Examining a School-University Partnership to Support Elementary Science Education in Luxembourg

This contribution explores a school-university partnership that has supported in-service primary teachers to engage with science education in ways that are responsive to challenges faced by teachers and students in a European country. The SciTeach Center is the space where researchers and elementary teachers come together, as a community of practice, to engage in cogenerative dialogue in order to address elementary science professional development in Luxembourg. Using a participatory research process and interpretive analytic lens, data from research conducted within the SciTeach Center's projects (video recordings, researchers' notes and reflection pieces) narrate the story of this school-university partnership, unpacking the multilayered building of communities of practice, possibilities of shifting toward open-ended teaching approaches in line with the competency-based approach supported by the Luxembourgish national curriculum, and reflection pieces on the tensions arising from the multilingual changing context. Findings reveal the team's work dynamics to support inquiry-based elementary science education is grounded on a structure of collaboration, built upon a process of reflect-dialogue-act (co-teaching included) and which, as examined, can provide recommendations to support sustainable partnerships based on ongoing open dialogue and trusting relationships.