School-university partnerships in Australia: a systematic literature review

Across Australia and around the world, school-university partnerships have been advocated by researchers and policymakers as a means of bridging the perceived theory-practice divide for which teacher education programs have been criticised. A range of literature exists that explores school-university partnerships either from a theoretical perspective, or grounded in specific examples. As these pieces of research typically provide an overview of school-university partnerships in general, or rely on findings from one or two partnerships, a broad understanding of partnerships and the research gaps that remain can be difficult to ascertain. This paper presents a systematic literature review to provide collective evidence on the implementation of Australian school-university partnerships for the purpose of developing pre-service teachers. The review reports on 59 sources, providing insights into the range of school-university partnerships in existence. It also highlights the benefits and challenges encountered through partnership implementation and proposes opportunities for future research.