Mobilizing Teacher Professional Knowledge in Initial Teacher Education: A Multi-Actor University–School Partnership

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions are increasingly expected to connect teacher education with professional knowledge, institutional collaboration, and territorially situated educational challenges. However, less attention has been paid to the processes through which teacher professional knowledge is articulated, interpreted, represented, and communicated across institutional boundaries within Initial Teacher Education (ITE). This study examined an instrumental qualitative case developed by the University of Valladolid in collaboration with five educational institutions in rural and urban settings, educational authorities, and the Institute for Women. Sixty-nine first-year pre-service teachers participated in a structured knowledge mobilization process involving nine collective teacher interview-dialogue sessions with nine professional participants, collaborative analysis, the production of multimodal communication outputs, and a final public seminar. The qualitative corpus comprised records generated through the nine interview-dialogue sessions, including 69 individual field-note records and partial audio recordings, together with 12 analytical summaries, 12 infographics, 12 oral presentations, seminar records, institutional documentation, and a whole-cohort plenary discussion used as supplementary contextual evidence. Data were examined through reflexive thematic analysis supported by NVivo 15. Four interrelated themes were constructed: teacher professional knowledge as situated expertise; its transformation from individual experience into a shared professional resource; students’ representations of teaching and their interpretive and communication practices; and the interinstitutional coordination supporting knowledge mobilization. The findings document a bounded process through which situated professional knowledge moved from teacher articulation to student interpretation, multimodal representation, and institutional communication. They support claims concerning coordination, complementary institutional responsibilities, and knowledge communication, while providing more limited evidence concerning shared governance, long-term knowledge reuse, institutionalization, or territorial effects. Collaborative governance and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) are therefore used as interpretive perspectives rather than as demonstrated outcomes of the partnership. The study contributes a relational conceptualization of university–school partnerships as infrastructures through which situated teacher professional knowledge can be made available for interpretation and communication within ITE.