In response to this challenge, theLearning Partnershipsprogram works from the
premise that teachers need to learnwithandfromrather than justaboutyoung
people. The program brings classes of school students into the academy to engage
in workshops with pre-service teachers. Workshops are usually of around 1.5–2h
in length and combine a class of around 25 school students with a class of
approximately 30 pre-service teachers. School students may be drawn from any
year level, though typically high school students are drawn from Years 7 to 10 (ages
12 to 16).
The students are positioned as advisors and as co-investigators. This process
repositions both students and trainee teachers, locating them as co-investigators.
The parties are invited out of their binary roles as providers-recipients and located
in an exploratory learning space.
TheLearning Partnershipsprogram sets out to straddle the theory–practice
divide by demarcating a space for exploration and experiment. It uses a partici-
patory pedagogical approach to provide a‘third space’for learning in which school
students and pre-service teachers can explore issues pertaining to student engage-
ment and well-being. This third space is designed to disrupt the dominant relational
binaries of teacher–student and youth-adult and the traditional institutional binary
of theory–practice, school-university.
14.5 The Program and Research Methods
Learning Partnershipswas initiated by thefirst author as a Ph.D. research project
(2002–2008). It has been implemented within the medical curriculum and in
pre-service teacher education at the University of Melbourne in the period of 2003–
- The methods and resultant data are described in more detail elsewhere (Cahill
2011 , 2012 , 2015 ; Cahill et al. 2011 , 2015 ; Cahill and Coffey2013b).
The data used here draws both from the initial Ph.D. research and from a
subsequent study. In the‘first wave’, the Ph.D. study (2002–2008) the workshops
involving 30 pre-service teacher and 25 Year 9/10 students were led by thefirst
author and took place within a core subject in the Diploma of Education
(Secondary) at the University of Melbourne. Thefirst author uses her reflective
notes and video-taped recordings of the 2003 workshop as source of data for the
workshop narrative, and audio-taped interviews with students and teachers con-
ducted post-workshop. The Learning Partnership workshop of 1.5 h included 30
pre-service teachers training to become secondary teachers (aged 23–45 years) and
a Drama class of 25 Year 9/10 students (aged 15–16 years). It was conducted
within a core subject in the Diploma of Education calledEducation Policy, Schools
and Society. The subject addresses the role of schooling in society and explores
issues of equity and inclusion. Interviews were conducted with nine students (five
females and four males) and nine teachers (eight females and one male) from the
2003 cohort. Ethics approval was provided for this research by University of
212 H. Cahill and J. Coffey