- Title
- It’s the right thing to do - university school partnerships as a social emotional journey
- Creator
- Brown, Joanna Robin
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- When partnerships between universities and schools, that have been created for the purpose of augmenting pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) in-school experiences have been studied, it has tended to be the voices from the university’s side of the partnership that have been most vocal. This case study differs from previous research in that it is intent on gathering, scrutinising, interpreting and communicating the perceptions of the stakeholders about their personal and collective engagement in university-school partnerships (USPs). As USP stakeholders, the deans of professional experience from seven different Australian higher education institutions were included in the study in order to find out how they describe and explain their own USP experiences and to discern what types of USPs operate in Australia. The study then focuses on the perceptions of the stakeholder groups involved in one particular USP, the LiNKS program (LiNKS). The focus on what the all stakeholder groups, as a community of practice, had to say about their experiences enabled explanations and possibilities for transforming learning in the USPs, rather than USP unilateral decision-making that deems some stakeholders worthier than others. This allowed a reconsideration of the ways that USPs are conceptualised, formed, facilitated and sustained. A USP typology was designed to contribute to the body of discourse on USPs and for heuristic use throughout the study to help describe, compare and explain the different types and purposes of USPs that the stakeholders referred to. The chosen methodology was a qualitative approach with two single embedded case studies drawing on the grounded theory and practitioner researcher approaches. Rich data revealing the stakeholders’ perceptions of their USP engagements emerged through the inductive and iterative coding and analytic processes. Fundamentally, this study reveals that participation in a USP is an emotionally demanding experience for those involved, and that the stakeholders consistently used concepts associated with Social-Emotional Intelligence (SEI) and simple emotive terms to describe and explain their experiences of being involved in USPs. For these stakeholders, the possession and use of SEI was central in influencing the conceptualisation, formation, facilitation and sustainability phases of the USPs. Conversely, as the stakeholders relayed their perceptions, little recognition was given to the Cognitive-Technical Intelligence (CTI) competencies that PSTs engaged in during their school visits. This finding differed from the literature on USPs, where CTI is frequently the prime reason for USP formation (Linda Darling-Hammond, 2010; Le Cornu & Ewing, 2008; Schleicher, 2012). Although not always aware of it, SEI is a vital human intelligence that the stakeholders in this study depended on to a significant extent during their USP engagements. This was a quite profound and unexpected finding, indicating the stakeholder’s view of teaching and schooling as a collaborative and social endeavour, with those skills deemed of most importance and relevance to the profession of teaching. The USPs were found to be particularly useful structures for revealing the extent of their stakeholders’ possession and use of the SEI competencies.
- Subject
- social emotional intelligence; university-school partnerships; pre-service teacher professional experiences; university-school partnership typology
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1395210
- Identifier
- uon:33834
- Rights
- Copyright 2018 Joanna Robin Brown
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 343 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |