Case 1: Cultivating a Shared Ownership of Professional Learning Through a Newly Formed Professional Development School Partnership

Effective PDS partnerships can improve teaching and learning in both PK-12 schools and universities (Darling-Hammond, 2005). A large part of the success of these school-university partnerships are the ways stakeholders work in tandem to create positive learning spaces for venturing new teachers, veteran teachers, university faculty, and students. When teachers learn from college faculty, college faculty learn from teachers, teacher interns learn from both, all groups of stakeholders profit from those understandings (Teitel, 1997). Our PDS story is unique because we used professional development as our vehicle for developing and then strengthening our PDS relationship. We begin with a description of who we are and how our partnership developed, moving into the story of our successes, challenges and the developing relationship. We then conclude with how we believe any PDS partnership can be strengthened through professional development.