District University Partnership Research Articles

Enhancing Rural Science Education through School District–University Partnership

This instrumental case study describes the steps taken to establish and implement a university–school partnership to improve rural science teachers’ content knowledge and teaching practices and students’ achievement in elementary science and high school biology courses. Our research questions explored the impact of professional development and place-based learning on student outcomes, with the study’s methodology involving needs assessments, teacher training, and continuous support through modeling and coaching. The findings include gains in achievement and substantial gains in science education. The findings have implications for the design, implementation, and evaluation of university–school partnerships designed to build teachers’ capacity to deliver high-quality science education and improve student success in rural school districts.

Taking the LEAP: a district-university partnership to address shortages in special education

PurposeDistrict-university partners increasingly rely on “grow-your-own” licensure programs to address teacher shortages. Because vacancies in special education represent a chronic issue, our district-university partnership developed LEAP – the Licensed Educators’ Accelerated Pathway, successfully preparing 26 paraprofessionals as special education teachers (SEs). We describe a model university-district partnership in which we collaborated to design and implement paraprofessionals’ SE licensure program.Design/methodology/approachIn this general review, we describe a district-university partnership collaboration that resolved barriers experienced by paraprofessionals working toward licensure in special education (Essential #4, Reflection and Innovation). The specialized design and partnership solutions were grounded in SE preparation research literature.Findings25 (28 entered the program and 25 completed) paraprofessionals from one large urban and several regional districts completed special education licensure through LEAP. Slightly more than half of LEAP participants were Black or Hispanic (see Table 1), contributing to the diversification of SE workforce. University-district partnership was successful in designing and delivering a program that allowed participants: a) to remain employed, b) attend evening classes in their geographic region or online, c) complete all field experiences in sponsoring districts (Essential #2) and d) receive concierge advising from a “completion coach.” We describe solutions to barriers experienced by paraprofessionals and advocate for district-university collaboration to address chronic teacher shortages.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations include lack of data on success of program completers during their first year of teaching as they began this work in Fall 2023. Further, because the participating district was large and urban, generalization of program details for small and rural districts is difficult.Practical implicationsPractical tips for developing grow-your-own special education licensure programs are providing. Detailed descriptions of barriers candidates experienced and ways the district-university partners resolved these issues are included. Programs like the one described has the potential to positively impact teacher pipeline issues.Social implicationsThe program described provided highly-trained teachers to fill chronic vacancies in special education in three participating districts/agencies. Because students receiving special education services are at risk for school failure and are disproportionately impacted by teacher turnover, addressing this area through grow-your-own licensure programs represents a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative. Further, upskilling diverse paraprofessionals to licensed teacher roles represent an economic boost, which they might not otherwise have achieved.Originality/valueAvailable research literature signals alarm over persistent teacher shortages in hard-to-staff districts and lack of diversity in the teacher workforce, but few published accounts describe successful programs. Partner collaboration fostered a re-imagining of course formatting and delivery to accommodate adult learners, avoiding problems often reported with alternative programs.

Leadership preparation in progress: evidence from a district-university partnership

PurposeThis study aims to analyze the experiences of a closed cohort of aspiring leaders and connects the university and school district partnership relationship to building the leadership capacity of the cohort. This study builds on previous literature in district-university partnerships and leadership preparation. Powerful learning experiences (PLEs) and interpersonal-intrapersonal leadership development models serve as frames to examine how aspects of successful leadership preparation programs were present.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study was conducted with a team of researchers from the university and school district and relies on data from semi-structured interviews with students from the closed cohort.FindingsResearchers identified three major themes of aspiring leaders' preparation experience: confidence building, reflection and mindset change.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the emerging literature on PLEs by illustrating how this type of partnership creates opportunities for powerful learning experiences for aspiring school leaders.

Applying for RAMP Using a Cohort Model: Results of a Multilevel Case Study

School counselors across the United States are implementing comprehensive school counseling programs, such as those following the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) National Model. ASCA awards a designation honoring exemplary school counseling programs: Recognized ASCA Model Program (RAMP). Although a growing number of studies have examined RAMP status through survey methods and student outcomes, the need remains to understand RAMP through the lens of each school’s unique context and experience. We present a multilevel, qualitative, participatory, descriptive case study to examine a school counseling cohort preparing over a 2-year period to apply for RAMP, utilizing a district–university partnership. Given the expansive data gleaned from the present study, the results are reported in two articles; this is the first of a two-part study. Results highlight this RAMP cohort process, including the following themes: (a) the push and pull of deciding to participate, (b) collaborative supports, (c) facilitators’ integral and complex role, and (d) next steps.

Leveraging Social–Emotional Learning to Promote Excellence and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A District–University Partnership

Social–emotional learning (SEL) has never been more important as the nation rebuilds after the COVID-19 pandemic and grapples with ongoing racial injustice. More work is needed to promote racial healing in our nation’s schools. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work in the midst and aftermath of the pandemic is challenging; effort, engagement, and trust-building are required to produce sustainable change that truly makes a difference for students. This column features a successful district–university partnership that focuses on SEL as a lever to promote student excellence and DEI. We reflect on the process of beginning this partnership, highlight three key principles, and offer suggestions for establishing and sustaining such partnerships. The partnership between the Mahomet-Seymour School District (MSSD) and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) was established in 2018. The MSSD student body is overall affluent, although it serves a small...

Sensemaking of University and District Stakeholders in Implementing a Teacher Residency Policy in Louisiana

A growing body of research has identified teacher residency’s potentials for improving and sustaining preservice teacher learning through a stronger district–university partnership. Drawing on sensemaking perspectives on education policy implementation, this qualitative case study examines how a variety of university and district stakeholders make sense of and implement a state-mandated teacher residency in Louisiana. Findings reveal that stakeholders are primarily making sense of the residency in isolation, leading to incoherent understandings and varied implementation practices. Opportunities to improve stakeholders’ collective sensemaking and collaborative implementation and to optimize the benefits and potentials of teacher residency partnerships are discussed. This study has implications for teacher education policy implementation and continuous inquiry into the complexities of teacher preparation.

A Case Study of Lessons Learned from a Decade of Success in Preparing and Supporting Quality School Leadership Through District–University Partnerships

The purpose of this case study was to explore the context and key features of a successful decade-long district and university principal preparation program. Despite the importance of such partnerships, long-standing partnerships appear to be far from the norm. The partnership was designed in collaboration with faculty at a flagship university in the American Southwest and district leaders in a large urban school system. At the initiation of the partnership, the school district faced challenges similar to other districts in ensuring a steady pool of quality school leaders. The study was grounded in theory and anchored in relevant scholarly literature. Research methods included data collected from a qualitative analysis of the perspectives of key personnel who co-created the principal preparation program and supplementary data from external evaluations conducted by recognized appraisers. Findings indicate that district–university partnerships are more likely to endure when the partners are able to strengthen shared goals, leverage existing assets, sustain trusting relationships, uphold mutuality of purpose, and support collaborative interactions. The implications and recommendations from the study may appeal to other providers of principal preparation programs who desire to adapt the lessons learned and build on the assets that exist in their own unique school and community contexts. Future research on long standing district–university partnerships may help inform states in their oversight of principal preparation programs and university and district partners who wish to start or sustain the recruitment, preparation, placement, and retention of quality educational leaders in contextually specific and complex school environments.

Collaboration of Researchers and Stakeholders: Transforming Educator Preparation

This study contributes to the literature on first year teachers by identifying complexities and struggles of becoming a teacher and the implications of district-university partnerships to strengthen our educator preparation program. The importance of partnerships with stakeholders, memorandum of agreements to share data, observations of first year teachers by university faculty, employer surveys, and the first year teacher’s perspectives about how well our university prepared them, as well as how they compare with other first year teachers nationally is addressed. Multiple sources of data were used to provide information about completers, individuals that graduated from the educator preparation program. These include state reports, national trends, and review of survey results next to universities across the United States involved in teacher preparation. Graduates of our teacher preparation program have a 93% retention rate after five years of teaching. The national average is 50% after five years.

