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Building school-university partnerships: Subjectivity, power, and the process of change

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Abstract

In the flurry of 1980s educational reforms, school-university collaborative partnerships appeared as a popular and promising vehicle for change. The growth of partnerships has been accompanied by an increasing knowledge about the process of change. This study, based on ethnographic and interview data, further extends the knowledge by focusing on one facet of the process: the initiation of partnership relations between a college of education and surrounding elementary and secondary schools. The study finds that the subjective perceptions of school people toward change plays a critical role in the development of partnership relations. These perceptions are grounded in the existing relations between school and university people, and in the harsh conditions of work in schools. School people's relation to these conditions, as manifest in their sense of power or powerlessness, shaped their willingness to work with the university.

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Osajima, K.H. Building school-university partnerships: Subjectivity, power, and the process of change. Urban Rev 21, 111–125 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01108498

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