Evaluation of school-faculty cooperation process in the context of theory and practice

Education faculties have many duties such as meeting the needs of society and cooperating with various institutions, in addition to their duties such as raising qualified people and contributing to science by research (Bayram ve Bozkuş, 2018). Also, school-faculty collaborations have the potential to strengthen the link between theory and practice (Kocadere ve Aşkar, 2013). It is thought that a more efficient education and educating process can be achieved by using the methods suitable for educators with the cooperation of the academicians who produce the theories and the educators who put them into practice in schools (Bozdoğan, 2018). The aim of this study is to determine the scope and status of cooperation between education faculties and schools in terms of reflections in theory and practice, through the opinions of relevant stakeholders. For this purpose, 6 teachers and 6 school administrators working in Çankaya and Etimesgut districts of Ankara province and 6 academicians working in a private university voluntarily participated in this study after obtaining necessary permissions. Qualitative research method was used. Data were collected with a semi-structured interview form and content analysis technique was used. According to the answers of the all participants, school-faculty collaborations are carried out through academic support, school experience and teacher practice course, advisor academic practice and projects/researches. It has been revealed that these collaborations contribute the most within the scope of academic-professional development and the link between school-faculty. In addition, the trainings given by the academicians have led to an increase in motivation and self-confidence on teachers and administrators. Moreover, it is emphasized that these collaborations improve the physical facilities of the school, while it is stated that school-faculty collaborations also increased research studies. In line with the answers of teachers and administrators, problems in the context of school-faculty cooperation were explained as lack of communication, disconnection between theory and practice, problems related to interns, and workload. While it was noteworthy that similar problems were also present in the answers of the academicians, they also mentioned different problems. All the problems encountered during the process were stated by the academicians as follows: lack of communication, disconnection between theory and practice, limited collaborations on course and project basis, inadequacy of teacher practice course content, lack of follow-up of advisor academic practice, inefficiency and workload of community service courses. In order to solve these problems, teachers and administrators stated their expectations as the need for academics and university students to gain more field experience, and the need for academicians to have a positive attitude towards vocational and academic education and cooperation offers from universities. Academicians' expectations are the continuity and increase of the cooperation, the cooperation requests from the schools, the standardization of the advisor academic practice and the necessity of revising the teacher practice course. Keywords: School-Education Faculty Partnership, Educational Administration, Theory and Practice Relationship