Monitoring and evaluating school-university partnerships: insights from the usability assessment and refinement of a conceptual framework

School-university partnerships (SUPs) are collaborations bridging the expertise of school and university representatives to address problems of educational practice. A critical and yet challenging aspect of SUPs is their monitoring and evaluation. There exist only a few monitoring and evaluation tools, nevertheless, they only partially address the complexity of SUPs, and some of them have limited adoption in practice. The SUP.ME framework was developed to address these challenges. It is a framework that aims to guide the processes of monitoring and evaluation in SUPs. As monitoring and evaluation tools are not usually assessed by their usability or intended adoption, the usability of SUP.ME was assessed through a series of co-design sessions involving stakeholders from four different SUPs, each at a different phase of its life cycle. After using SUP.ME, participants deemed it as a useful tool to provide a picture of their partnership fitness and to promote in-depth reflections about their partnerships. Results also underscore the need to use tailored strategies for scaffolding the introduction of innovative tools in multi-stakeholder and collaborative settings such as SUPs. SUP.ME's complexity and comprehensiveness were rated as factors that could hinder its adoption. SUP.ME was refined based on the participants' feedback. • A new framework supports the evaluation of school-university partnerships. • The framework helps improve planning, monitoring, and reflection in partnerships. • Mixed methods were used to assess the framework's usability in real settings. • Findings show the tool is clear, comprehensive, and encourages collaboration. • The study highlights the need for tailored strategies to support framework adoption.