Collective impact school–university partnerships in teacher education: intentionally designed clinical practice experiences

Traditionally, collective impact in education has been viewed as a vehicle for educational reform (Mechur Karp & Lundy-Wagner, 2016; Smith et al., 2019; Zuckerman et al., 2020), but we contend that the structures of effective clinical experiences through SUPs match the characteristics, impact and even limitations of collective impact. The five characteristics (as defined in Table 2) necessary for collective impact work are a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication and backbone support organizations (Kania & Kramer, 2011, 2013).

Most importantly, while collective impact can be contextually-relevant and emerging based on collective needs, these collaboratives must be intentionally scaffolded and guided by mutualistic goals and structures (Mechur Karp & Lundy-Wagner, 2016; Panjwani et al., 2023). Clinical experiences – as our vignettes in this article illustrate – can embody all of these characteristics when they too are intentionally structured and fully collaborative between partners.

Collective impact in education has typically involved partnerships between whole organizations (Panjwani et al., 2023; Zuckerman et al., 2020), and while clinical work in its smallest form may appear to focus on individuals (UBTE, SBTE and TC), each partner represents a larger organization. In effective SUPs, these individuals span the boundaries of their professional organizations to collaborate toward mutualistic goals (Akkerman & Bruining, 2016; White, 2019). While these partnerships are established most often to help train future teachers, their overall impact is widespread (Zeichner, 2010; Zeichner et al., 2015; Zenkov et al., 2025). In this way, collective impact and its five characteristics can be a helpful tool for teacher educators to determine if a clinical experience within a SUP has been structured intentionally to meaningfully and authentically benefit all partners.

Each vignette below highlights an example of clinical practices framed through the five characteristics of collective impact: (1) common agenda, (2) shared measurement, (3) mutually reinforcing activities, (4) continuous communication and (5) strong backbone (see Table 2). The first illustrates a unique photovoice project that for two decades has asked secondary students to define good teaching. The second describes a project that pairs TCs with SBTEs in order to implement new, innovative pedagogies in secondary schools. The third presents a clinical experience that directly supports elementary students’ math skills. The fourth places TCs in elementary schools to develop math and literacy skills through small-group teaching. Following the vignettes, we synthesize these distinct examples of SUPs to discuss implications and limitations of structuring clinical practice through the collective impact framework.

The “Perspectives on Extraordinary Teaching” (PoETs) class began as a photovoice inquiry (the “Through Students’ Eyes” project or TSE) in Cleveland in 2004, designed by third author, Kristien, a veteran urban high school teacher and a local education journalist. At that time, the dropout (or “pushout”) rate for Cleveland’s high school students stood at more than 60%. Desperate to address this crisis in even a small way, trusting that youth might offer policy and practical insights to which adults and decision-makers did not have access, and thinking that young people might be more motivated to engage with writing in their English classes and with school overall by considering the institution’s very purpose, the TSE co-founders posed three questions to a group of about 20 high school juniors and seniors:

• (1)

  What do you believe is the purpose of school?

• (2)

  What helps you to be successful in school?

• (3)

  What gets in the way of your success in school?

The TSE directors were all very comfortable with writing, but they knew that most high school students were not. Writing achievement and efficacy have consistently been cited in research reports as factors that diminish diverse, urban youths’ relationships with school. Aware of these trends, the directors speculated that they might better facilitate youth sharing their ideas about school and more honestly and comprehensively answering these questions if they approached them with visual media rather than traditional writing genres.

Unaware of the still-early research on “photovoice,” they devised a process that called on these nearly two dozen young people to complete “photo walks,” accompanied by the TSE directors alongside future teachers from the local teacher preparation program that Kristien was coordinating. Weekly meetings at a local community space followed the photo walks, with young people and this team of adults reviewing the images and discussing how they related to the project questions. The heart and soul of this photovoice process quickly became these “photo elicitation” meetings and conferences, through which youth engaged in drafting, revising and polishing reflective answers to the queries about school. The youths’ image and writing combinations were eventually shared via an exhibition at a neighborhood gallery, in a micro-magazine published and distributed throughout the city, and in multiple scholarly reports.

The TSE co-directors latched onto the photovoice inquiry method as a means to highlight the voices and concerns of disenfranchised youth, always shared via public displays, popular and accessible “public intellectual” manuscripts and scholarly publications. The result is a now two-decades’ long photovoice consideration of grand questions, both inside and outside of schools and universities. These ongoing projects have involved preservice and in-service teachers, PhD students and university faculty members. The projects have addressed topics including school, literacy, teaching and citizenship, and the products include three books, multiple articles and chapters, and approximately 100 conference presentations.

Perhaps most importantly, these projects have impacted thousands of young people, hundreds of future teachers and numerous school-based teacher educators (veteran teachers or SBTEs) and UBTEs. The original photovoice project in Cleveland was a youth-focused intervention intended to enhance the writing skills of young people, to engage them as citizens and to potentially impact local school policy. As a form of collective impact, it has evolved into a novel partnership-driven, project-based clinical experience which continues to pose hard questions to youth and offer them a creative, more reasonable way to answer these while developing their writing skills. As detailed below, it also now provides authentic learning opportunities for future teachers, engages new and veteran education researchers (TCs, doctoral students, SBTEs and UBTEs) in accessible scholarly endeavors and impacts broad audiences who view its outcomes.

