Partnership models – one size fits all?

The partnership model within Initial Teacher Education is vital to the success of any teacher training programme. Student teachers need to appreciate and consider the key principals of effective English teaching and develop secure subject knowledge, but until they can put that knowledge into context, they are unable to call themselves teachers. Secure partnerships between York St John University and our schools have proved to be valuable in supporting our students to develop strong pedagogical skills, particularly in relation to teaching systematic synthetic phonics. This strength of provision was highlighted during the university's last Ofsted inspection (2012) where the teaching of phonics as described as a ' most noticeable enhancement and a key strength is the outstanding centre-based training in phonics and early reading and writing.' Building on the success of our phonics training, members of the English team wanted to investigate if the model used for phonics could be applied to the challenge of teaching our students the enhanced grammar knowledge need to teach the National Curriculum. We wanted to consider if a partnership model could provide, not only examples of good practice for our students to follow, but provide a genuine context to support their developing subject knowledge. This research report will outline initial findings relating to applying an existing partnership model to the current focus on grammar. Taking into account all stakeholders, it will explore both the transferable advantages of this approach but also highlight the inherent difficulties in applying a '˜one size fits all' model to very different areas of subject knowledge