attempting to work up the SAMR scale, there should be less teacher-direction and
more student-led learning. On the other hand, simply placing worksheets on Google
Classroom with instructions to students to source information does not constitute
good practice. Looking ahead, then, a focus will be for the school to better com-
municate its intentions to parents and students, while simultaneously attempting to
broaden good e-Learning practice across the school.
The shift from teacher-direction to greater student (or learner) agency and
self-management of learning is one of the direct implications of the implementation
of the BYOD policy at the school. This implication, however, challenges the
conventional sense of teacher identity. Tsui and Law ( 2007 ) noted the significance
of‘learning in boundary zones’, which may be areas of difficulty or discomfort for
practitioners. Crossing boundaries allows individuals to re-examine their own
practices, and develop new learning (2007). This occurred as the researcher and
practitioners negotiated meanings and made sense of the challenges confronting a
group of teachers attempting to craft a new practice paradigm. In sum, the research
partnership stands to promote wider learning between the school leadership,
teachers, and the wider community, while a critical examination of emergent
‘teacher’and‘learner’identities in a BYOD context will become a foundation for
next-step planning in the school.
While some teachers may respond negatively to change, there appears to be
enough reason to suggest that positive motivations to change can lead to actual
changes in practice. The school leadership team may consider ways of conveying
and sustaining positive narratives to teachers and community alike, this too based
on further evaluative research. Simultaneously, however, enthusiasm and energy
must be kept in balance, as thefindings reveal significant levels of stress and work
overload. This too, is in the hands of leadership and governance.
School-university partnerships present complex spaces for learning, where
accepted expertise is challenged while, concurrently, promoting professional
empowerment. They can be transformative because they promote development of
beliefs, and practices, that enable deep learning, and sharing of practice (Tsui and
Law 2007 ). The shared approach to examining practice and contribution to learning
as a profession actively promotes the replacement of polarisation with interaction
(Hargreaves and Fullan 2012 ). More interactional spaces in which educators are
constructing shared meanings, and developing shared understandings of each oth-
er’s contexts, support professionals to engage in using deeper twenty-first-century
learning skills of communication, collaboration and critical thinking to create new
understandings.
Sustaining a school-university partnership as a learning system means managing
contradictions, negotiating new ways of understanding, and generating reciprocal
benefits. The discursive comments above indicate fertile ground on which one such
partnership can proceed.
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