Twenty years since that first photovoice inquiry, Kristien continues to serve as a UBTE, and – even more importantly – as a boundary-spanning educator (see Zenkov & Harmon, 2016, Zenkov et al., 2018) committed to considering innovative and effective clinical practices, particularly ones that aid future teachers and their SBTE mentors in exploring and modeling engaging and authentic pedagogies. The PoETs class is now an elective for the secondary education (SEED) teacher licensure program that Kristien directs, and it continues to address the questions shared with Cleveland youth just after the turn of the century, but with an important twist: it still asks what young people believe is the purpose of school, but its second and third queries add teachers to the mix, asking high school and middle school students to consider what teachers do to help young people to be successful in school and what teachers do to impede adolescents’ success in school.

While the agenda of PoETs is not one that has been collectively determined – universities and most educational institutions insist that course objectives be identified ahead of any instructional interaction and that they fit within a larger set of curricular aims – it is a common one, given the explicit relevance of these questions (What is the purpose of school? What do teachers do to help young people be successful in school? What do teachers do to impede young adults’ success in school?) to future teachers and their prospective students. The agenda is also one that is common to the secondary students who are asked to answer those queries with images and reflections: they are in school and engaging with teachers all day, every day, but they are rarely asked about schools’ and teachers’ practices. It is fair to claim that when we engage them in this project, they always have lots to say.

The agenda of this collective impact project is also “common” in the sense that it models for young people and TCs how instructional objectives might be drawn from authentic questions about their lives and that authentic interventions might impact the structures and institutions in their communities. In this way, the most authentic outcome of the project may be on the pre- and in-service teachers involved – they are more likely to engage their current and future students in such activities and in their own considerations of such grand questions because they have witnessed the effective implementation of such structures.

The PoETs project is now scheduled to occur during the university’s first summer session, partly because this gives SEED students a meaningful summer elective, but primarily because the university’s “summer” and area schools’ “summer” are not aligned. Secondary teachers and their students are wrapping up the school year, which is an ideal – if busy – time to have TCs facilitate such a project, as they typically don’t get to witness the end of the school year via other project structures. This timing is also reasonable for youths and their teachers, providing them with an engaging alternative to test-taking and allowing them to reflect on the school year and to consider alternative practices for their teaching (the SBTEs) and learning (the young people) in the future.

The project design embeds numerous mutually reinforcing activities. On the first day of the PoETs course in their university classroom the lead instructor, Kristien, introduces the basic pedagogical structures to what is typically a group of 15–20 future English, social studies, math, science and computer science teachers. He shares that he is modeling these structures as if he were working with a group of young people on this photovoice inquiry – rather than leading this first graduate course session as if it were, well, a graduate course. He explains that he is modeling these activities because the next day the future teachers in the course will be leading such an inquiry with an actual group of adolescents in the classroom of one of the program’s alumni. While the instructor has shared this plan with students in the weeks leading up to the course, the introduction of this authentic challenge – and the fact that the TCs have just hours to prepare for 2–3 hours of facilitation – can be a shock.

This cycle continues for two more weeks, with a separate set of TCs taking the lead in planning the next day’s facilitation, but with all members of the class co-teaching and working with young people at all three of the school sites with which the PoETs project partners. The remainder of this first class session and every successive session is focused almost exclusively on this authentic end: the planning and pedagogical decisions that will be implemented the next day or next week with groups of young people. Other mutually reinforcing activities include sharing of other model lessons and discussions of research on exemplary teaching – all planned and facilitated by the students in the class themselves and always with an eye toward what pedagogical choices might best serve the PoETs youth or these future teachers’ future students.

The assumptions, structures and commitments of the PoETs project ensure that communications are ongoing and rooted in trust-building. The very idea of the course (and project) is that young people and young teachers have much to offer schools, veteran teachers, teacher educators and the world in terms of insights into what makes an extraordinary, effective teacher. Such a stance is disarming and even radical, but it clearly communicates to these often disenfranchised constituents that their voices matter, that they are safe to communicate with each other, with the veteran teachers and with the course instructor.

The co-planning, reflection and assessment structures of the course make space for daily communications around a topic – great teaching – in which everyone is invested. In many ways, the class is intended to be (and has, so far, more than a dozen years in, always become) a five-week long conversation about teaching among a rich range of constituents, all with connections to schools. And while the course only occurs once per year, Kristien incorporates these same structures into his other instructional methods classes, and he often welcomes back previous class members and teachers (again, almost always program alumni) with whom he’s partnered to present to the class, to share their ideas about extraordinary teaching, to be the experts they are, to be a part of a pretty grand and growing conversation.

In fact, the “continuous communications” arguably begin the very first day that Kristien works with SEED TCs in the program – long before they are the program alumni and SBTEs who welcome PoETs TCs into their own classrooms. As noted above, PoETs almost exclusively involves SEED alumni as the SBTEs for this project meaning that SBTEs all went through the SEED program when they were TCs. While this is a structural decision (these folks are more willing to participate, given their relationship with Kristien, the program, the project and each other), it is also an important “collective impact” insight: perhaps such collective impact endeavors should rely on these genuine relationships and authentic conversations.

