The rationale for this chapter is that democracy in the United States is in crisis and that higher education is contributing to the crisis. Research universities, given their influence on schooling, affect the degree to which a society functions democratically. Changing higher education is, therefore, necessary for creating a democratic schooling system andb for democracy itself.  An approach needs to be identified to transform higher education institutions into democratic civic universities that have positive effects on K-12 schooling. We contend university-assisted community schools (UACS) are that promising approach. We make the case for higher education’s significant impact on the schooling system and democracy, describe the democratic goal of community schools and define UACS as a type of community school, place UACS within the context of school-university partnerships, provide examples from Penn’s Netter Center, and propose UACS as a means to reduce obstacles to developing democratic civic universities.

School–university partnerships (SUPs) have the potential to create equitable outcomes for students in material and intentional ways. Our chapter includes a case study that exemplifies ways in which SUPs can be organized around equitable outcomes for students who have been historically marginalized. We tease apart specific aspects of this SUP with a focus on creating robust collaborative learning spaces for all partners in the SUP, building upon and honoring the unique contributions of each key role in the SUP, identifying the new teacher profile (knowledge, skills, practices, and dispositions) desired by all SUP members, and designing the experiences and activities that will support new teachers achieving that profile. We share strategies that help our SUP to create a healthy ecology for teacher preparation that is focused on social justice and equity for both candidates in our program and the students in partner schools.

Teacher education programs, practitioners, and scholars committed to school–university partnership (SUP) and professional development school (PDS) structures have long relied on potentially confounding titles, sets of principles, lexicons, and concepts to guide their work. In this chapter, the authors consider eight of the key terms associated with PDSs and SUPs, drawn from an analysis of the language used in the constitutional documents of the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS), the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), the Association of Teacher Education (ATE), and other organizations. The authors examine the meanings of these appellations and identify metaphors they propose practitioners are “partnering by,” and suggest alternative metaphors that might be more accurate guides for future SUP/PDS work. The authors contend that the SUP/PDS teacher education field might rethink both the language and the metaphors in which partnership practices are grounded to facilitate progress toward the effective implementation of these structures.

School–university partnerships leverage resources through collaboration for mutually beneficial outcomes (NAPDS, 2021). This chapter explores global collaboration to extend the reach and benefits of School–University partnership. Changes in P-12 learner demographics require global-minded teachers who can meet new classroom needs. This chapter argues for the use of existing and effective professional development schools (PDS) structures to rethink the scope of School–University partnership. Strategies for maintaining and evaluating international School–University partnerships will be shared as well as global practices to develop global-minded teachers who are not able to travel. The chapter concludes by suggesting new areas of research as well as next steps to expand global perspectives for School–University partnerships.

In this commentary I take the idea of an “SUP 3.0” as offered by Diane Yendol-Hoppey and her colleagues and use it as the overarching consideration for my discussion of inquiry and innovation in school–university partnerships (SUPs). Previously, SUP researchers may have considered the developmental stages of partnerships as outlined by the professional development school (PDS) Standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE, 2001) as an organizer for their critiques of partnership efforts. My colleague Jeanne Tunks and I (2007) collaborated on how to align the PDS standards with the appropriate research methodologies put forth by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) to provide partnership researchers practical advice in the hopes of one day attaining what traditionally has been regarded as the gold standard of research–experimental (or at least quasi-experimental) design. However, fallout from the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) impacted many schools by not only narrowing curriculum and teaching but also causing distrust about the nature, purpose, and logistics of educational research, thus undermining the ability to share ideas and learn from one another, including issues about race and equity.

This chapter illuminates how the action research methodology is well-suited to tackle common problems within school–university partnerships (SUPs) and generate systems-level change. This innovation is described through the story of a collaborative action research study in a SUP induction program that resulted in systemic change to the school district and the university teacher preparation program. The purpose of the action research was to design, implement, and evaluate interventions that enhanced a school district’s induction program. Interventions included a virtual New Teacher Orientation during the COVID-19 pandemic that created school-based learning communities for 200 new teachers and a virtual professional learning community that built mentoring capacity among teacher leaders. The authors suggest that SUPs would benefit from engaging in action research that addresses systems level change and that SUPs should leverage action research to address complex common problems, such as teacher retention.

The authors in this section address administrative and teacher leadership in and for school–university partnerships from a wide variety of perspectives. In my view, the authors did an admirable job of making sense of a domain in which there is a lack of consensus around common definitions. The label “school–university partnership” is used in the literature to refer to a wide variety of relationships, making the authors’ task more difficult. Having noted the lack of definitional consensus I feel obligated to clarify my thinking about partnership types. In their chapter, Provinzano and Mayger provide useful guidance in conceptualizing partnerships. They discuss transactional, authentic, and transformational partnerships. In my view, their discussion, though helpful, blurs the lines between authentic and transformational partnerships, so I will clarify how I see this typology using their labels.

