This paper develops a sustainability-by-design framework for school–university partnerships (SUPs) based on the case of the Teaching Clinic (TC), a research-based service-learning (RBSL) SUP. We use the TC's history of scaling and forking to reflect on the framework's sustainability. We argue that sustainability is best understood as a partnership's capacity for adaptive resilience: the ability to remain functional, equitable and generative under changing conditions, rather than merely persisting over time or securing ongoing funding.
We present a conceptual synthesis of the TC's design architecture, collaboration routines and documented implementation lessons across several countries and educational systems from 2019 to 2026. We treat the TC as a modular boundary-spanning infrastructure comprising roles, routines and boundary objects that reduce transaction costs and support continuity beyond individual actors. We position the TC within the broader landscape of research–practice partnerships, professional development schools and existing sustainability frameworks, drawing on comparative design knowledge generated through multiple adaptation and scaling waves of the TC.
We propose (i) six TC building blocks that should remain invariant when scaling, (ii) an “interface” logic that specifies which elements can be adapted without diluting the partnership mechanism and (iii) a six-lever sustainability-by-design framework (reciprocal value, support in-frastructure, governance and role clarity, adaptive modularity, recruitment pipeline and trust and legitimacy) that supports partnership durability and transferability. We discuss equity mechanisms embedded in the model's design and identify persistent limitations, including facilitator dependency and quality variation across projects.
The paper contributes an actionable, leader-facing framework for scaling SUP models internationally without losing conceptual coherence. It advances comparative insight by distinguishing between what must remain stable and what can be localised, offers a definition of sustainability centred on adaptive resilience rather than funding or longevity alone, and critically examines the TC's limitations alongside its affordances.
An open-access course that teaches the foundations of advocacy and organisational change to researchers, research software engineers, and research technical professionals, structured around the UNICEF five-step advocacy cycle.
K. Pringle, Lorna Smith, Erinma Ochu et al.· 0 citations
Increasing attention has been given to strengthening educational practice through the use of research evidence. However, the relationship between educational research and school practice remains fragmented, particularly regarding how school–university partnerships (SUPs) support teachers’ engagement with evidence and their role as epistemic agents. The aim of this study is to identify the characteristics of collaboration models between schools and universities that shape different forms of teachers’ engagement with research and the collaborative development of professional knowledge. Following the PRISMA protocol, 20 studies published between 2020 and 2025 were selected from Web of Science, Scopus, and ERIC and analysed to address four research questions on the objectives, actors, organisational dynamics, and reported impacts of SUPs. Based on the analysis, the study proposes three distinct configurations for examining the relationship between SUPs, research utilisation, and teachers’ epistemic agency: an approach to teacher training, an approach to fostering informed professionals, and an approach centred on the co-creation of knowledge. These configurations reflect different levels of teachers’ epistemic agency and vary according to the organisational conditions that support evidence use. The study offers an analytical framework for understanding the potential and limitations of SUPs in strengthening research-informed practices and for guiding future collaborative initiatives.
J. Espinosa-Rodríguez, Diego Ignacio Caro-Rojas, Georgeta Ion· Education sciences· 0 citations
Whole-institution approaches (WIA) have become a promising instrument promoting holistic implementation of sustainability in the global discourse on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Yet, the literature often presents idealized models of the ‘sustainable institution’ that may be difficult for institutions to translate into practice. This article reviews the literature on whole-school and WIA to sustainability learnings and practices across all levels of education in order to identify recurring elements that support institutional transformation. The literature review was conducted in 2024–2025 to inform the development of a UNESCO guidance tool on the WIA. The review identifies 14 components that frequently appear as areas of action within WIAs, including leadership, curriculum, pedagogy, governance, institutional culture and community engagement. The article conceptualizes these elements as flexible ‘building blocks’ that institutions can pick and choose to design their version of the WIA, according to the institutional and local context. This component-based perspective moves away from the understanding of the WIA as an ideal state of an institution and aims to support new forms of engagement with the WIA, inform policy dialogues and contribute to further research and institutional practice on sustainability transformation in education systems.
Katrin Kohl, Charles Hopkins, Isabel Toman et al.· Journal of Education for Sus...· 0 citations
Urban education systems are increasingly experimenting with place‑based learning communities (LCs) to respond to growing socio‑ecological complexity. Yet empirical research on how such initiatives are organized, governed, and enacted in practice remains limited. This study situates Vienna’s Bildungsgrätzl (BG) initiative within this emerging field of distributed, school‑anchored LCs, addressing the conceptual ambiguities and governance tensions that characterize comparable models internationally. Drawing on semi‑structured expert interviews (N = 16) with educational leaders and stakeholders from seven BGs, we analyze how BGs evolve, how collaboration is structured across formal, non‑formal and informal institutions and how actors negotiate the initiative’s values, governance roles and everyday practices. The findings indicate that BGs combine bottom‑up engagement with light municipal scaffolding, shifting over time from loosely connected Communities of Practice to more intentionally coordinated Communities of Learners. The analysis identifies key mechanisms—hybrid governance configurations, cross‑institutional role distribution and activities that bridge school-community boundaries—that enable BGs to function as extended learning systems embedded in the city’s Smart Climate Strategy. The study contributes new empirical insights into how local LCs can be organized within urban governance structures while retaining local agency, illuminating both the innovative potential and the structural constraints of the BG model. These findings offer transferable lessons for policymakers and educators seeking to establish sustainable, community‑rooted educational networks in other urban contexts.
Evi Agostini, Nazime Öztürk, Sibilla Montanari et al.· The Urban review· 0 citations
Do culturally responsive educator-preparation programmes for teachers ‘count’ in increasing student persistence in primary schooling? This question is explored using late 2010s and early 2020s data from three Andean contexts and three levels of geographical analysis (national, municipality and student). We use data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank databases. We apply a combination of interrupted time-series models, multilevel models and cross-national variance models to address the research questions. Temporal estimates provide evidence of a significant policy-related shift in persistence in only one of the three cases. Municipality-level models show strong, positive and meaningful associations between participation in administered educator-preparation programmes (our proxy for the policy) and persistence for all student populations in all three contexts. Student-level models reveal that material deprivation and school infrastructure are stronger predictors of persistence than the policy proxy, indicating that educators-preparation initiatives operate within territorially bounded contours, and are not in isolation from other school-level initiatives and circumstances. While we are able to draw some general conclusions about persistence across the three contexts, the uneven quality of the data in impoverished contexts complicates the quality of within-population inferences. Based on limited evidence, there appears to be a positive relationship between policy indecision and growth. As with much else, institutions, data and inequality may play a role.
Mauro Maury, Mario de la Puente, Luciana Pertuz Altamiranda et al.· Contemporary Education Dialo...· 0 citations
While global discourse increasingly demands environmental stewardship, contemporary educational frameworks often relegate sustainability to theoretical, compartmentalized segments of curriculum. This paper addresses the critical necessity of embedding systemic sustainability across primary and secondary school operations, physical infrastructures, and pedagogical models. Utilizing a structured, three-tiered framework—comprising the ecological, socio-cultural, and socio-economic pillars—we explore systemic challenges and propose actionable solutions tailored for localized school systems. Special emphasis is given to rural-urban transitional contexts, such as those within Punjab, Pakistan, demonstrating how localized community-school alignment, place-based environmental training, and cost-effective waste circularity models can bridge the gap between academic theory and community-led green practice. The research advocates for transformative policy and professional training programs that empower educators to transition from passive teachers of natural sciences to active coordinators of systemic ecological change.
Saira Sohail Iqbal· Journal of innovative resear...· 0 citations