The “strong backbone” element of collective impact may be the one into which the PoETs project offers the most important insight. On the one hand, those involved in the project are not a team: the graduate students need the course credit to complete their degrees, the veteran teachers who agree to work with the project do so primarily as a favor to their former professor, and the young people are a captive audience in school. And even the notion of “qualified” is somewhat complicated here: teachers and teacher educators often lament that because everyone in the US went to school, it seems that everyone can claim an expertise in the field – teaching – for which they have trained.

This project turns that complaint and these other issues on their heads by inquiring and wondering about the nature of good teaching, rather than declaring what it is. All of the constituents return, over and over again, to those questions, to that inquiry stance, to what Kristien (along with first author, Lin, who often serves as one of those willing program alumni welcoming current program students to her classroom to work with her students) have begun to theorize as listening pedagogies.

The “backbone” of this project is represented by at least three elements – the what, the who and the how. The “what” is that common institution of school and those common practices of teaching and learning. All of the parties involved in PoETs are invested in this institution and these practices, whether or not they always choose to be or whether or not they do so with smiles on their faces. The “who” is Kristien; from the evidence of the PoETs project, every collective impact-oriented endeavor requires a convener, an organizer, a visionary, an idealist, a worker bee: someone who sees all the pieces and parts and can rally them together. And the “how” is still very much a work in progress, a theory in formation. For PoETs, the “how” is what Kristien and Lin have formulated as listening pedagogies – an instructional orientation that centers a commitment to engaging in conversation, to hearing various constituents’ perspectives on a common concern.

We might critically suggest that because we do not formally assess the impact of our curricular interventions with young people on their writing achievement or school engagement, no such shared measurement is occurring. But the assessment of the impact of this project is actually quite unique and takes many forms. It appears in the evaluations of the graduate elective course where PoETs takes place; the SEED future teachers are almost universally pleased with the outcomes of the class, even speaking to its authentic nature in their qualitative assessments. It is evident in the engagement of the young people and the compelling sets of pictures they take, profound writings they produce and the practice- and policy related “big ideas” they describe. We measure its impact by the honest – often raw – responses they offer to the project’s questions. We measure its impact by the responses of these veteran teachers in whose classrooms the project is conducted; they consistently marvel at how such seemingly straightforward queries draw out important insights from even the most disengaged youths. The impact of this project also appears in the responses to young people’s answers from the larger teacher audiences, to whom PoETs’ youth typically present their photographs and reflections. The audiences of this work gain important insights into the realities of youths’ lives, including teachers, school administrators and policymakers at every level. To illustrate such impact, below is a response from Markus, a high school junior who participated in one of the first PoETs projects:

Finally, PoETs is measured by the very intentional reflection activities in which the involved young people, TCs, SBTEs, doctoral students, administrators and UBTEs engage, following each project implementation and throughout the graduate class in which it is implemented. These reflections reveal an appreciation not only for the content of youths’ insights or the effectiveness of the photovoice and photo elicitation strategies, but the return to the very “stance” of the project, its collective impact extending across such a wide range of constituents, with novel clinical practices at the very center. The ultimate impact may be that all of these constituents better understand how and appreciate why such experiences can be key to developing the critical orientation that is central not just to teachers continuing to refine their pedagogies but to citizens sustaining their democracy.

The Problems of Practice (PoP) project was a collective impact initiative developed in order to provide meaningful clinical experience for TCs that also benefited designated SBTEs and the students in their placement school, while involving a UBTE in a co-teaching role (alongside the SBTE and TCs). As part of the university’s SEED Methods I course, student teachers were required to engage in 15 hours of clinical experience in a partnering school; since implementation, all schools have been sites where SEED alumni were teaching and willing to serve as mentors and key participants in this project.

Traditional clinical experiences have long been criticized because they often call on TCs to passively observe SBTEs rather than actively partnering with these veteran teachers or actively engaging with PK-12 students, thus gaining critical, practical experience in teaching. The PoP project created an intentionally collaborative learning structure by engaging the student teacher, SBTE and the UBTE in identification of a secondary student learning challenge, a pedagogical challenge, and/or a research-based instructional strategy that the TC and SBTE agreed to implement on a pilot basis.

Although each student teacher/mentor teacher partnership (12 in all) was implemented in ways that were responsive to each school context, generally the PoP projects began when the TC was paired with a mentoring SBTE (again, all of whom were alumni of the SEED program). The TC then interviewed in order to discuss a student learning challenge, pedagogical challenge or research-based instructional strategy relevant to the SBTE’s practice. The TC and the SBTE then worked together to develop a lesson (or a series of lessons) that might help address that challenge or implement the strategy. The UBTE then provided feedback on the challenge and instructional plan. Next, the UBTE visited the school, and all three partners – TC, SBTE and UBTE – taught the lesson together. The project culminated with a reflective discussion between all three partners to address the impact of the lesson on secondary students.

For example, within one CI partnership in a large high school, Sara (pseudonym), a TC, visited the school to observe multiple English classes. She used this time to get to get to know the students and develop a relationship with the SBTE, Lin. After she had spent time learning more about the students, Sara interviewed Lin to determine the challenge (the “problem”) in her practice. The two discussed what the students needed, collaboratively setting their common agenda for the lesson. During the interview, Lin mentioned that she was struggling to help her students feel comfortable with academic risk-taking. The students were always concerned about the effect of such risk-taking on their course grades, and they were typically only focused on earning a “good score” and not on the learning that might result from more open-ended and risk-based lessons. Sara, who had spent considerable time in Lin’s classes getting to know both the students and Lin’s teaching style, agreed with this assessment, and they then collaborated to plan a series of lessons that would encourage – or even require – academic risk-taking.

