A seminar takes place today where researchers and practitioners will be presenting the findings of a project that explores how university/school partnerships can enhance and develop teacher practices.
The Network of Social and Educational Equity’s international researcher, Dr Romina Madrid, worked with colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Education, the University of Chile and a school in Chile, Colegio Antilen on the project.
The project – innovation through school-university collaboration – looked at the creation of teaching practice systems relating to the school placements of teaching students during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Challenges of the pandemic
In Chile, the challenges of the pandemic meant teaching practices needed to be restructured in the search for alternatives that would allow those student teachers on placement to learn. While other alternatives to physical school placements existed, they had not necessarily been designed for situations where most schools had to shift to online teaching.
Most schools did not have experience or expertise in online teaching, putting huge pressure on teachers, their students and families.
To address some of these challenges, some schools initiated new alliances and partnerships to enhance their daily work. One of these schools was the Colegio Antilen, in a central region in Chile, where colleagues worked with Initial Teacher Education University programmes, developing innovative and relevant classroom practices for trainee teachers.
Collaboration
Interest in systematising good practices developed as result of the partnerships established. The Colegio Antilen connected with a research team from the University of Chile and the University of Glasgow on a project where teachers, school staff and researchers collaborated to describe and analyse those innovative practices, reflecting on their experiences and what worked and what didn’t.
Collaboration in the implementation of a system included the reconstruction of the experience, analysing what factors facilitated the practices and their meaning for the trainee teachers.
Today’s seminar will present the findings and lessons of the project, and analyse what took place in line with the national and international literature around Initial School-University partnerships, Teacher Education, and teachers’ professional learning.
Picture credit: Gordon McKinlay / St Andrews Building, Glasgow University /
