers.

By showcasing examples of scholarship about school–university partnerships (SUPs) in contexts other than the continental United States, this part of the handbook aims to expand the frame of our vision and enable us to see a more complete picture of the possibilities that might emerge from SUPs. A broader perspective can bring our own context more clearly into focus, enabling us to see subtleties that might have remained hidden and making some well-known attributes look surprisingly new, for good or for ill. In addition, as we adjust our gaze to take in both the similarities and differences between our own context and others, we may also begin to see that these variations do not exist in a single binary plane (us and others), but that the similarities and differences abound within and among SUPs in “other” places as well. Thus, we hope that these chapters will be viewed holistically, as a small peek at the vast potential of SUPs to improve education in many different ways, in many different places.

The term “school adjustment” refers not only to the state or phenomenological description of a student at a given point in time; it also refers to the process that newcomers experience once they start to make the transition from home to early childhood care or kindergarten; from kindergarten to elementary school; from elementary school to secondary or junior high-school; from secondary school to high school; from any one school to another (e.g., due to parental divorce or immigration); and from high school to institutions of higher education. The state of school adjustment refers to students’ exhibition of expected academic outcomes, expected interpersonal outcomes, a general motivation to learn, and personal outcomes (e.g., positive self-esteem, lack of depressive symptoms). The process of school adjustment is the advancing process by which the students’ readiness and even eagerness to meet the aforementioned criteria of a state of school adjustment gradually emerge. As one of the life-course transitional events, adjustment too school can be articulated by the Stress and Adjustment Model (STA; Israelashvili, 2023).

The five contributions in this part are varied in three significant ways. First these chapters cover a diverse geographic range. Secondly, the chapters reflect the diversity of types of programs that fall under the wide umbrella of the term school–university partnerships (SUPs). Finally, the chapters are unalike in genre, as one is a literature review, one a report on a study abroad program for pre-service teachers, and three are analyses of teacher-preparation focused SUPs in different national and regional settings. I see these three aspects of diversity of these chapters as a strength, as collectively the chapters help us appreciate the challenges and possibilities of creating a field of research on comparative international perspectives on SUPs.