The parameters of the unit – how the “problem” would be addressed and assessed – were collaboratively constructed by all members of the partnership. To tackle their identified problem, Sara and Lin co-developed a unit with lessons that spanned multiple classes and included assessments measuring students’ content-area growth and perception of academic risks. Once the lessons were developed by Sara and Lin, the UBTE (Kristien) gave feedback on the lesson and asked guiding questions. Some changes were made to the lesson, but some of Kristien’s suggestions were disregarded based on the pedagogical beliefs of Lin and Sara. Although Kristien was Sara’s institutional supervisor – the instructor of her teacher education course – he made clear that the parameters of the lessons and assessments should be co-developed, and he trusted Sara and Lin’s knowledge of their students. We believe that this orientation demonstrates the authentic collaborative nature of the initiative. All members of the partnership agreed on the measurements in a way that subverted institutional hierarchies because the UBTE allowed the other partners, including the student teacher he supervised, equal voice in the development of the lesson.

In the next stage of the PoP, Sara and Lin taught the lessons they had planned to address the students’ fear of academic risks. These lessons culminated in a creative writing project where students – in small groups – had to tell a story using art rather than words and then present this narrative to the class. One of the unique elements of this partnership was that Kristien visited the school and helped co-teach this final lesson. While most often university supervisors (in this case, a UBTE) observe TCs in order to give evaluative feedback, by becoming an active instructor in the room, Kristien was participating alongside Sara and Lin in ways that were mutually beneficial for the adults (veteran and preservice teacher) and students in the room. Additionally, students received significant support and feedback with three motivated educators helping to facilitate their learning.

Each stage of this project built trust into the partnership over time. Having student teachers visit the school for such an authentic purpose first allowed the relationships to develop between the university and secondary classrooms. Next, receiving feedback from the UBTE on the PoP lesson plan was a form of communication related to an authentic teaching task that helped build trust because the feedback was framed as a series of suggestions not mandates that resulted in a pedagogical, reflective dialogue between all partners. In our example, the respect Kristien held for both Sara and Lin as educators helped make the process feel truly collaborative, and this was reinforced when Kristien helped teach the lesson rather than silently observe. Positioning himself as an equal participant alongside Sara and Lin was a unique, in-the-moment form of communication. Finally, after the lesson, the three educators had a discussion about the PoP that felt collaborative rather than evaluative, likely due to that well-established trust that subverted traditional school/university and TC/mentor/professor hierarchies.

The PoP design was initiated by the university as the main backbone partner in this collective impact project. However, the 12 partnering SBTEs across multiple school districts were given opportunities to offer feedback throughout its implementation. The PoP assignment was the culmination of years of clinical practice assignment revisions, many of which had involved the PoP SBTEs as either or both TCs or mentors. As a result, the UBTE was able to share the initial PoP proposal with the SBTE team and integrate their significant feedback into its ultimate structure. Because successful collective impact initiatives need to be adaptable to each partnership’s goals and contexts, each individual school was also encouraged to make changes to the project in order to best fit the needs of their students. As the backbone partner, the university – represented by the UBTE – could assess how different schools were engaged in PoP. They could ferry information both directly to SBTEs across the districts or through the TCs visiting these schools each day. In this way, while each SUP engaged in the PoP project involved small-scale partnerships of educators within one classroom, the implementation of the projects across school divisions allowed the initiative to have a much broader impact on educational outcomes for the community as a whole.

The goal of the PoP SUP was to give TCs more authentic clinical experience and to develop and implement a variety of teaching skills including collaboration, lesson planning and classroom management. One way this project differed from traditional clinical experiences was that the TC was not the only participant to gain insights and to grow as an educator. In dissolving hierarchies and establishing communicative trust, all partners became mentors and mentees to one another. More importantly, the secondary students themselves benefited in novel ways, both because the lessons directly addressed problems identified within the classroom and because multiple skilled educators were present to assist in giving support and feedback.

One limitation of the PoP project was that no empirical data has yet been gathered on its effectiveness. While anecdotal data (from secondary students, TCs, SBTEs and the UBTE) suggest that the outcomes and impact of this project are quite beneficial, its specific effect on students and partners has not yet been measured. Still, too often clinical experience places a student teacher in the back of the room with a worksheet, silently observing without gaining practical experience; our collective impact-oriented experience challenged this model and provided alternative, beneficial experiences for all constituents. Based on this pilot implementation, it seems clear that collective impact SUPs like the PoP facilitate broader impacts for the partnering schools and universities that can extend beyond one classroom.

Eliciting and interpreting students’ mathematical thinking is one of the essential skills for TCs to develop prior to beginning their teaching career (Ball & Forzani, 2009). One of the reasons teachers elicit and interpret students’ mathematical thinking is to assess student understanding to inform in the moment instructional decisions (NCTM, 2014). Because eliciting and interpreting student thinking happens in the moment, it can be difficult to simulate in a university-based methods classroom, and often there is a disconnect between the practices taught in teacher preparation programs and implementation of them in the classroom (Campbell & Dunleavy, 2016). The purpose of this project was to address this disconnect and provide meaningful experiences for TCs to develop their ability to elicit and interpret student thinking while supporting elementary students’ understanding of mathematics.

