Expect the unexpected: The importance of school leaders in university-school partnerships

Abstract

In this article we utilise interview data to explore the roles of school leaders in a university-school partnership. The partnership was established within a pioneer national initiative in Norway to support persistently underperforming municipalities and paired selected schools with university staff with the aim of building capacity for improvement. Our work as advisers and researchers in the partnership afforded us the opportunity to explore how the school leaders we worked with in a co-created action learning process reflected on their experiences, practices and outcomes. The leaders described how instability in staffing and unforeseen pressures hindered their work in leading the action learning process and supporting improvement. Mistrust and disinclination among school staff increased over time. Findings suggest that efforts to co-create understandings and structures throughout the partnership were insufficient to mitigate against unpredictability and uncertainty, leading us to frame these aspects of university-school partnerships as unavoidable and unexceptional. This research provides an opportunity to explore the implications of this through the experiences of school leaders in university-school partnerships. Findings confirm that the abilities of school leaders to navigate the complexities of university-school partnerships are vital to their success, demonstrating a need for greater focus on how school leaders work with such partnerships within their organisations.