Being Culturally Responsive in a Formative Evaluation of a Professional Development School: Successes and Missed Opportunities of an Educative, Values-Engaged Evaluation

While evaluators have explored the implementation of culturally responsive evaluation (CRE), the failures of applying CRE are less often told. In this article, we use a reflective case narrative to explore our successes and failures in implementing our CRE approach, including an educative stance. We draw on a formative evaluation of a district–university partnership during its first year. Our analysis of the reflective case narrative makes transparent how our culturally responsive, educative approach was sufficient to employ culturally responsive methods. Yet, our culturally responsive, educative stance failed to provide critical midcourse feedback, which worked against the development of the district–university partnership. The lessons learned from the formative evaluation are important to draw attention to the intersections between the cultural characteristics of the evaluand and how the evaluation contributes to educative insights.

Family Engagement Practices as Sites of Possibility: Supporting Immigrant Families through a District-University Partnership

In this article, we consider the ways in which family engagement practices foster sites of possibility for immigrant families in the public schools. As demographic change leads to a growing number of new immigrant destinations and amidst increasing hostility toward immigrant communities, educational institutions play an increasingly important role in supporting these students and their families. Drawing on a study of one school district’s partnership with a local university to identify and resolve engagement gaps between immigrant and nonimmigrant families, our article discusses asset-based approaches to family engagement practices. In addition to discussing district initiatives to engage immigrant families in 2-way communication and minimize barriers to participation, we also consider the role of university partners in building sites of possibility for immigrant youth and their families. We conclude with implications for expanded efforts to develop equitable family engagement practices in districts serving immigrant communities.

Benefits of 25 Years of School District-University Partnerships to Improve Teacher Preparation and Advance School Renewal

Benefits of 25 Years of School District-University Partnerships to Improve Teacher Preparation and Advance School Renewal

The Emotional Landscapes of Literacy Coaching

In this article, the researchers use positioning theory and de Certeau’s theoretical insights into cultural production in everyday life to examine how first-year literacy coaches negotiate issues of power, positioning, and identity during their professional development. Data were collected during a yearlong qualitative study of literacy coaches participating in a district–university partnership to provide professional development to first-year literacy coaches. The researchers used positioning analysis of three small stories drawn from interviews with literacy coaches and one vignette from a professional development session to investigate how the literacy coaches positioned themselves within the moral order of the district’s literacy and professional development model. Findings demonstrate how the literacy coaches both shaped and were shaped by the institutional spaces through which they moved as they tactically negotiated conflicting expectations and discourses about coaching. These negotiations highlight the emotional nature of literacy coaches’ work as they co-constructed their identities and negotiated understandings of how school spaces are used and the purposes of literacy coaching. The researchers argue that it is necessary to move beyond current conceptions of literacy coaching as a series of roles and tasks to recognize the complexities of literacy coaching and to offer more meaningful professional development for literacy coaches.

A Structured, Interactive Method for Youth Participation in a School District-University Partnership to Prevent Obesity

The involvement of school-age children in participatory research is described in the context of a school district-university partnership to prevent obesity in children. The purpose of this study was to elicit, from children in kindergarten (K) through sixth grade, perceptions of foods and activities that would inform the design of developmentally appropriate interventions to prevent and reduce childhood obesity. Children (N = 218) were selected through a random sample of K through sixth grade classrooms in 3 schools. They participated in structured, interactive, small group exercises focused on perceptions of foods (taste and healthy/unhealthy) and activities (fun and active/sedentary). High school students in the same school district were trained to facilitate the children's groups in collaboration with university faculty and students. Qualitative data analysis was used to discern patterns across grade levels. There were grade-level differences in perceptions of the taste and healthfulness of foods. Younger children (K-1) equated foods that tasted good with foods that were "good for you." Older children were more discriminating and gave reasons for their perceptions. For activities, fun was positively associated with the number of people involved and the amount of movement. There were fewer differences across grade levels in preferences for types of sedentary activities, compared with sports and other activities that "make you move." The findings have implications for developmentally appropriate health promotion interventions to prevent obesity. These structured but highly interactive methods could be used by school personnel to assess the unique needs of a school population.