In designing such programs a first step for the mathematics teacher educator (MTE) was to collaborate with local elementary school teachers to develop a common agenda. The university sponsoring the teacher preparation program, where the MTE (Maddie, fourth author) taught, supported the conception and development of the elementary SUP. Through this unique partnership, both the university and elementary school faculty were committed to supporting TC education in ways that were mutually beneficial.

The MTE met with the two first-grade teachers at a local elementary school to formulate their goals both for first-grade students and the TCs. The teachers identified improving students’ basic fact fluency and solving word problems as two areas where their first-grade students needed either additional support or opportunities for extension. The MTE then described that TCs needed to develop their skills for eliciting and interpreting student thinking. The transparent discussion of goals both for the students and the TCs allowed the MTE and the teachers to come to a common understanding and develop a shared agenda for the clinical experiences. The MTE and the first-grade teachers then identified coursework and clinical practices that might address the needs of both the elementary students and the TCs.

The first-grade teachers were regularly assessing their students using formal measures such as Do The Math assessments (Burns, 2007) and classwork alongside informal measures such as observations. The MTE was measuring TC progress by observing and providing in-the-moment feedback to the TCs, structuring guided reading reflections on instruction and reviewing audio recordings captured during the TCs’ lesson implementations. The first-grade teachers and the MTE met regularly during the clinical experience – informally while the TCs were present in their classrooms and formally outside of the clinical experience. During the informal meetings, the MTE and the teachers would discuss strategies that could be immediately enacted to help support different first-grade students. The formal meetings provided an opportunity to discuss student progress with their basic facts and problem solving as well as areas of TC strength, growth and refinements to the clinical experience.

The TCs visited the first-grade classrooms five times for one hour over the course of a college semester. The TCs were paired with one to two first-grade students. The MTE and the first-grade teacher intentionally developed the pairings using knowledge about the first-grade student needs and the TC strengths. The TC had a few course meetings prior to beginning the clinical work in order to work with the mathematics they would be teaching and begin developing instructional strategies around eliciting and interpreting student thinking. The TCs then used activities from Developing Number Concepts (Richardson, 1999) to work with their students on basic fact fluency and wrote word problems to reflect their students’ needs. Developing Number Concepts was a resource the first-grade teachers were already using in their classroom, and by using activities from this resource, the TCs were able to authentically reinforce concepts the students were learning in their classroom.

The TCs also took turns working with a partner to lead a number talk with the students in the first-grade class. A number talk was selected because it is a math routine designed to support students’ fact fluency (Parrish, 2011). A number talk is a discourse routine where the teacher shows a dot image (Figure 1) or an expression, and the students need to explain their mathematical thinking. For example, in Figure 1 the TCs asked students to tell them how many dots there were and how they saw them. The number talk provided the TCs an opportunity to elicit, interpret and respond to several different student ideas while supporting the first graders’ in developing a conceptual understanding of addition.

To help support the TCs in eliciting and interpreting student thinking – and implementing the math activities in ways that support student learning – the MTE and first-grade teachers provided in-classroom support for the TCs and first-grade students throughout the lesson. The TCs also met the hour before working with the students to rehearse their lesson with their peers and practice their responses to anticipated student ideas and questions. They then met for an hour after the clinical experience to debrief, sharing what went well and identifying areas of growth for the next visit.

Because the MTE was in the classrooms during the clinical sessions, it allowed for communication across the experience. The meeting before the semester began, during and after gave the teachers and the MTE opportunities to reflect and revise the experience as needed. This helped to develop a trusting relationship between the teachers and the MTE. While the MTE gave consistent feedback to TCs as part of their role, the classroom teachers were also encouraged to develop relationships with and provide feedback for the TCs in their classroom as mentors.

This SUP is a partnership between the elementary school and its teachers, university and its faculty, and local community members with the overall goal of supporting the elementary school and developing skilled future teachers through the university coursework and authentic clinical practice. The first-grade teachers, the MTE and the TCs were all committed to these goals and this experience.

The first-grade teachers saw the individual or small group instruction provided by the TCs as a genuinely beneficial opportunity for their students. During an interview after the experience, one teacher shared that it was “the best part of my day. And the kids’ day” reflecting that “the students are given the really individualized 2:1 or 1:1 attention that they crave so often that we can’t give them in a traditional structure”. One of the TCs shared that the clinical experience helped them develop strategies needed for teaching:

The SUP between the first-grade teachers and the MTE provided opportunities for the TCs to develop as teachers and the students to develop their understanding of the mathematics content. This partnership also provides an example as to how clinical experiences can be designed to mutually benefit all partners involved in the project. The TCs were able to engage in intentionally designed experiences to elicit student thinking, and the elementary students received small-group instruction to support their understanding of basic facts and develop their skills to solve word problems. Clinical experiences such as this one can help to address the need to connect university-based methods courses with the practical needs of schools.

As part of a multi-year SUP between University (blinded) and a local school district, TCs were placed within the district’s elementary schools for a year-long internship which included a semester of on-campus courses as well as 8–12 hours per week of clinical activities followed by their semester-long full-time student teaching internship. The university placed between 18 and 24 TCs for this year-long clinical experience which included the fall semester of their senior year and their full-time student teaching internship in the spring (e.g. Putman & Polly, 2021, Putman et al., 2022a, b). In this section, I (Drew, second author) describe the intensive small-group teaching activities that TCs completed during the first semester of this year-long placement.

