The aim of PROTEUS is to enable key stakeholders to better integrate the academic and practical elements of learning to teach, by investigating the effectiveness of initiatives that promote university/school collaboration, such as university schools. These provide opportunities for teacher educators, teacher mentors and student teachers to develop understandings of ‘new professionalism’, across boundaries of research and teaching practice.

By elaborating the knowledge and experience of partners, PROTEUS will identify and understand the central elements and concepts involved in successful university/school collaborations, which support the development of student teachers’ professional competence. Through dialogue with policy makers in partner countries, we will make empirically grounded policy recommendations for the development of university schools or other specific forms of school-university collaboration.