Standard P.1. Partnerships

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) (2013) has described the need for and characteristics of effective partnerships. The Association of Public Land-Grant Universities’ (APLU) Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership has developed Guiding Principles for Secondary Mathematics Teacher Preparation Programs (Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership, 2014) to provide guidance to educators in partner institutions to educate secondary mathematics teachers. These and other documents can help guide the establishment of the partnership.

Strong partnerships engage all partners in developing a common vision and identifiable goals. As argued by the National Association for Professional Development Schools (2008), a common vision must be focused on “the advancement of the education profession and the improvement of P-12 learning” (p. 3). More specifically, this vision should lead to identifiable goals that promote “professional growth across the continuum of preservice teacher candidates, in-service educators, and college/university faculty and administrators” (p. 4).

While members of the partnership may include a broad range of stakeholders, the partnership must include mathematics teacher educators and researchers, their teacher preparation colleagues, Pre-K–12 educators and administrators, mathematicians, statisticians and statistics educators, community-based organizations and community members, and representatives from business and industry. Leadership for creating and sustaining the partnership will typically fall to the mathematics teacher educator.

We envision this group working within a professional council of stakeholders. This council is responsible for reviewing the partnership and verifying that the partnership is inclusive of all stakeholders. Partners recognize that for a collaboration to be successful, it must have systematic ways of verifying that the partnership is mutually beneficial.