At the inception of this partnership, the university-based department chair who worked with district leaders to start the SUP met with the four UBTEs and each of the partnering school districts’ SBTEs. During the meeting, everyone reviewed the typical course activities and invited SBTEs to recommend course modifications. This review and the ensuing modifications ensured that course and clinical activities aligned with the district’s focus and would prepare TCs to succeed during full-time student teaching. One of the frequently-mentioned elements was that TCs needed to have extensive experience teaching small groups in both mathematics and reading. The school district was emphasizing small-group teaching as a primary mechanism to differentiate activities and enrich the educational experiences of children through additional learning opportunities.

The common agenda that emerged was to support SBTEs and their elementary students by having TCs teach weekly small-group lessons in their clinical placement. The structure of this clinical experience served all partners: TCs would gain valuable experience teaching small groups during the semester prior to student teaching; SBTEs would gain focused help with TCs teaching small-group lessons to their students; and lastly, elementary school students would gain more support and feedback within small-group instruction with the TC. As described in a previous paper (Putman et al., 2025), SBTEs were invested in the small-group teaching clinical experience since they helped draft the common agenda and had agency to shape the implementation of the clinical practice in their individual classroom – SBTEs could determining what subject (math or reading) and standards TCs taught in the small groups.

Due to the variance in the clinical placements – TCs taught in different grade levels and across different subjects – it was not feasible to empirically measure the impact of the small-group teaching across the program (Putman et al., 2025). However, the SUP provided recursive opportunities for TCs to reflect on their experiences and for the SBTEs to provide feedback on their observations across the clinical placements.

As part of their university coursework, TCs completed monthly reflections and provided feedback about their experiences through discussions and written assignments. Informally, though, when asked about what they noticed about the impact of student learning, TCs reported various positive indicators including that students were more confident when working on topics that TCs taught in small-group, students got more questions correct as time went on, and students were able to complete more problems and tasks than before while also increasing their accuracy.

Research conducted as part of the SUP included TC-related outcomes. Specifically, TCs reported in their reflections that they had gained more confidence teaching in small group settings (Putman & Polly, 2021, Putman et al., 2022a), and prior studies noted that TCs showed gains in their self-efficacy related to teaching students of diverse backgrounds (Putman et al., 2023); additionally, their student teaching outcomes in the second semester of their year-long internship were significantly higher than those of their peers not involved in this SUP (Putman et al., 2022b).

In addition to the small group teaching activities, the SUP included multiple mutually reinforcing activities aligned to the goals of the partnership which were to improve elementary student learning, develop TCs’ pedagogical skills and have TCs provide support for SBTEs. While the small-group teaching activity was the primary ongoing activity that lasted the majority of the TCs’ first semester in their year-long clinical internship, additional activities included course sessions that were facilitated by the district’s literacy and mathematics coaches as well as opportunities for TCs to teach and engage directly with students (even more than TCs who were not part of the SUP). Lastly, twice during the semester UBTEs observed TCs and provided feedback.

An additional partnership activity that mutually reinforced the goals of the partnership occurred in Years 1 and 2. The department chair leading this program had funding to support after-school professional learning meetings that involved TCs, SBTEs and UBTEs. Meetings during Year 1 focused on a book study about culturally sustaining pedagogy, while meetings in Year 2 focused on a book study about research-based strategies to increase student engagement. This book study helped to bridge the gap between university coursework and topics in SBTEs professional learning by having reciprocal professional development that TCs and SBTEs co-facilitated to all of the participants, including UBTEs. Specifically, during Year 2 of the partnership, TCs and their partnering SBTEs each facilitated a small-group discussion about a research-based student engagement strategy.

In the focus groups collected about the partnership, TCs reported that one of the most impactful activities during their year with the partnership was the feedback and observations from UBTEs and SBTEs during the first semester. Typically, TCs do not receive any feedback from UBTEs in the first semester of their year-long internship and feedback from SBTEs varies. In this SUP, UBTEs observed two lessons taught by TCs during the first semester and provided them with feedback immediately after the observation.

Communication in this partnership morphed over time. While UBTEs had an initial meeting with SBTEs at the beginning of the SUP, within the first few months university faculty realized that a half-dozen TCs were not engaging with students as much as we had hoped due to confusion regarding the expectations communicated between UBTEs and SBTEs. Previously published research indicated that activities such as direct teaching correlated to TCs demonstrating more proficiency on various student teaching outcomes earlier than their peers who had less student interaction (Putman & Polly, 2021, Putman et al., 2022a , b). Based on this, UBTEs created a list of various tasks and activities that TCs could do during the first semester of their internship in order to reinforce to SBTEs how the SUP could support them as teachers as much as it supported TCs in gaining teaching experience. Instead of using this list as an evaluative process, UBTEs communicated to SBTEs and TCs that these were potential ideas for how TCs could be more involved in the daily work of teaching.

