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based on their own specific needs and context. In Queensland, there were examples
of both these levels of partnership being more prescribed to address the issue of
availability of teachers to supervise professional experience placements and the
more flexible partnership models such as the one developed across peak bodies,
schools and university as partners.
The common aspect of each of the partnership cases presented is that resourcing
was aligned with policy and funding and was for a set period of time. In all cases,
funding supported personnel from university, schools and school systems to imple-
ment the envisaged government partnership policy. Such funding was key no matter
how the funding was allocated, whether it be to schools, as in the case of New South
Wales where an individual hub school was allocated funding over a specific time
period, or in the case of Western Australia where university(s) submitted a tender to
access funding to establish and support yearlong preservice internships at partner-
ship schools. What cannot be disputed is for sustained partnerships, resourcing,
money and committed personnel from all sectors involved in the partnership agree-
ment are fundamental to success. Resourcing one component of the partnership and
not the other does not appear to enable effective partnerships and relationships to
flourish. Funding models in the future need to be allocated to both partners and
specifically to the allocation of supporting the emergence of new roles and work
accompanied in connecting and bridging the relationships between schools and
universities.
Although the outcome for each of the policy cases presented was to establish
effective school-university partnerships with a primary focus on enhanced profes-
sional experience for preservice teachers, each of the cases discussed is unique. In
the case of Victoria and Queensland, a university was partnered with a number of
schools to develop what may be viewed as a ‘community of practice’ (Lave &
Wenger, 1991 ; Rossner & Commins, 2012 ). In contrast, New South Wales partner-
ship policy required a university to be partnered initially with only one school, with
the aim to develop an integrated mentoring-professional experience model.
In both the case of Western Australia and New South Wales, the government
university-school partnership policy was built on pre-existing relationships between
a university and particular school(s). In these cases, the state policymakers enacted
policy that built on what was in most cases an informal university-school partner-
ship. While in the case of Queensland, the state-driven partnerships were new and
provided an opportunity to secure commitment from the profession to support qual-
ity preservice teacher professional experience placements. The enactment of this
policy as the development of a future workforce had a significant impact on the
engagement of schools in professional experience. The smaller-scale partnership
agreements successfully shifted more of the focus on the need for genuine collabo-
ration and mutual learning possible in authentic partnerships as a contribution
towards the quality teaching agenda.
There are long-term implications that can be garnered from our initiative to pres-
ent the comparison of the four cases. Firstly, there is no one effective partnership
model that can be applied to all jurisdictions. Future government policy reforms
need to acknowledge and support the flexibility between universities and schools all
S. White et al.