"This was hard work": Developing an international partnership in teacher education: Reflections on a complex collaborative process

Against the backdrop of worldwide transformations, internationalization represents a requirement in higher education (Maassen, Jungblut, Stensaker, Griffith & Rosso, 2023). This is particularly important in teacher education where such processes can provide global competencies which can broaden the notions of being a global citizen. To integrate an international perspective in the structures of teacher education in a meaningful way, resilient collaborative partnerships are required. Coombe (2015) indicates that research literature considers such partnerships successful if they are based on corresponding cultures, understandings and goals. However, there is a paucity of research dealing with the advancement of this kind of process. We address the question of how a collaborative interaction, embedded in the context of an international partnership, was developed. We employed auto-ethnography (Campbell, 2016) to document experiences and used complexity theory (Clarke & Collins, 2007) to interpret the data. Key findings indicate that partnership development operates as a complex system that needs time and complex interactions to produce successful partnerships.