Anatomy of Six Public School-University Partnerships

Abstract

The purposes of this article are to examine 6 school-university partnerships developed between the Special Education Department of the Universiy of South Florida and surrounding school districts and to delineate key factors contributing to their progress. The literature on partnerships is used as a guide for the review. Context and key personnel seem to be two of the most important factors in these 6 projects. Challenges to partnerships are discussed, including the establishment of parity and the role of personal values in developing school-university partnerships.

School—University Partnerships in Special Education Field Experiences

“…Another article questioned why the Holmes Partnership ignored special education (Sapon-Shevin, 1990). The remaining articles described specific school-university partnership programs at the University of South Florida (Christensen et al, 1996;Cranston-Gingras, Raines, Paul, Epanchin, & Rosselli, 1996;Rosselli, Perez, Piersall, & Pantridge, 1993), Johns Hopkins University (King-Sears, 1995;King-Sears, Rosenberg, Ray, & Fagan, 1992), Northern Arizona University (Minner, Varner, & Prater, 1995), the University of Utah (Welch & Sheridan, 1993), and the University of Wisconsin ing?"). A brief note of introduction preceded the questions and requested that "a faculty or staff member knowledgeable about field experiences in special education" complete the questionnaire.…”

Considering New Paths for Success

“…Considering the dramatic and urgent shifts created under NCLB, the demand for urban school-university partnerships reached a new apex, and the school-university partnership has an important place in mitigating the negative impact of NCLB while helping foster more critical understanding of urban school contexts (Kanpol & Abbott, 2006). The research on urban school-university partnerships was robust in the 1990s (Christensen et al, 1996;Harris & Harris, 1994;Lewison & Holliday, 1997;Ravid & Handler, 2001), but since the implementation of NCLB, the focus of urban school research shifted to test preparation (Ravitch, 2010). This move signaled an important change in teacher preparation that refocused onto the standardized testing needs of urban learners and contexts (Nieto, 2009).…”

University and Urban School Partnerships

“…Most of the work on university-school collaboration to date has been case studies, usually describing one or a small number of partnerships and exploring implications for more effective collaboration (Christensen et al, 1996;Matczynski, Lasley, & Williams, 1997;Sandham, 1998;Sockett, 1998). Based on their own experience in two collaborations, A.…”