Re-searching university-school partnership collaboration

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that causes significant social, communication and behavioural difficulties. As students with ASD lack Theory of Mind (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985), they generally experience social and emotional challenges. Between 2000 – 2015, a working group comprising teacher educators, school principals, teachers, and professionals collaborated with the aim to help students overcome these difficulties. As a result of a series of monthly meetings, school-based preparation work, try-out observations, and revisions, four teaching packages with programme books, learning and teaching activities, and CDs were developed and published for teachers’ use to work with students with ASD. The present study adopts a narrative inquiry approach (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988) to inquire into how a teacher educator and a teacher experience university-school partnership collaboration throughout the fifteen years, the changing relationship during the process, the teacher knowledge (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995) gained, and their effects on learning and teaching for all parties including the students with ASD. Interviews are conducted between the teacher and the teacher educator to gather data which are analyzed and discussed to understand the phenomena. Results of the study do not only enhance understanding the experience of collaboration and reciprocal learning in school development and teacher education, they bear implications for future university-school partnership collaboration.