understanding, and “mutual informing and critiquing” (Moss 2008 , p. 348).
Equally, mutual benefit may be achieved through achieving partnership outcomes.
Nevertheless, discussion and development of what is mutually beneficial and“the
need for both institutions to benefit from the partnership”is the“most important
challenge in establishing collaborative research partnerships”(Schuck 2012 , p. 59),
and cannot be rushed: in this regard, Tsui and Law ( 2007 ) acknowledged the
process of building partnerships incrementally.
While partnership goals can vary, or conflict, (Edens and Gilsinan 2005 ), mutual
purpose is a cornerstone for any partnership (Gardner 2011 ). A key purpose is
establishing and sustaining partnership learning, and sharing the benefits associated
with that learning. Deconstructing traditional academic boundaries (Carlson 2001 )
to“support reciprocity and the free exchange of ideas, connect theory and practice,
promote collegiality and honest talk, and provide...supportive feedback”(Miller
2015 , p. 25) fosters understanding of partnerships as learning systems.
20.6 Learning as a Profession
The majority of school-university partnerships are linked to teacher professional
learning programmes which highlights“learning as a core component of partner-
ships”(Callahan and Martin 2007 , p. 136). Teacher perceptions and understandings
of themselves, as both learners and as professionals, are regarded as a dominant
influence on school-university partnerships (Moss 2008 ; Nelson 2006 ; Segedin
2011 ). Segedin ( 2011 ) noted that participant teachers felt“accountable to be change
agents in their school” (p. 54). Organisational learning from engagement with
school-university partnerships is linked to participant experiences, and a willing-
ness to change their practice.
20.6.1 Practice Context: Bill’s Narrative
Periodically, transformations occur within the education sector that can test the
capacity of even well-established systems. The advent of e-Learning, leveraged by
the ubiquity of Internet access and affordable personal and mobile computing
devices, has forced a rethink of many schooling conventions, and schools in New
Zealand are no exception. Although there was much internal impetus for the uptake
of e-Learning (using ICT to facilitate learning) at Rosehill College, the early uptake
of e-Learning and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) by its contributing schools,
created a tipping-point for Rosehill College.
The college, a state co-educational school, was established in 1970, and its
current enrolment is 1755 students and 105 teachers. It has a historic tradition of
embracing innovation and after considering the research and consulting the local
community, a plan for a measured implementation of BYOD in 2014 was set in
302 L. Benade et al.