Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / The ability to express meaning in prose is a foundational skill in our society. Given the importance of being a competent writer, concern with the quality of writing instruction is a recurring theme among American educators (Cutler & Graham, 2008; Gilbert & Graham, 2010; National Commission on Writing, 2003, 2004, 2006). Research shows that teachers are unprepared to teach writing (Gilbert & Graham, 2010) and devote limited amounts of time to it (Cutler & Graham, 2008; Gilbert & Graham, 2010). In addition, national assessment data indicates that most students are not proficient writers (Salahu-Din, Persky & Miller, 2008). An embedded case study design (Yin, 2009), using mixed methodology (Greene & Caracelli, 2003a, 2003b; Hesse-Biber, 2010), was employed to determine whether a school-university partnership enacted systemic functional linguistics theory guided writing intervention changed fourth and fifth grade teachers' writing instruction over the course of three years in an urban elementary school. The study further investigated changes to 41 fourth and 27 fifth graders' writing performance during the third year of the invention. Examination of the relationship between students' performance in writing and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test in English language arts was conducted. The study also explored how teachers articulated their experiences with the partnership. Findings showed the content of teachers' instruction changed involving the use of metalanguage and the teaching of genre, language, and tenor. Similarly, instructional strategies evolved regarding negotiating field and deconstruction of text. Findings also indicated a significant improvement in writing performance for all students, and bilingual students had more growth over time than monolingual peers. Also, a moderate positive relationship existed between writing performance and MCAS performance, which suggests understanding of genre may support reading comprehension. Overall, teachers positively experienced the partnership and found value in the professional development. Implications of these study findings will benefit teacher education, administrators and policymakers, and allow for improved school-university partnerships. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study is to describe a particular phenomenon: the lived experiences of high school teachers who were responsible for creating and teaching a senior-year English Transition Course. Moustakas’ methods, framework and data analysis guidelines, coupled with interviews using Seidman’s three-interview process, is the best procedure for achieving the research aim. Thus, the study is based upon the results of interviews of 10 high school teachers from schools within a specific geographic region who collaborated with four English faculty members from a comprehensive four-year institution within the same region, over a period of three years. It is important to capture this phenomenon, as it occurred within a time of broad educational reform and uncertainty and will allow others to understand how teachers respond to interventions designed to reduce the need for remediation in reading and writing. This research examines the following questions: (a) What is the essence of high school teachers’ experiences planning a senior-year English Transition course designed to achieve college readiness in reading and writing? Specifically, how do teachers experience planning as a result of collaborative sessions with University English faculty? Additionally, how do teachers experience planning (e.g., course goals, units of study, individual lessons) as result of their individual efforts? (b) What is the essence of the experience of teaching a senior-year English Transition course designed to achieve college readiness in reading and writing? The fundamental textural-structural synthesis revealed four common themes as well as a variety of sub-themes across all participants. Scientific terms were used as metaphors. The juxtaposition of this scientific metaphorical depiction, ostensibly at odds in a study of literacy instruction, intends to reveal the complexity of teacher experiences and the totality of external circumstances as well as internal conditions they encountered. The insights from this study may inform curriculum specialists, policy-makers, school administrators, and English teachers.

