School-based mentor teachers as boundary-crossers in an initial teacher education partnership

Teacher educators are constantly challenged to collaborate across organizational boundaries between higher education and schools. This study examines a school-university partnership in Norway where school-based mentor teachers are co-employed in short-term contracts as joint faculty, collaborating on subject development, co-planning, and co-instruction. The study is based on interviews with 11 schoolbased mentor teachers co-employed as joint faculty. A reflexive thematic analysis elicited three main perspectives on the participants' experiences: (a) professional dissonance; (b) professional contribution; and (c) professional growth. The analysis identified some of the complexities from working across organizational boundaries, as well as opportunities for innovation and professional growth. (c) 2022 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).