Towards the teaching school: partnering to create an exciting new future in teacher education

Improving the academic performance of schools is a global preoccupation for governments. A pre-occupation that has its roots in the emergence of a global knowledge based economy which places a premium on intellectual capacity. This premium has consequently focused governments to improving the academic performance of their schools. Given the key role played by teachers in such an agenda school heads are being called upon to improve the teaching capacities of their teachers. This teaching improvement agenda is challenging because traditional approaches to teacher professional development --- the withdraw from class to workshop model--- prove ineffective and limiting in an age of knowledge production, innovation and applied creativity and constant change. In this paper we revisit the Teaching School concept (as theorised by authors such as Turner & Lynch, 2006; Smith & Lynch, 2010; Lynch, 2012) to propose a fresh approach to teacher professional learning: one that is embedded in the ‘teacher as researcher’ premise, new teaching arrangements and a partnership with a university.