Bridging Campus and Classroom Through a Sustainable School–University Partnership in Australia: Exploring the Contributions of School-Based Clinics to Pre-Service Teacher Development

This article explores how school-based clinics are situated within a large scale school-university partnership and what role they play in pre-service teachers’ professional development. Using large text data from open-ended survey responses from 60 practicing teachers and 540 pre-service teachers (PSTs) over four years (2018 to 2022), alongside quantitative surveys completed by 259 PSTs, we sought to examine how school-based clinics enhance PST professional development and what factors contribute to partnership sustainability. Findings from the qualitative data analysis show that PSTs appreciated the quality and value of their participation in school-based clinics. A majority of the PSTs viewed school-based clinics as a learning community where they benefited in the areas of lesson planning and student assessment with the support and feedback from classroom teachers. Moreover, most PSTs reported that their self-efficacy in teaching skills had been bolstered through their participation in clinics. Quantitative analysis confirmed these findings by demonstrating a positive association between the number of clinics in which the PSTs participated, and their perception of professional development. Implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed in the context of initial teacher education in Australia.