Support for Research through the implementation of School-University Institutional Teaching Collaboration Initiatives

Abstract

In recent years, numerous studies and experiences have been developed in the field of teacher education that promotes professional development. These include works that manage to create and maintain a network, a community of practice or other forms of collaborative work among teachers, whether from the same educational level or from different institutions and levels. Most of these are joint work experiences carried out around the practical component in initial teacher training in which a methodology is used that falls within the broad field of qualitative research. Although all these studies reveal a field of work in which the productive relationships among the university, the educational centers, and their community are evident, none have addressed the professional growth of teachers through bidirectional training exchange between public early childhood and primary education centers and the university. This is a new format or formula that has proven to be effective and that allows further progress to be made in the field of initial and continuing teacher training. Aware of the benefits derived from this, the University of Granada (Spain) launches an initiative in the 2020-2021 academic year with the implementation of the experimental program HERMES. The main purpose is to create networks and working groups between teachers from schools and universities to facilitate the implementation of joint training, innovation and/or research projects in the next academic years. The bidirectional training stays between the educational center and the university give the Program an innovative profile within our country. This paper focuses its attention on it.