Additionally, based on SBTE feedback in our initial meeting about the multitude of clinical activities that TCs had to complete, the four UBTEs made a compiled list of assignments and due dates. One UBTE made and sent out monthly newsletters that included reminders for expectations and upcoming major projects throughout the clinical experience. Many SBTEs reported that the newsletter and the list of assignments with due dates was incredibly helpful so that SBTEs and TCs could plan ahead and know when TCs should complete specific clinical activities with the elementary school students.

The strong backbone in this SUP was formed by the university-based department chair who started this endeavor and the UBTEs, including Drew. All of the UBTEs had extensive experience teaching elementary school students, elementary education courses and supporting TCs during student teaching. Additionally, all UBTEs were committed to supporting both SBTEs and TCs and willing to be receptive to SBTEs’ recommendations for course and clinical modifications. This aspect of co-design with SBTEs led to the small-group teaching project and caused Drew to modify clinical activities in order to maximize the relevant clinical experiences of TCs while supporting the practical need in schools.

In addition to the strong backbone from UBTEs, the other individuals who were involved in this SUP were influential about the quality of TCs’ experience. All SBTEs were engaged with TCs, but some did not initially realize the level of commitment. This was definitely evident during the COVID-19 pandemic which impacted the student teaching semester for the 2019–2020 cohort and the first semester of the 2020–2021 cohort. During the fall of 2020, there was notable variance between TCs related to the extent that they worked with students and completed clinical activities. In some cases, TCs were co-teachers in virtual spaces and in-person experiences, and in other cases they were put in positions where they just observed their SBTE and did not teach much at all.

UBTEs implementing collective impact SUPs must remain flexible to address context-specific needs and concerns to best meet the goals of the partnership, sometimes against unexpected obstacles, like a global pandemic. While the common goals of this particular clinical experience directly benefited TCs and elementary students, SUPs are more than their larger organizing bodies and overarching goals. SUPs comprise diverse individuals with varying needs, day-to-day obstacles and competing concerns. To genuinely engage in collective impact endeavors, partnerships must balance the system-level structures alongside ground-level realities, empowering each partner to best fit the structures of the SUP to their context in order to obtain collective impact and benefits in broad ways.

In this section, we synthesize the four vignettes above and describe implications for future work related to collective impact in the context of teacher education SUPs. As to be expected with four examples of collective impact endeavors spanning both elementary and secondary levels, there were differences across the vignettes. The most apparent is that each vignette describes a unique SUP. While the roles were generally the same (UBTE, SBTEs, TCs and PK-12 students), the grade levels, subject matter, common goals and individual players were incredibly diverse. As such, the mutually reinforcing activities greatly varied. Nevertheless, across these cases, we identified four common themes which we present below followed by implications and future directions for collective impact in teacher education.

The vignettes each described a unique SUP focused on teacher education, and we identified four commonalities in these cases including direct involvement of TCs in the partnership, the authentic collaboration with SBTEs, a shared focus on PK-12 student outcomes and a lack of empirical measurement. One implication for this synthesis is that SUPs based in teacher education wishing to have collective impact should prioritize these first three themes and critically consider the fourth (which could be a limitation in assessing the effectiveness of clinical practice endeavors). We describe each of these themes in the sections below.

While it may seem intuitive, one of the most clear commonalities across the four vignettes is the involvement of TCs within the SUP. As stated earlier, very little research on collective impact includes teacher education and TCs (Panjwani et al., 2023). In the four vignettes in this article, teacher candidates were central to the collective impact work and often considered equal partners alongside the UBTEs and SBTEs.

This rejection of hierarchy was most apparent in the second vignette where the TC was tasked with creating and implementing a lesson plan alongside the SBTE as a co-creator. The TC was then a co-teacher alongside the SBTE and UBTE, gaining direct and authentic teacher experience with secondary students. TCs were also centered in the SUPs described in the second and fourth vignettes where TCs worked directly with elementary school students on various mathematics or literacy activities to develop their skills and knowledge.

While all clinical practice is geared toward preparing TCs, clinical practice that utilizes collective impact seems to uniquely prioritize giving TCs direct experience working alongside PK-12 students and teachers as equal partners within the SUP, often with meaningful outcomes to multiple partners. In the first vignette, TCs were tasked in leading photovoice workshops on “good teaching” that centered both them and the students as experts on these critical questions. Reflections on the students’ answers were particularly meaningful for the audience – primarily SBTEs and UBTEs. In fact, in all of the vignettes SBTEs felt that not only did their students benefit, but they themselves grew from the partnership through the assistance, insights and support provided by the TCs.

In all four vignettes, SBTEs were included as collaborative partners throughout the planning and implementation of the clinical practice experiences. All four vignettes described scenarios that were flexible to individual contexts and needs. SBTEs were allowed to shape these projects in ways that best supported their specific students as well as the needs of the TCs they helped to mentor. In the second vignette, SBTEs offered feedback in the early planning stages of the PoP project, and they partnered directly as mentors and beneficiaries for the lessons taught by TCs. In the case of the fourth vignette, the SBTEs helped the UBTEs design both coursework and clinical activities that provided meaningful teaching experience for TCs while supporting authentic learning for elementary students through small groups in mathematics or reading. When COVID-19 impacted different clinical experiences, UBTEs in the fourth vignette adjusted and supported the SBTEs accordingly. Collective impact SUPs must empower SBTEs as partners with agency to the common goals and mutually reinforcing activities, and this empowerment is capable through the relationships of the SUP through continuous communication.