The notion of "partnership" dominates contemporary school improvement and educational reform agendas. Most discourse about partnerships between schools and universities historically relates to the apparent divide between practice and theory, between practitioner and academy. This study departs from these traditional perspectives to move beyond the divide between teachers and academics. Designing strategies for re-visioning this historical divide within the education community, between teachers and academics, engages the profession at all levels. Instead of simply re-visioning this divide, however, we can envision a professional place where the divide does not exist. Addressing this divide requires teachers and academics, when they do come together for the purpose of collaborative work of any kind, to actively seek to understand each other's work. This study examines one school and university partnership that was modelled on the principles of a Professional Development School. It investigates the meeting talk between groups of teachers and academics as they plan and report on a collaborative project aimed at improving Mathematics teaching practices in the school. Whereas most research investigating school and university partnerships addresses the outcomes of such partnerships, or attempts to describe and advocate for ideal partnerships, this study considers the actual interactional work of the participants as they engage in the everyday and ongoing activities of partnership. It shows how partnerships are constructed through talk and activity. Instead of considering the partnership as a predetermined and pre-existing phenomenon, this study adopts the view that the work of partnership is an ongoing accomplishment through the activity of the participants. In this way, this study shows the local social order of a partnership as it was built, maintained and transformed through the interactional work of the participants. Both the institutional setting and the participants' enactment of partnership work contribute to the establishment of the social and moral order of the partnership. The principal question addressed in the study asks how participants accomplish the partnership work through their social interactions with one another. It considers the interactional resources that the partners (teachers, interns and academics) use to construct their talk and interactions with one another in the project; and how the partners construct themselves and the other members as members of the partnership, as academics/researchers and as teachers. This study drew on ethnomethodological resources to develop understandings about how the participants accomplish the partnership work through their talk-in-interaction. The specific focus is the talk of partnership that occurred in meetings between members of the school and of the university. These meetings were audio-recorded, transcribed, and finely analysed using the techniques and procedures of conversation analysis and membership category analysis. These methodological resources revealed the social and moral orders at work. Analysis of the meeting talk shows the specific activities and relationships developed by the principal of the school in the accomplishment of the partnership; the ways in which the various participants develop and use their claims to expertise (or lack of it) in doing partnership work; and how participants use the institutional resource of meeting talk to accomplish the partnership work. The study is of significance to educators, teachers and academics. It provides new and rich understandings about how school and university partnerships are accomplished through the participants' meetings. It shows the resources that the participants use to construct and accomplish their different kinds of expertise, to enact the leadership activities required, and to co-construct the various features of partnership. The study offers analytic tools for uncovering the interactional resource of the participants. The ethnomethodological resources, particularly conversation analysis and membership category analysis, can be used to analyse in close detail the social interactions of participants in the institutional talk of meetings. In showing how the social and moral orders of partnerships are revealed and by offering understandings of the pragmatics of school and university partnership, the social structure of school and university partnerships is explicated. The study offers one example of what a school and university partnership can be like. Epistemologically, it explores and exposes the kinds of knowledge produced from this kind of accounting for school and university partnerships. It shows how the work of partnership can be accomplished by participants, rather than attempt to claim how it should be done.

abstract: Universities have been increasingly engaged in international collaborations with peer institutions overseas. In recent years, Confucius Institutes have emerged as a new model of collaboration between American universities and Chinese universities. In an attempt to identify factors contributing to successful international university collaborations, this study used the case study method and focused on one Confucius Institute between MMU, an American University, and ZZU, a Chinese university, and intended to identify factors leading to the success of the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration. The study investigated the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration within the framework of the MMU-ZZU institutional partnership. Based on data collected from the institutional documents, interviews, site visits and news reports, this study examined the experiences and perceptions of the university's stakeholders involved in creating and sustaining this particular Confucius Institute, including stakeholders at the program level, at the college level, and at the institutional level both at MMU and ZZU. Using the glonacal agency heuristics framework, the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration was a result of joint forces of stakeholders at the program level, at the college level, and at the institutional level from ZZU and MMU. Stakeholders, no matter what level they are and which institution they are affiliated with, had to navigate through the significant differences between them to develop synergy to be successful. Synergy, including vertical synergy developed among stakeholders within each institution and horizontal synergy developed among stakeholders between institutions, turned out to be critical to the success of the MMU-ZZU CI. The study concluded that synergy in leadership, organizational contexts, stakeholders' resources, and the synergy in the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration and the MMU-ZZU institutional partnership, led to the success of the MMU-ZZU Confucius Institute collaboration. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2012

Cooperative education program was introduced into undergraduate hospitality degree program to help students be better prepared for their careers. A cooperative partnership between the industry and universities results in both sides receiving benefits. This study identifies the benefits industry partners receive from a cooperative education program. The implications of these benefits leads to the evaluation of hospitality cooperative education. From the results of the evaluation, recommendations are proposed for redesigning the cooperative education program.

