Enhancing Educational Innovation through School-University Partnershi...

In the past, school-university partnerships (SUPs) have primarily aimed at enhancing student’s and teachers’ teaching and learning practices (Walsh & Backe, 2013; Green et al., 2019; Sarmiento-Márquez et al., 2023). However, in 2017, the School of Education at the University of Klagenfurt shifted the focus of collaboration and initiated SUPs that would foster educational innovations (Hauth, C. et al., 2019; Barnay, R. et al., 2020). Therefore, five schools were chosen for the collaboration period of four years. During the SUP-project, an evaluation study that draws on 28 projects carried out between university and these schools was conducted to outline guidelines for further collaborative work. The data was acquired by a quantitative online questionnaire on the participants´ perception of the collaboration in general and includes their personal assessment of the relevance of the projects output for their further work. Moreover, it explores the challenges, concerns and suggestions faced by participants that aspire to improve the practice and understanding of cooperation. The latter was investigated by guided interviews with practitioners and researchers in the last year of the cooperation 2022 (Koren et al., 2022) - the findings were presented at the conference.