Co-constructive socio-spatial school development – towards sustainable school-university partnerships in contexts of educational inequality

Purpose This article examines how socio-spatial perspectives can inform school development in contexts marked by educational inequality and how collaboration between educational research and school practice can be organised as sustainable school-university partnerships. Design/methodology/approach The article combines a conceptual discussion of research–practice collaboration with empirical insights from a modular workshop process implemented within the German research and development programme Schule macht stark. The workshop format integrates socio-spatial analysis based on small-scale contextual data with participatory explorations of local environments conducted by students. Methodologically, the collaborative process follows the logic of design-based research and draws on conceptual perspectives from research–practice partnerships and boundary work. Findings Initial findings indicate that school actors often interpret their socio-spatial contexts primarily through deficit-oriented perspectives. The joint interpretation of contextual data and students' experiences within the workshop setting contributes to more differentiated understandings of local environments and stimulates reflexive professional learning processes among educators. At the same time, the results suggest that structured collaboration between researchers and practitioners can support the development of context-sensitive strategies of school development in socio-spatially disadvantaged environments. Originality/value The article contributes to current debates on research–practice collaboration by linking socio-spatial perspectives on educational inequality with a conceptualisation of co-construction as a guiding principle for school-university partnerships. Based on the empirical and conceptual analysis, five principles for organising sustainable co-constructive collaboration between research and school practice are proposed.