Agency is fundamental to the work of all professionals and attempts to improve or reform education and schools must attend to teacher agency. This chapter provides a conceptual understanding and begins with an examination of terms used to describe the ways teachers act or are positioned, including agency, empowerment, autonomy, identity, self-efficacy, and voice, and explores the interrelationships among these terms. Contextual factors that impact teacher agency such as school culture, administrative style, practitioner inquiry, collaboration, measures of accountability, time constraints, and prior experience are reviewed. The fact that teacher agency may be expressed through professional attitudes and action, leadership, curriculum curation, and resistance to imposed mandates is explored, and finally, the authors highlight the benefits of agentic teachers to schools and students. School–University partnerships provide a unique opportunity to support teachers as agentic professionals and the chapter concludes with a set of specific recommendations to facilitate such an endeavor.

Clinical experiences are typically cited by teacher candidates as the most powerful component of their teacher education program (Cuenca, 2012; Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; Wilson et al., 2001). In addition, student teachers typically cite their cooperating teacher as the most “significant other” during their teacher education program (Karmos & Jacko, 1977; McClusky, 1999). As Dallas and Horn (2008) stated in 2008, the best way to learn to teach is to practice with highly qualified teachers. School–university partnerships, whether they be professional development schools or some other type of close partnership, promote deep collaboration between faculty and administrators in higher education and P-12 schools, as well as with teacher candidates to ensure the best possible sites for teacher development.

This chapter includes a systematic review of 111 peer-reviewed articles that were identified through ERIC via EBSCO Host with keywords related to student learning, student achievement, school–university partnerships, and professional development schools. Despite the keyword indicators focused on student outcomes, only twenty articles actually included student learning data, while 36 included data on teachers, teacher candidates, or administrators related to partnerships hoping to improve learning, and 65 articles were descriptive and included no data sources at all. We use a case from our own partnership work to provide a potential framework for future research in School–University partnerships and elaborate on implications for consideration for scholars hoping to link partnerships and their influence on student learning outcomes.

As school–university partnerships (SUPs) continue to establish themselves in the larger context of improvement efforts in the field of education, it is less clear how they relate in design, process, and outcomes to other types of collaborative education research efforts (Penuel et al., 2020). In this study, we address calls for research on school-university partnerships (Darling-Hammond, 1994; Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Farrell et al., 2022) by examining the inputs and processes of different variations of collaborative education research (Penuel et al., 2020). We hypothesize that the inputs and processes of these collaborations have more similarities than differences. To test this hypothesis, we selected purposeful cases of a professional development school and a research–practice partnership launched during the same time period – the 1990s. Findings and implications for the field of collaborative education research and school–university partnerships are discussed.

After being exposed to several life-course transitions, and assuming that the major difficulties that characterize the period of early adolescence are over, the transition to high school should be easy. However, in reality for some students this transition is still significant and stressful. The difficulties stem from five characteristics of this process: an accumulation of difficulties; an overload of learning materials; unspoken threats regarding possible school dropout or negative evaluations of academic achievements; the obligation to make practical decisions regarding the future; and worries about the postschooling period. Studies on adjustment to high school establish only a limited body of knowledge, as many are short-term explorations without follow-up of possible long-term implications. Discussions of the teachers’ role, which is now even more significant than in secondary school, peers’ role, that is now less important, and parents’ role are provided. Following that, descriptions of interventions to support high school adjustment and to support the transition from high school to postschool life are presented and demonstrated

This commentary critically examines the Equity, and Student Learning part in The Cambridge Handbook of School–University Partnerships. Collectively, these chapters make inquiries and provide valuable insights into the assertive efforts of school–university partnerships (SUPs) to address social and economic inequalities for minoritized, marginalized, and otherized student groups within PreK-12 school systems. Effectively, these chapters highlight the potential and opportunities SUPs offer for redressing sociocultural gaps or lack of cultural competence or critical consciousness within teacher education programs together with the social and economic inequalities (i.e., opportunity gap) observed in PreK-12 schools. Correspondingly, these chapters provide timely and practical approaches for addressing the sociopolitical dilemmas SUPs are currently navigating.

In the context of an ever-shrinking world, where education concerns are shared across borders, and the 2030 deadline to achieve the 17 United Nation Sustainable Development Goals – specifically goal 4: “inclusive and equitable quality education … for all” is looming, it seems timely to take a look at school-university partnerships from a global perspective. This chapter begins with a quick scan of school-university partnerships, primarily in the US. It then examines school-university partnerships in – or with – other parts of the world, using available – and accessible – literature. What are some examples of school-university partnerships across different countries and what kinds of conversations frame this phenomenon? It closes by discussing some enduring issues that plague school-university partnerships and suggest how global collaborations might generate new insights into perennial problems.

