Student thesis in collaboration between the school practice and teacher education.

This project is one of the activities within ULF (Teaching, Learning, Research) at Mid Sweden University. ULF is a national pilot project with the goal to develop an infrastructure with long-term sustainable collaboration models around practical research in order to strengthen the scientific basis on which the education according to the Education Act (SFS 2010: 800) is to rest. To achieve this, different collaboration models between academia and the school or school system are developed and tested regarding research, school activities and teacher education (www.ulfavtal.se). The research that is intended to be conducted must be based on the stated needs of the professionals, and maintain a high scientific quality. This means that research within ULF is based on both the professionals' interests and the need for new knowledge to improve and develop education, and takes place in collaboration between researchers and professionals (Nationella samordningsgruppen, 2022). During the trial period 2017 - 2022, activities within ULF have focused on different forms of collaboration between research and school activities, while activities that include teacher education have been included to a lesser extent (Benerdal et al., 2022). Therefore, there is a need for more activities that focus on collaboration between the school practice and teacher education. Furthermore, research is an integral part of teacher education and during their education, students must write a thesis (SFS 1993: 100).

In this project, the purpose is therefore to test a model for how collaboration between teacher education and school practice can look like, which includes students' thesis. The project is based on a complementary perspective where proposals for research areas are initially formulated by teachers at the school that is included in the project. Then, students develop these proposals into researchable problems. This work is done in consultation with supervisors at the university and contact teachers at the school. During the work with preparing and conducting data collection at the school, the contact teacher is involved according to agreement between the contact teacher and the student. When the thesis is completed, the student presents and discuss the results with the teachers at the school. The goal of the project is twofold: collaboration should contribute to that students in teacher education conduct research that is relevant to the practice, and that teachers at the school should have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of learning and teaching in different subject areas based on their wishes. Because the students' work takes place in collaboration with a school, teachers in teacher education (in the role of supervisor) also get a closer connection to the practice. In this project, data is collected in the form of interviews with participating students, their supervisors at Mid Sweden University, and their contact teachers at the participating school.