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An extensive body of research has indicated the benefits of collaborative, contextualised and enquiry-based learning for teachers' professional development and school improvement. Yet professional learning is also known to be constrained by a number of factors, including the organisational limitations of schools, conflicting cultural practices and wider political demands. Schoolsuniversity partnerships have been developed to overcome some of these difficulties by transcending particular school contexts and offering alternative theoretical and practical perspectives. The complex combination of motivations, backgrounds and working contexts in such partnership work calls for attention to the individual and collective learning experiences of those involved, including the ways in which school and university contexts are, or could be, effectively bridged. This paper focuses on understanding the learning experienced by a cohort of teachers and school leaders involved in a two-year schools-university partnership Master of Education (M.Ed.) course in England. A mixed group of 15 experienced primary and secondary teachers and school leaders reflected on their learning at five points of time during and shortly after completing their M.Ed. course. Qualitative analysis of the group's interview responses and reflective writing led to the identification of six related aspects of personal and professional learning experience: being a learner; learning as part of professional practice; widening repertoire; changing as a learner; personal growth; and critically adaptive practice. The identification and visual representation of these aspects of experience emerging within the group offers useful insight into teachers' perspectives on learning in school and university contexts and their experiences of progression over time. We conclude that more explicit and central attention to the professional and personal learning elements of schools-university partnerships can help to resolve some of the binary 'theory-practice' tensions that have been extensively discussed in relation to partnership programmes and teacher professional development. There is a need to acknowledge variation in teachers' learning experiences within schools-university partnerships, bearing in mind the ongoing nature of this reflective process with each new group of school and university colleagues. Analysis of participants' learning experiences in school and university contexts also draws attention to the wider structures, values and cultures that influence, and are influenced by, schools-university partnership work.

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Following from John Dewey’s notion that aesthetic experience is experience in its fullest sense, this chapter focuses on examining Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience as it is inextricably tied to his concepts of human nature and education. It begins by exploring the concept of aesthetic experience in the context of Dewey’s broader theory of education and growth. The chapter then discusses how aesthetic experiences are cultivated in the context of formal learning settings, including classrooms and outdoor environments, paying special attention to the critical and indispensable role of the teacher in creating situations for students’ aesthetic experiences. In this context, the chapter discusses how Dewey’s critique of traditional and progressive education is still relevant in today’s global education climate. It concludes by discussing the crisis in education as the authors see it today and suggests that Dewey’s views provide three key insights for addressing this crisis: the value of teachers, the role of art as an ethical-political force, and the special place of philosophy of education in the cultivation of shared humanity.