Points of View: Effective Partnerships Between K-12 and Higher Education

When I was a high school science teacher, my interactions with university faculty members were limited. Occasionally, depending on the district in which I was teaching, university faculty members in the region or state would send us letters inviting us to summer workshops and classes. My science teaching colleagues and I generally valued these opportunities because we believed the classes kept us up to date in our fields and knowledgeable about contemporary ideas and big questions in biology. We viewed these occasions largely as opportunities for ongoing professional development. Our relationship was based on our perceptions that the university faculty had expertise and knowledge from which we could benefit.

However, partnerships today between university faculty and K-12 teachers imply something more than an instructional relationship based on a one-way flow of information from an expert to his or her novice students. The construct of “partnership” implies direct benefits for all parties involved. Partnerships involve two or more people, each with expertise or skills to contribute, working toward a common goal. The idea is that something is there to be gained by everyone, an idea that is at the heart of the National Science Foundation's Mathematics and Science Partnerships (MSP) program, which is offered as a special initiative by the Directorate for Education and Human Resources. The common goal of the large MSP projects is to improve the science and mathematics learning of all students, K-12 through university. Today, partnership models are replacing one-time summer courses and workshops as vehicles for improving science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in the United States. However, the ways in which partnerships between schools and universities become established and are maintained is not well documented.

One developing partnership that I have been observing with interest is at North Dakota State University. The project is called NDSU GraSUS: A Graduate Student-University-School Collaborative. I am the external evaluator for the National Science Foundation-funded GK-12 project. The GraSUS project involves placing graduate students in the STEM disciplines in year-long fellowships with practicing middle or high school science and mathematics teachers. One of the goals of the project, now in its fourth year of operation, is“ increased collaboration between NDSU scientists and mathematicians and area middle and high schools.” Thus, this led to the evaluation questions for my work, “What comprises the collaboration to which the project aspires?” and “Does the project collaboration represent a partnership between K-12 and university scientists, and if it does, how do we know it when we see it?” In its first year of operation, I was somewhat critical of the degree to which this project was advancing toward the goal of increased collaboration and partnership. Early on, the project was designed so that STEM graduate students, with input from classroom teachers to whom they were assigned and with supervision from university faculty, were to develop in-class activities at the university that could be transported, as it were, to middle school and high school classrooms. The idea was to enhance the science curriculum with inputs created at the university.

However, the GraSUS project leaders quickly recognized that the one-way flow of activities from the university to middle and high school classrooms created little reason for teachers to take ownership of the project or to consider using the activities that had been developed in the curriculum. The GraSUS project was modified so that teachers, rather than faculty and graduate students, originated the ideas for the curriculum enhancements. Teachers knew which units of instruction needed upgrades, and they were also aware of which areas in which they felt weak. The shift resulted in a substantial increase in interactions among the graduate students in the project, the teachers, and the supervising university faculty members. To document the increased collaboration, the project director began keeping records of all interactions and the reasons for them. The GraSUS project changed in less than 1 year from one with few interactions between faculty and teachers to one in which dozens of interactions occur each year.

I believe the GraSUS project is successfully documenting collaboration and growth of a partnership because the university-based project leaders realized early on that reasons for a partnership must be grounded in the needs of the teachers who will be making the decisions about how and whether to use the“ products” that are created. High-quality activities and curriculum enhancements make a difference only if individual teachers regularly use them. With the GraSUS project, each graduate student fellow works on a different project. Yet, each fellow is involved in improving the educational experiences of the middle and high school students with whom they work. They accomplish this through activities the fellows create or revise in response to what a teacher specifically needs.

I also believe the GraSUS partnership is enabled by the presence of the graduate student fellows who serve as conduits between the university and school cultures. In other words, I do not believe the collaboration and resultant partnership would happen without the graduate student fellows. Their presence allows teachers' needs to be interpreted and then communicated to faculty members at the university. Because the graduate student fellows spend a significant amount of time directly involved with the teachers in their classrooms, they gain knowledge of the K-12 learning environment, which is largely invisible to many university faculty members. The fellows occupy a unique position in the project in that they can confidently communicate with teachers as well as with the university faculty members.

Finally, there is some evidence in my project evaluation data to suggest that the partnership is working both ways. Graduate students report that the year-long fellowships spent working with science and mathematics teachers in their classrooms and on curriculum enhancements has resulted in their own greater awareness and understanding of student learning and teaching. Some of the graduate student fellows I interviewed also reported changes in their own instructional approaches to laboratory courses they often teach at the university. As these graduate students are just now beginning to graduate and pursue academic or industry careers, we have only been able to speculate about how the project will affect their thinking and actions. A goal for the next several years is to document the ways in which the GraSUS project has affected the fellows and their careers.

In sum, successful K-12/university partnerships do not begin with what university faculty members believe must be changed in K-12 classrooms. Rather, successful partnerships develop in response to needs identified by practicing teachers for their specific classrooms and curricula.

Furthermore, curricular needs are best articulated by individuals who have dual knowledge of the science and the school learning environments in which the improvements will be implemented. Finally, successful partnerships involve university faculty members asking how involvement with K-12 schools and teachers can enhance the education of their own students.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS