Boundary spanners: stories of blurring borders, getting stuck in the mud, and the importance of trusting relationships -- The How and Why of Laboratory Schools: Innovations and Success Stories in Teacher Preparation and Student Learning.
Chapter
Overview
Overview
Abstract
School-university partnerships, even in a lab school model, are a messy undertaking. The demands of working in a K-8 school are immediate, ongoing, and time-consuming. Universities, on the other hand, function at a different pace and with different priorities. In this chapter, we illustrate how our work as school-university boundary spanners school ultimately provides us with the opportunity to bridge theory to practice and develop a unique understanding of both worlds. Our individual roles were varied—we are coaches, researchers, teacher educators, professional development and partnership facilitators, school and university administrators, classroom teachers, and family and community connectors. We offer examples of our work as boundary spanners in a state-mandated lab school-university partnership in a historically significant and underserved K-8 lab school that show how our work extends beyond the bounds of our university-based classrooms and the pre-service teachers we educate. As with any work involving human beings, the work of school-university collaborations is complex—there is no one-size-fits-all model and while there is much promise in our work, there is also significant challenge. We believe that sharing authentic stories in all their messiness offers insight into possibilities for different types of meaningful collaborative relationships within a lab school model.
