Dear School-University Partnerships readers,
As teacher educators and former classroom teachers and instructional coaches, we have seen first-hand the value of high-quality professional development, and our experience in higher education has shed light on the importance of strong partnerships between schools and universities. Cross-institutional professional development emphasizes the partnership between institution of higher education (IHE) and professional development school (PDS) professionals and benefits from the experts on both campuses. To highlight this potential, we selected cross-institutional professional development as the topic for this special issue of School-University Partnerships. This issue explores the ways that these professional development partnerships impact collaboration, knowledge sharing and continued professional growth among educators.
While many PDS partnerships involve cross-institutional professional development, an exploration of effective applications and empirical examinations of these collaborations allows for greater expansion and refinement of this professional development. This collaboration can help pre- and in-service teachers, administrators and teacher educators grow professionally and keep up with the latest developments in their field. Of the seven articles included in this issue, some feature empirical explorations of the effectiveness of innovative cross-institutional professional development, while others offer a more conceptual view of particular initiatives. These articles address this topic in a variety of contexts, from literacy, trauma and urban schools to continuous school improvement. We hope this issue offers an opportunity to reflect on and implement a new idea within your context.
The first two articles are related to literacy. First, the article Centering community and collaboration in a multi-year literacy professional development initiative between a university and school district focuses on a partnership to develop an initiative to prepare cohorts of teachers to gain their literacy certification. In this unique job-embedded partnership, school administrators from PDS campuses and IHE faculty worked together to build a program that provided a pathway for K–12 teachers to obtain their reading certification from the state’s Department of Education.
Second, Middle school educators’ experiences in a cross-institutional professional development model for enhancing writing instruction is a practitioner piece that explores a five-year case example of two teachers engaged in practice-based professional development (PBPD) for self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) in a middle school. It examines the transformative effects and challenges of improving writing instruction, the activities involved and alternative PBPD delivery methods.
The next two articles engage teachers’ mental health. The third article, Including self-care curricula to respond to PSTs’ exposure to secondary trauma, provides empirical support for designing and integrating a self-care unit in an elementary teacher preparation program in a private university in southeastern United States America to address the secondary trauma and stressors inherent to the teaching profession.
Continuing in this vein, the fourth article, Engaging teacher’s mental health self-care early through a trauma-informed microcredential, examines how beginning teachers’ participation in a microcredential based on trauma-informed classroom management and restorative discipline practices might enhance their self-efficacy through an understanding of their own trauma response, its neurobiological basis and classroom interventions that focus on student wellness and teacher self-care.
The next two articles are situated in urban schools and provide ideas for those practicing within that setting and implications that carry over into a variety of contexts. The fifth article, Building capacity in urban schools: emphasizing partnerships between counselor education and elementary schools, is a conceptual piece describing the implementation of a capacity building partnership model between counselor education programs and urban, under-resourced schools.
The sixth article empirically explores post-COVID-19 technology use in urban schools. This article, building technology integration at an urban school through a PDS partnership, examines the effects of utilizing a PDS partnership to effect change in both teacher comfort and teacher use of technology in an urban K–8 school with a high population of English language learners.
The final article ends thematically, describing a continuous improvement plan. The article, Supporting PK–12 continuous school improvement efforts in a school-university partnership network, is a practitioner-based article describing the process that one university’s PDS network launched to promote a collaborative, continuous improvement partnership initiative.
We hope these articles inform your work and serve as a resource as you develop and strengthen your cross-institutional professional development.
