The Collaborative Presence of University for English Teacher Education with and in the School

Abstract: This paper addresses the possible implications of the approximation between the university and the school based on the notion of “coming into presence” (Biesta, 2017), that is, when higher education becomes present in the school context. This qualitative study introduces a community outreach project for English teacher education called UNISALE University-School Partnership Project and focuses on the events revolving around the presence of a member of this project in the school environment. Supported by Discourse Analysis principles and procedures, we analyzed interviews and narratives generated by the participating English teacher and the researcher’s field notes. We found contradictory discourses that shift between qualification (admiration) and disqualification (skepticism) of the university’s existence and production, unveiling a distant and fruitless relationship between regular schools and the university. At the same time, we captured possibilities of rehistoricizing (Reis et al., 2019) these discourses, relationships, and representations through the university’s physical presence at the school and, most importantly, how this collaborative presence might strengthen English teacher education with and in schools.