This essay reflects on the challenges of facilitating a community program partnership with the Prince George's Memorial Library System. The program, "Community Justice," uses a public syllabus to introduce local teens to social justice concepts, theories, and methods. While issues of sustainability and retention are examined in this…

This paper builds on feminist elaborations of Bernstein's code theory to engage in a series of thought experiments with interview data produced during a co-inquiry design-based research intervention project. It presents three accounts of thinking/writing with data. Our purpose in presenting three different accounts of interview data is to…

This study reports on the professional learning of two teachers of science who were learning to engage their grade four students in meaningful, hands-on learning. Teachers' learning took place in the context of a 10-month university-based action research program designed to help improve the practice of science, technology, engineering and…

This article explores the theory of action underlying New York University's (NYU's) Partnership Schools Program--explaining in the process what a theory of action is, and how it can be constructed for other innovations in other contexts. NYU's Partnership Program involves 23 schools, K-12, spanning several of New York City's most economically…

"Professional Development Schools: Researching Lessons from the Field" provides a comprehensive analysis of PDS research that can aid PDS stakeholders in designing and sustaining meaningful research in their partnerships. Breault and Breault used an extensive qualitative meta-synthesis to examine the research over the past 20 years. Their…

Partnerships between schools and universities in England use course handbooks to guide student teacher learning during long field experiences. Using data from a yearlong ethnographic study of a postgraduate certificate of education programme in one English university, the function of course handbooks in mediating learning in two high school…

This study examined social structures that complicate teacher professional development within the context of university and school partnerships in a Western state. Semi-structured interview with participants was the primary data source for conducting an activity systems analysis comparing teacher professional development activities with school…

According to dictionary definitions, the notion of collaboration is neither simple nor clear. An online American Heritage Dictionary defines collaboration as "to work together, especially in a joint intellectual endeavor; to cooperate, as with an enemy of occupying one's country." The purpose of this article is to propose a theory of…

Discusses the challenges faced by evaluators in moving from results-focused evaluation to learning-oriented evaluative theory in the context of school-university partnerships with professional learning agendas. Also discussed are the influences of the transition on individual practitioners and their organizations. (Author/SLD)

Reviews literature on parent/teacher partnerships. Proposes a systemic theoretical approach which frames the factors in an ecological and social system perspective, thereby enabling teachers to visualize how complex and dynamic the parent/teacher partnership is, to view events from more than one perspective, and to monitor their responses to…