Another aspect of shared vision that was common among these vignettes was the focus on improving student outcomes for PK-12 students. The first vignette described the decades-long project to engage students as primary sources to their own lives – an initiative that originally began in order to lower dropout rates in an urban school district. In the second vignette, the PoP project was meant to specifically identify a problem or strategy that the TC and SBTE believed would directly benefit their secondary students. In the case of the third vignette, there was deliberate planning focused on elementary school students’ mathematics learning between the UBTE and the SBTEs when the SUP started. SBTEs shared information about their students and provided insight on what activities may best impact their students’ learning with input from the UBTE who then trained and prepared the TCs accordingly. Collective impact projects that involve SUPs must consider how the common agenda and mutually reinforcing activities will impact teaching and learning in the school. Too often, clinical practice has the singular goal of only giving the TC hours in a school building with few other considerations put in place. A more intentionally structured SUP brings the partners together to discuss and decide on how the partnership can have the biggest impact on students.

The final commonality in synthesizing these vignettes could also be considered a limitation: the impact of these SUPs has not yet been empirically measured, and their specific impacts are unclear. While all four authors believe – and have ample anecdotal evidence to support – that when SUPs are formed intentionally they can have significant benefits for participants, their specific impact is hard to quantify and measure. In the case of the first vignette focused on the PoETs project, there is qualitative evidence that the secondary students involved with the project have increased engagement and interest in the activities compared to activities prior to the project. Additionally, the questions themselves, which center on “good teaching,” generate important data directly from the perspective of students and can have an impact on the adults helping to facilitate this activity. In reflections, both SBTEs and TCs have commented how the activity has made them reflect on these characteristics of “good teaching” and affected their practice. The fourth vignette used the input from SBTEs to shape the activities of the TCs, providing the elementary students with additional support in building mathematics and literacy skills. Again, anecdotal evidence in the form of weekly reflections from TCs and comments from SBTEs suggests that both partners saw beneficial outcomes for students, but because the SUP placed TCs across various grade levels, it was not feasible to develop common measures for student learning.

The struggle to implement a shared membership is a consistent limitation in collective impact projects (Smith et al., 2019). While the lack of empirical evidence may be a deficiency, we contend that the benefits of these partnerships are still apparent. Because SUPs are so relationship-oriented and contextually-specific, reflections and feedback from individual partners are the shared measurement. What is notable is that through these characteristics of collective impact each partner in each of the four contexts felt comfortable expressing their needs and adapting these projects as they might best serve the SUP and PK-12 students. The UBTE, as the backbone partner in these cases, established a partnership that empowered partners to shape activities but still meet the common agenda. We contend that collective impact SUPs are necessarily adaptable and contextually-relevant to each classroom which resists standard measurement.

While a universal standard measure of collective impact SUPs is not feasible due to the varying contexts and foci, future research should work to refine the empirical and systematic investigations to measure impact on individual SUP participants including PK-12 students, TCs, SBTEs and UBTEs. While each vignette describes benefits of each project, there is still a need for individuals doing collective impact work in SUPs and teacher education to gather explicit data on these activities. A possible way to conceptualize the “shared measurement” of collective impact while balancing the nuance of each unique SUP context would be to work backwards from some of the desired outcomes of collective impact within SUPs: (1) improving PK-12 student learning, (2) improving teaching and (3) improving affective outcomes. Table 3 provides alignment between these three outcomes and potential research questions. To maintain the unique individualism and adaptability of SUPs in teacher education, any shared measurement should meet the characteristics of successful collective impact projects – they should meet the common agenda, be mutually reinforcing and invite continuous communication between partners.

The four vignettes in this article provide a set of examples about how SUPs designed through the collective impact framework can be leveraged to simultaneously develop TCs, support effective teaching in schools and impact PK-12 student learning. Most often UBTEs serve as the backbone partner. As our vignettes illustrate, they typically reach out to establish the SUP because, as part of their job description, they need to create clinical experiences for their students. However, how a clinical experience SUP is structured can vary, and choosing to develop a collective impact project takes effort. The continuous communication must begin with this first interaction, and SBTEs should be empowered as equal partners in the development of clinical experiences. Then, while all five aspects of Kania and Kramer’s (2011) framework are important, establishing a common agenda that meets the needs of both the PK-12 school and university is tantamount to an effective collective impact SUP. If the collective impact endeavors are going to include activities to support and develop TCs, then the common agenda should include a plan for mutually reinforcing activities for the role of TCs in the SUP and the PK-12 students. As a part of the continuing conversations, these mutually reinforcing activities must be mutually beneficial, feasible and authentic.

Finally, while a shared measure may be difficult to implement, there must be opportunities for reflection and feedback embedded in the clinical experience. Although the most nebulous, this characteristic supports many of the others. With no sense of how the project is going, participants cannot assess if it is meeting the shared goal. Efforts to establish more empirical evidence for collective impact SUPs must respect the characteristics of this partnership, meaning all participants (TCs, SBTEs and UBTEs) see the value of the data. UBTEs should resist any urge to develop empirical studies to garner results only for their own benefit but rather develop research questions and processes that authentically benefit all partners in the SUP. Ultimately, our vignettes demonstrate how collective impact can be a useful framework for developing SUPs in teacher education that feel mutually beneficial for participating partners and PK-12 students.