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We took on roles at the school sites designed to strengthen collaboration and foster relation-
ship building within and across the different groups. Negotiating this resulting web of rela-
tionships seemed, to us, much like a complicated dance involving ongoing decision-making
processes situated in specific contexts; the complexity arising from the ‘variety of perspec-
tives, needs, and interests of the many involved parties’. (Martin et al., 2011 , p. 305)
Although the partnership model in Martin and colleagues research can be linked
to Guiterrez’s collective third space, the challenges faced by the teacher educator
towards their role were neither first nor second space and therefore link more spe-
cifically to Soja’s conceptualisation of thirding-as-Othering. In this respect, the
opportunities that the roles and the associated participatory interactions created lead
towards an alternative construction of identities and learning consistent with Soja.
The role of the teacher educators in this example was reconstructed according to the
context of the professional experience and the nature of the interactions that occurred
as a result of the goals set out to be achieved.
The examples presented and described in this section of university-school part-
nerships have highlighted how hybrid spaces can create opportunities for preservice
teacher learning that takes advantage of multiple sources of expertise to support
high-quality teaching, as espoused in Zeichner’s conception of third space (Zeichner,
2010 ). In this respect, the literature provides examples of how the third space can
offer alternative school-university partnerships that allow the creation of new
knowledge where practitioner and academic knowledge, or the practice and theory,
intersects. More specifically, such spaces allow new knowledge to emerge from the
connections made by the preservice teachers ‘in and from practice’ (p. 91) and inte-
grates what is often seen as competing discourses in new ways. Although the third
space challenges the participants in professional experience about new ways of
thinking and doing, the third space offers alternative possibilities which may enable
ITE providers and schools to create authentic partnerships, but also strengthen them
for future learning.
Third Space as a Way of Understanding the Complexity
of Preservice Teacher Identity
Persistent disconnections between what preservice teachers are taught during uni-
versity coursework and the opportunities to enact what they learn in schools and
classrooms during field experience have limited the roles preservice teachers can
play. The conceptualisation of a third space as discussed in this chapter may enable
preservice teachers to develop new and different identities that bridge the traditional
theory-practice divide. Three studies from the literature are discussed and analysed
below to provide learning and insight into how this may be possible.
In the first example, Cahill et al. ( 2016 ) conceived a third space as one in which
dialogic exchange enabled preservice teachers to work with teachers and teacher
educators as well as students. The research involved 120 University of Melbourne
preservice teachers undertaking a Master of Teaching (Secondary) program and 125
R. Forgasz et al.