Transformational Partnerships and Learning: broadening the experiences for a community organization, school and university

Partnerships between community organizations, schools and universities are becoming more widespread as education faculties seek to broaden the experiences of their preservice teachers (Kruger, Davies, Eckersley, Newell& Cherednichenko, 2009). The following paper reports on one such endeavour where a small group of six preservice teachers, drawn from teaching programs that included secondary, primary and primary/early childhood, were immersed in a primary/secondary rural school in Sola, on the remote island of Vanua Lava, located in the northern province of Vanuatu. Whilst international practicums are not new, what is unique within this endeavour was the nature of the partnership that included the Vanuatu Ministry of Education, the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS). Each partner had a layer of active participants represented by Arep Secondary School, the School of Education (ACU, NSW), and the Rotary Club of Winston Hills. The partnership was therefore able to provide both strategic and practical support to the ongoing project, creating layers of engagement and participation for the various groups. This partnership was transformational as it was based upon genuine engagement with a focus on common goals and mutual benefits, built on relationships established over many years, which is different to other types of partnerships that often seek to obtain only individual organizational goals rather that mutual goals or shared purposes (Brown et al., 2006).