The Boundary Spanner in Professional Development Schools: In Search of Common Nomenclature
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2016
Abstract
Teacher education is entering an exciting era for professional development schools (PDS). Recent reform efforts have called for increased school-university partnerships (AACTE, 2010; NCATE, 2010), which means that the PDS community may be well poised to offer insight into the necessary boundary-spanning roles and structures needed to support robust school-university partnerships. The purpose of this qualitative meta-analysis was to use the findings from thirteen empirical studies from the past 30 years to generate new knowledge about the boundary-spanner role in PDS. Findings revealed that in the PDS literature terms for boundary-spanners are contextually-based and therefore vary greatly. This variance has created a lack of common terminology and potentially a lack of common understanding of the boundary-spanner role. The findings also revealed that the boundary-spanner role is supervisory by nature. Implications offer a beginning framework for scholars to use when describing boundary-spanner roles in research and scholarship. The framework has the potential to foster a common understanding while preserving contextually-specific terminology.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
School-University Partnerships, v. 9, no. 2, p. 28-39
Scholar Commons Citation
Burns, Rebecca W. and Baker, Wendy, "The Boundary Spanner in Professional Development Schools: In Search of Common Nomenclature" (2016). Educational and Psychological Studies Faculty Publications. 199.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/esf_facpub/199