Schools of Promise: A School District—University Partnership Centered on Inclusive School Reform

A university—school district partnership, Schools of Promise (SOP), was formed to improve elementary schools for all children through whole-school reform. This effort focused on the concepts of belonging and inclusion, positioning the needs of marginalized students at the center of the reform through a university-facilitated restructuring of service delivery and university-led professional development. This article reports on the findings from a mixed-methods study of this partnership, addressing two research questions focused on the experiences of the participants and major stakeholders involved in this reform effort. The questions include (a) What have been the major accomplishments of SOP? and (b) What barriers have been encountered? The findings suggest there are both significant accomplishments as well as ongoing barriers to these efforts. These themes are discussed, and implications for future research and future directions for this partnership are presented.

Partnerships for Improving Literacy in Urban Schools

How many times have researchers and professional developers approached you or your school with “the answer” to improving literacy achievement? How did it work out? If changes occurred during the engagement with these outside partners, what remained after the project ended? Did such efforts lead to lasting change and improvement in student performance? If your experiences are typical and align with our own past experiences, your answers to these questions are probably, “Many times,” “OK while it lasted,” “Not much,” and “Not really.” The Advanced Reading Development Demonstration Project sought to change these answers by redefining school district–university partnerships and thereby making capacity building at the school and district level the explicit goal of these partnerships. Capacity building was seen as the linchpin for sustainable and ongoing performance improvements.

Preparing First-Time Leaders for an Urban Public School District: An Action Research Study of a Collaborative District–University Partnership

This article reports the results for the first cycle of an action research study about a district–university partnership. Two district facilitators and two university facilitators co-constructed a principal preparation program for an inner-city school district to help prepare the next generation of building leaders. Twenty-two students participated in the 15-month nontraditional program. The study found that in preparing first-time school leaders, the most helpful experiences were those that developed self-understanding and readiness for the role change. New instructional techniques and the full-time residency facilitated this earning. It also found that the partnership, though providing new and exciting opportunities to deviate from the traditional preparation model, needed further development.

Transforming the Preparation of Educational Leaders: A Case for Ethical District–University Partnerships

Transforming the Preparation of Educational Leaders: A Case for Ethical District–University Partnerships

Sustaining Innovations Through Lead Teacher Learning: A learning sciences perspective on supporting professional development

There is a rich history of researchers developing curricular materials aimed at enhancing student learning in American classrooms. Though many of these innovations have been successful on a small scale, institutionalizing them so they become part of a district's instructional culture has been a challenge. As large districts try to scale up and sustain the use of successful innovations, they are faced with the task of supporting many teachers with varied levels of experience with the materials on an ongoing basis. This article describes our efforts within a mature district–university partnership to build the district's capacity for providing this support. In this effort, university researchers have participated with district curriculum specialists in a workcircle to support district lead teachers as they plan and conduct professional development around reform‐based curriculum materials. Our approach has been to build on the classroom expertise of the lead teachers by providing them with access to theoretical and research‐based knowledge relevant to their work as professional developers. We use two examples of our work with the lead teachers to describe how theoretical ideas from the learning sciences guide our efforts. These ideas include the situated nature of knowledge and learning, the role that communities of discourse and practice play in refining practitioners' understandings, and the use of a cognitive apprentice model to scaffold lead teachers' understandings and enhance the district's capacity to scale and sustain reform.

Fostering Collaboration in a School District–University Partnership: The Teachers Researching Inquiry‐Based Science project

This paper describes how collaboration emerged in a school district–university partnership designed to foster teacher development in the context of elementary science education. The Teachers Researching Inquiry‐Based Science project involved four elementary teachers, a school district science mentoring teacher, a school district science coordinator and a university researcher. In this qualitative action research project, a variety of research methods and sources were adopted including participant observation, interviews, documents and journals. Research outcomes describe strategies adopted to foster collaboration and teacher learning.

A Best Practices Model for Preparation of Rural Special Education Teachers

This district-university partnership program is meeting the personnel needs of a 17-district region in the California desert where over 40% of their special education teachers had been employed without appropriate credentials. The program was designed to respond to the geographic and population (68% Hispanic) demographics of the region. Utilizing an alternative credential option (the Internship Credential), courses, extensive practica support, assistance and supervision, and continuing professional development opportunities were provided for teachers in this rural desert region. Preliminary results indicate that 70 teachers completed their Specialist Credential, and the retention rate of these professionals has been approximately 85%. It has been indicated, too, that coaches who provide extensive mentoring of Intern teachers during their two years of working toward full certification have favorable views of the program.