School-University Partnerships on the Edge of Possibility: Expansive Learning and Practice Transformation Across Australia, Nepal, and Bhutan

Abstract

In this chapter, we analyse the life-cycle of international partnerships between an Australian university and universities and schools in Nepal and Bhutan. The collaboration placed the Australian university hosts in a distinctive role with special responsibilities of providing stimuli, engaging teachers and teacher educators in joint processes of working through contradictions, developing new ideas for practice, and supporting their embedding in institutional practices. Participants included researchers, teacher educators, in-service teachers, pre-service teachers, and school students. The partnerships produced lasting positive changes that broke away from existing practices in ways that were often deemed unviable. Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), we explore partnerships as a process of jointly creating new knowledge and artefacts that make new practices possible. Conflicts of motives were crucial—not between different partners, but between motives to enact engaging, inclusive pedagogies, and seemingly opposed motives to cover curriculum content. Participants were able to resolve this dilemma, develop models for new practices, and then implement these. The chapter highlights the expansive nature of the learning that can take place through school-university partnerships, offering wider lessons for those seeking to create school-university partnerships to transgress the status quo and realise what was previously considered impossible.