This research discusses the issue of education reform in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) through an exploration of the perspectives of a range of participants involved in the preparation programme for science teachers which is run through an existing relationship between the University of Taibah and public schools in Medina city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The research examines the perspectives of participants in the university and the school (university supervisors, university coordinators, headteachers, collaborating teachers and science student teachers). It discusses teacher preparation issues in the multiple contexts reported in the literature. Teacher preparation in other contexts has revealed models which could be useful in the Saudi context. Activity Theory (AT) was used as the theoretical framework to achieve this study’s objective of exploring the academic systems of the university/school and the relationship between them in science teacher preparation, focussing on the contradictions that create conflicts for student teachers learning to teach the modern science curriculum. Activity Theory was a useful tool in organizing this research as it permitted the exploration of the relationships between systems, analysing the rich data collected on the relationship between university and school. Activity Theory acted as a link between the need for a more expansive unit of analysis in initial teacher education (ITE) studies and appropriate and effective research methods. This research is situated within the interpretative paradigm. It usescase study with mixed methods as an appropriate methodology, using multiple methods of data collection, namely semi-structured interviews as the main tool, questionnaires and documentary evidence. This research revealed the utilitarian nature of the relationship between the university and the school, which did not reach the level of a cooperative partnership, and which contained many contradictions that created conflicts for science teachers when learning the teaching skills required of modern science curricula.

This is the story of a project to connect the resources of a university to the struggles of a group of Congolese asylum seekers in the city of Derby. It represents a case study of a whole process: this includes a specific project established to explore how a university might fulfil its stated goals of being closely anchored in the local and regional community; and how it might engage and marshal its resources to provide educational and maybe research opportunities, while giving priority to community-based projects that tackle social disadvantage. The thesis is made up of a number of overlapping elements: there is the story of the project itself, of why the University became involved, and the nature of the interaction with a particular community, as seen through the eyes of some of the Congolese and me the project coordinator/researcher. It includes my struggles to establish a steering committee with the Congolese and the creation of a range of educational/recreational resources to help members of a community manage the difficult, stressful and even traumatic processes of asylum. The project led to the establishment of a community association and various initiatives to dialogically engage with the community and gather diverse narratives. Finally it led to various outcomes leading to what might be a ‘Reconnecting the hearts and minds’ project, that created spaces for story telling for a number of women and men migrants. The project also included an evaluation, which developed at its core, into a collection of narratives chronicling the difficult processes of forced migration, where people experience the pain of family separation, the dislocation of landing in a foreign country. A country whose language was different, whose customs were strange and where the processes of claiming asylum could be alienating, and where racism is experienced. We can call this project and its evaluation a piece of action research with a series of narratives at its heart. The project and evaluation together raise questions about the role of creative activity and narrative in managing painful transitions. There is another story within the bigger one, however, a story of a project coordinator and his relationship with the community and the University of Derby ... of initial enthusiasm followed by marginalisation and the closure of a supportive community development unit in the University; and of the placement of this role, for want of a better home, in the marketing department. This is also a narrative of registering for a doctorate, of being rejected, and of seeking to think through, with the help of others, what a good enough doctorate might entail. The end product has become a process of auto/biographical narrative reflexive research in which the narratives of the migrants intertwine with the researcher’s own; around the themes of dislocation, and of the struggles for voice and agency. The basic threads of the study are of a dislocating experience, and of how resources of hope can be found in creative activity – whether a sewing class, telling stories, fashion shows or engaging in auto/biographical narrative reflexivity. The basic argument has to do with tokenism and the disrespect that can surround university civic engagement as well as how asylum seekers are treated callously more generally; but also how resources of hope can make a difference. There is also the troubling issue of voice in research and whose story really counts; of a white, middle class male engaging with distressed women migrants, and of what might have been a silencing of the women concerned. But through values of commitment, and of learning to listen, the project became more dialogical, as evidenced in the women’s stories.

Teaching in the field of public health needs to employ a global perspective to account for the fact that public health problems and solutions have global determinants and implications as well. International university partnerships can promote such a perspective through the strengthening of cooperation, exchange, and communication between academic institutions across national boundaries. As an example for such an academic network in the field of public health, we introduce the International Public Health Partnership—a collaboration between a university in Germany and universities in India, Turkey, and Nigeria. Formed in 2005, it facilitated the exchange of information, fostered discussion about the transferability of public health concepts, contributed to the structural development of the universities involved, and promoted an intercultural dialog through a combination of local and distance learning activities. Although well accepted by students and staff, different obstacles were encountered; these included limited external funding, scarce own financial, time and personnel resources, and diverging regulations and structures of degree programs at the partnership sites. In the present article, we share several lessons that we learned during our joint collaboration and provide recommendations for other universities that are involved in partnerships with institutions of higher education or are interested to initiate such collaborations.

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