A New Model for School-University Collaborations: Mobilising Academic Knowledge and Building Cross Sectoral Synergies Around Inquiry Learning

In this chapter, we examine and offer a rationale for an alternative to the more traditional models of school-university partnerships that revolve around teachers’ professional development. This new approach, based in the Canadian public school system, puts the focus of school-university collaborations on knowledge mobilisation and has the potential to be transformative at a systems level. Our aim is to both extend the conceptual space in which discussion of school-university partnerships are articulated, and share the many insights gained over the last four years around a project that resulted in the creation of a new online platform designed to support collaborations between current teachers and university-based researchers in the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts: The/La Collaborative Inquiry.