Case 3: Rituals, Celebrations, and Traditions:Selected Structural Features That Sustain a Professional Development School Community

There is a growing recognition that good PDSs differ from other schools. One difference is that a PDS takes on all the characteristics of community. PDSs become stronger communities as they mature, not only because partnership relations have a chance to mature, but also because they form an identity all their own. In partnerships where PDS ownership is shared between partners, there is a realization that the PDS is not entirely located in a university nor in a school district, but in the space between them. Some scholars have even referred to the location of a PDS as a “third space” (Burns & Baker, 2016; Cuenca, Schmeichel, Butler, Dinkelman, & Nichols, 2011) a term first taken from the work of the influential cultural and post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha referring to the interstices between colliding cultures, a threshold space which gives rise to something different, or something new (1994). The PDS has been called a third space to differentiate it from traditional school organizations.