This chapter discusses the policy landscape and partnership environment for teacher preparation. The chapter highlights three collaborative models (professional development schools, teacher residency programs, and registered apprenticeship programs) that promise to generate the diverse, well-qualified, and highly committed educators P-12 schools need. Current policies that support these models are delineated and emerging research about the models is introduced while recognizing a significant need for continuing research, particularly with registered apprenticeship programs, only now beginning to graduate their first completers. Feedback from policy-makers and key players among the constituencies that create and lead teacher preparation is utilized to generate recommendations for future action and to suggest crucial areas for additional research.

This chapter outlines how Children’s Aid has partnered in community schools work with institutions of higher education in New York City and beyond. This work includes establishment of a satellite college campus in a public intermediate school; development and implementation of multi-year evaluations of Children’s Aid community schools; professional development partnerships with all New York City graduate schools of social work; and, most recently, the co-creation of the nation’s first on-line course on community schools. The chapter explores several key themes: (1) how the centrality of partnerships to the work of community schools makes these venues fertile ground for innovative School–University collaborations; (2) the mutually beneficial nature of these partnerships; (3) the role of Children’s Aid as a coordinator of these School–University partnerships; and (4) lessons learned about factors that enhance or hinder effective School–University collaborations. Findings from the multi-year community school evaluations and other relevant research are presented.

This chapter explores recent literature focused on teacher inquiry in Professional Development Schools (PDSs). The first part of the chapter surveys the conceptual history of teacher inquiry, considering the contributions of teacher education researchers and national organizations. The next part of the chapter identifies some of the many different approaches to teacher inquiry that are found in PDS work. To better understand the role of teacher inquiry in PDSs, the chapter presents a review of recent articles about teacher inquiry published in the journal of the National Association for professional development schools, school–university partnerships. The review tabulated and described articles that focused on each of four aspects of teacher inquiry in PDSs: types of support for teacher inquiry, categories of teacher inquiry, how teacher inquiry supports student learning, and the frameworks and structures of teacher inquiry. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what can be learned from this review and about potential future avenues for scholarship surrounding teacher inquiry.

There are an exceptional number of publications on the transition from elementary (primary) school to middle school, also known as secondary school, junior high school or lower-middle school. The major reason is that the transition to middle school is an event that has multiple and harmful implications. Several reasons contribute to the difficulty of secondary school adjustment, including misleading advertisement of the schools, a significant change in the teachers’ behavior and academic demands, and, especially, the developmental transitions to adolescence and the associated difficulties in managing parent-adolescent relationships. Relying on the P–E Fit Model, it is commonly agreed that the characteristics and demands that secondary schools impose on newcomers do not fit the needs of adolescents. In line with their developmental needs, secondary school are more oriented to their peers’ expectations than to those of their teachers and parents, and are more engaged in matters related to their self-esteem and social life, rather than learning “boring materials” or staying at school while their out-of-school life seems to be more exciting. Interventions to foster adjustment to secondary school are presented and discussed.

School principals play a critical role in developing and nurturing effective school–university partnerships (SUP). This is especially true in community school contexts, a type of SUP where public schools benefit from partnerships with community resources. To provide a more nuanced understanding of the leadership skills required for principals to do partnership work, the purpose of this chapter was twofold: (1) to describe what is known about the role of principals engaged in partnership work, and (2) to provide examples from the authors’ own research on how school principals can advance partnerships, especially with universities, to foster an effective SUP. Implications for school principals and university partners are discussed, as are challenges school principals encounter when attempting to advance sustainable SUPs. The chapter concludes with policy and practice considerations for school and university leaders.

Teacher residencies are an important component of university-district partnerships and often grow out of a desire to ensure students have equitable access to quality teachers. However, it is critical to consider how problematic roots and rationales for teacher residencies alongside questionable implementation practices may position these programs to perpetuate the very inequities they claim to push against. This chapter reviews the evolution of teacher residency programs in the context of educational equity and outline how guiding documents and associated research position teacher residencies in relation to notions of educational equity and where these aims diverge. We end with our freedom dreams (Kelley, 2020) for ways forward as a love letter to teacher residency program providers and to residents themselves, as we encourage readers to locate themselves and their work in these histories and contemporary implementation practices so that we may dream up more just ways forward in teacher residency work.