From fragility to sustainability in a US-Jordanian international school-university partnership
Susan Lipford OgletreePurpose
School–university partnerships have increasingly emerged as important frameworks for strengthening teacher preparation and advancing educational equity in complex global education systems. While much of the existing scholarship focuses on domestic partnerships, less research has examined how such collaborations operate in international contexts or how they evolve from fragile beginnings into sustainable professional learning networks. This study examines the Teaching for the Future Now (TTFN) program, a collaborative partnership established between the University of North Georgia, Georgia State University, and several Jordanian educational institutions, including the Jordanian Ministry of Education, the University of Jordan, and the Queen Rania Teacher Academy, designed to strengthen the pedagogical knowledge, instructional practices, and English skills of English teachers in Jordan.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a mixed-methods survey research design, an electronic post-conference survey was conducted collecting information on demographics, innovative teaching methods, and knowledge. Survey data were descriptively analyzed using frequency distributions, percentages, and means to characterize participant responses. The survey used twenty-one Likert-scale questions and three open-ended survey questions.
Findings
Findings highlight improvements in instructional practice, teacher leadership development, and the formation of a sustainable learning network at the practitioner level. At the policy level, findings suggest that partnership sustainability is not solely dependent on institutional agreements but also becomes a lasting partnership between individuals and institutions through the development of ongoing communication, negotiated education outcomes, shared governance structures, and opportunities for collaborative professional learning.
Research limitations/implications
The study contributes to the growing body of literature on international school-university collaboration and suggests that partnership sustainability is closely linked to the development of trust, shared governance, and program design. Limitations identified in included power dynamics in partnerships in the Global North and South, lack of instructional leadership's impact on teacher professional learning, and how adaptive expertise operates within international partnerships to diffuse instructional practices within schools and directorates.
Practical implications
Sustained, context-specific, and collaborative teacher professional development can foster profound and lasting improvements in teacher knowledge, self-efficacy, and classroom practice, even in highly challenging environments, with findings advocating for a shift away from isolated, short-term workshops towards integrated, long-term models that prioritize peer collaboration and cultural relevance, revealing a pathway from knowledge acquisition to transformed professional identity. The role of Communities of Practice in sustaining motivation and collaborative problem-solving can support long-term improvements in teaching quality and student learning outcomes (Morrison et al., 2026). Teacher peer mentoring and participation in Communities of Practice improve teacher self-efficacy and foster emotional support, reflective practice, and collaborative teaching. Sustained teacher collaboration enhances instructional quality and holistic learner development, with findings indicating that teachers' motivation, perceived relevance of professional development, and collaborative practices significantly contribute to sustainability, yet limited reflective practice and variations in professional competence constrain sustained engagement (Ruleguka, 2026).
Social implications
Teachers as leaders of justice-oriented education can function as co-designers and co-authors of curricular materials and professional development agendas, as co-researchers, professional development facilitators, and as teachers inside and outside the classroom. This positioning of teachers as leaders shifts from traditional expert-driven models toward collaborative knowledge production, where teachers' expertise and lived experience are valued as central to educational improvement (Jayathirtha et al., 2025). By incorporating reflective practice into professional development programming, teachers are provided a space to discuss their learning experiences and an opportunity to better understand the purpose and outcomes of professional learning, specifically for teaching and learning.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the growing body of literature on international school-university collaboration and suggests that partnership sustainability is closely linked to the development of trust, shared governance, and program design. For practitioners, the results underscore the importance of structuring professional development programming that is both contextually responsive and collaboratively designed. The findings highlight the importance of positioning teachers as active contributors in knowledge creation rather than passive recipients of training (Hoskin, 2026). This study contributes new knowledge about how a fragile US-Jordanian partnership evolved into a sustainable English-language network for English teachers in Jordan.