TY - JOUR
T1 - In and of the City
T2 - Theory of Action and the NYU Partnership School Program
AU - McDonald, Joseph P.
AU - Domingo, Myrrh
AU - Jeffery, Jill V.
AU - Pietanza, Rosa Riccio
AU - Pignatosi, Frank
N1 - Funding Information:
In terms of resources, NYU’s share of the Petrie funding over 4 years amounted to roughly $5 million, and NYU also raised nearly $4 million more by means of grants from the U.S. Department of Education and the Carnegie Corporation. These funds were mostly used for scholarships, though they also buttressed NYU’s professional expertise in negotiating the different worlds of school and university—by means of three staff positions, two clinical faculty positions, and thanks to a waiver of the city’s conflict-of-interest rules that the PTE obtained, the addition of active NYCDOE teachers to the NYU adjunct faculty. The funds also supported curriculum revision. For example, they supported the redesign of the NYU introductory course to teacher education, which is now cotaught in Lower East Side classrooms by NYU faculty and New York City teachers (Jeffery & Polleck, 2010, 2012).
Funding Information:
Building on an earlier pilot, what is now called the NYU Partnership Schools Program was formally launched in 2004, with major grants from the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. It existed for several years as part of a citywide intermediary organization called the Partnership for Teacher Excellence (PTE)—which also involved the City University of New York (CUNY) and its partner schools, and was administered by the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) under the auspices of its Fund for Public Schools. Later, when external funding ended, NYU absorbed the costs, and the NYU’s Office of Clinical Studies in Teaching took on the administrative role. Since 2004, the NYU Partnership Schools Program has involved the joint mentoring (by NYU professors and school professionals) of NYU teacher interns, as well as social work interns, in a set of partner schools. It also incorporates a wide variety of other joint activities designed to serve the interests of the schools and their students, as well as the interests of the university and its students. Indeed, the Partnership’s watchword phrase is “mutual self-interest.”
Funding Information:
This research was funded by a grant from the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Co-PIs are Joseph P. McDonald, Rosa Riccio Pietanza, and Frank Pignatosi. They are joined by the other authors, Myrrh Domingo (now of the Institute of Education and formerly of NYU), Jill Jeffery (now of Brooklyn College, and formerly of NYU). The authors wish to acknowledge as well contributions by Robert Miller, Scott Conti, John Istel, Mary Brabeck, Avi Kline, Tara Andreas, Kajal Vora, Jason Blonstein, and Robert Wallace. The data reported here is the product of a systematic review and coding of a voluminous archive of documents related to the founding and ongoing development of the Partnership, and of interviews transcribed and coded using Argyris and Schon’s (1996) theory of action framework and derivations of it.
PY - 2013/11
Y1 - 2013/11
N2 - This article explores the theory of action underlying New York University's (NYU's) Partnership Schools Program-explaining in the process what a theory of action is, and how it can be constructed for other innovations in other contexts. NYU's Partnership Program involves 23 schools, K-12, spanning several of New York City's most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. It operates on the basis of what the authors call "mutual self-interest" and exploits what they call "complementarity." The authors illuminate the program's original as well as its evolving intentions, and the environmental conditions necessary to enact them and to sustain the program over a decade. They also describe the program's core design elements, with a view to how these may be replicated elsewhere. Finally, they look closely at the Partnership's theory of action in action, employing action research data to portray a meeting where professors and teachers discuss the teacher education residency experiment they have collaboratively launched.
AB - This article explores the theory of action underlying New York University's (NYU's) Partnership Schools Program-explaining in the process what a theory of action is, and how it can be constructed for other innovations in other contexts. NYU's Partnership Program involves 23 schools, K-12, spanning several of New York City's most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. It operates on the basis of what the authors call "mutual self-interest" and exploits what they call "complementarity." The authors illuminate the program's original as well as its evolving intentions, and the environmental conditions necessary to enact them and to sustain the program over a decade. They also describe the program's core design elements, with a view to how these may be replicated elsewhere. Finally, they look closely at the Partnership's theory of action in action, employing action research data to portray a meeting where professors and teachers discuss the teacher education residency experiment they have collaboratively launched.
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U2 - 10.1080/0161956X.2013.835156
DO - 10.1080/0161956X.2013.835156
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84886823665
VL - 88
SP - 578
EP - 593
JO - Peabody Journal of Education
JF - Peabody Journal of Education
SN - 0161-956X
IS - 5
ER -