Twenty years ago, one of the commentators for this part and I were deeply involved in school–university partnership (SUP) work and published an edited volume for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE; Wiseman & Knight, 2003) focusing on research linking university partnerships to student outcomes. While not the explicit topic of the book, themes of leadership echoed throughout the volume in the form of facilitation, gatekeeping, and collaboration needed to accomplish partnership goals. I became convinced that SUP leadership is a key factor in creating a third space (as characterized by Snow in this part) in which two or more organizational cultures are integrated for improvement of teachers, administrators, students, and community. So convinced that I pursued a leadership position at Southern Methodist University (SMU) with the express desire of developing a model for SUPs that incorporated aspects of several types of partnerships and, more importantly, studying how the various factors within SUPs affect success. Now, two decades after our book, I am currently involved in a public–private partnership with four partners: a large urban school district, a small private university, a major international industry partner, and the community in which the school is located (Wieselmann et al.

School-based teacher educators (SBTEs) are critical to the success of School–University partnerships. To better understand the complexity of the SBTE role, this chapter reviews current literature about SBTEs while also presenting the results of a small study of the voices of SBTEs. The three key areas of literature about SBTEs are (1) the complexity of selecting and matching SBTEs with university students, (2) the education of SBTEs for their mentoring role, and (3) the voices and identity explorations of SBTEs. The results of a small focus group study of SBTEs highlight the voices of SBTEs as they identify challenges to their role as well as facilitators of their role. The chapter concludes with a call to action for the PDS community to better understand the complexity of the SBTE role as well as to center the voices of SBTEs in both the implementation of PDSs and further research about PDSs.

Recent legal and educational decisions have caused educational stakeholders to examine and redefine what it means for school and district demography to be diverse, equitable, inclusive, and anti-racist (DEIA). For some, DEIA is seen as being “limiting” to the very people who have created the legal, economic, educational, and historical obstacles which have limited and prevented opportunities for people of color (POC) for centuries and generations in the US. Rather than acknowledging and removing the intentional and external educational obstacles for POC, it has become a blame the victim proposition. Fortunately, or unfortunately, because the historical and social constraints for people of color have been ongoing, for decades (or centuries) the ways in which POC have worked around and through these challenges have had to be consistent, creative, and effective.

The themes of the chapters in this section suggest that school–university partnerships are a key structure for the preparation of new teachers and the ongoing professional development of veteran teachers. School–university partnerships value the expertise of all stakeholders including P-12 teachers, university- and school-based teacher educators, P-12 and university administrators, and teacher candidates. The chapters in this section focus on fully developed partnerships between universities and P-12 schools, the pedagogy of racial and social justice, effective teacher professional development, and community engagement.

Schools and universities have a long history of collaboration to address educational goals, but at present these partnerships find themselves at a crossroads navigating myriad contextual factors influencing both teacher education and PK-12 schools. In reviewing the evolution of the Mason Elementary PDS program, as well as the historical phases of School–University partnerships (Catelli, 2021), we identified partnership elements and ultimately designed a program framework that facilitated responsiveness in challenging times. Through examples, we demonstrate how our framework sustains partnership efforts in our context. In closing we recommend school and universities create supporting frameworks for adapting flexibly in their unique settings.

Publications about practitioner inquiry in professional development schools (PDSs) tend to emphasize localized descriptions. This has led to a tension in the scholarship between valuing knowledge generated through reports of practitioner inquiry and valuing the generation of methodologically rigorous, potentially transferable knowledge about practitioner inquiry. This chapter addresses that tension by highlighting localized descriptions while aiming to produce new knowledge about practitioner inquiry within the PDS movement. The chapter’s purpose is to construct an up-to-date perspective on practitioner inquiry as a distinctive PDS practice. The authors conducted a systematic review of descriptions of practitioner inquiry in PDS literature published between 2008–2022. The chapter begins with an overview of the foundations of practitioner inquiry in PDSs. The review’s method is described, then its findings are presented through a five-part typology of ways practitioner inquiry was commonly positioned. The chapter concludes by discussing future directions for research about inquiry in PDSs.

Dance – often left to specialists outside the classroom – is a means by which children can explore the world through their whole bodies. For many learners who feel they lack the ability or the interest to pursue more academic subjects, this is where they need to be given opportunities to demonstrate their potential for success. This chapter focuses on forms and skills of dance and movement, methods for engaging children and the theoretical knowledge behind dance, as well as practical activities to use in the early childhood and primary classrooms. Linking to other Knowledge Learning Areas, as well as to wider school and curricular issues, this chapter aims to equip both the novice and the experienced educator in dance to confidently and knowledgably facilitate the learning and development of children. Personal and environmental health and safety issues will also be explored.

Wherever we are in society, we are surrounded by the Arts. This text has been designed by artists, and the words you read are just visual artworks representing the oral storytelling foundation of all societies. Its layout was designed by artists, using multiple media forms. You are reading it in an environment where the soundscape will hopefully allow you to concentrate. Your body is probably positioned to minimise discomfort and maximise efficiency, while communicating your current state of thought to all those around you (whether consciously or not). Surrounding you may be posters, objects, noises, people interacting with facial expressions, probably some communicating via Facebook, Instagram or other social media using increasingly advanced technologies. The Arts power our lives, yet too often we power down children as they enter formal education (preschool and upwards), stifle their natural forms of communication and interaction, and slowly destroy their ability to be creative and to think diversely.