The need for sustainability in school–university partnerships (SUPs) has reached a critical point. Faced with dual pandemics—COVID-19 and systemic racism (Jones, 2021)—long-standing SUPs have struggled to survive or have been discontinued entirely. Meager funding, turnover of key personnel, and declining enrollments in university-based teacher education programs have exacerbated the challenges. In the United States, political polarization and hostility toward public education—coupled with terminations of federal grants (e.g., TQP, SEED) that previously supported some partnerships—has fueled an exceptionally turbulent context for SUPs.

Despite these challenges, SUPs both in the United States and internationally have sustained, grown, or reimagined their work, often in innovative ways that renew wellsprings of great hope for SUPs’ future. This special, themed issue of School–University Partnerships aims to explore emerging possibilities for sustainability in SUPs moving forward.

The first aim of this special issue is to survey the ways in which scholars and practitioners are conceptualizing the sustainability of SUP work amid turbulent times. The issue’s second aim is to create a space of possibility for pluralistically imagining and reimagining what sustainability might entail for SUPs across a wide range of unique contexts. The topical foci of the special issue will be:

● Concepts of sustainability: Concrete, descriptive examples of SUPs’ work and what sustainability in SUPs may entail in a diverse array of contexts shaped by variations in spatial and sociogeographic characteristics, size, scope, purpose, organizational structure, duration, and other defining dimensions

● Critiques of sustainability: Examinations of the ways in which partnerships have historically addressed (or not addressed) issues of sustainability; examinations of how SUPs handling the challenges unique to our current times

● Opportunities for sustainability: Exploratory discussions that contemplate new directions for future action and inquiry surrounding sustainability in SUPs

This special issue will generate a focused discussion on the concept of sustainability within SUPs. While prior literature has begun to conceptualize sustainability, there has not been a collective, critical look at sustainability as a concept or its impact on partnership work. This issue will therefore provide a space for scholars to reflect on existing, historically prevailing, and/or dominant understandings of sustainability, which often relate to issues of scaling and funding across contexts. Additionally, much of the research that currently exists about SUPs’ sustainability focuses on highlighting experiences from individual partnerships. Through this special issue, the editors hope to enable scholars to look across individual contexts, to begin to sense patterns in current discourses about sustainability, and to reconceptualize what sustainability could be—especially within/against today’s turbulent times.

Topics for this special issue could include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Reimagining sustainability in SUPs: Redefining what sustainability means for SUPs. Considerations may include how partners work together to create their own definitions of sustainability, new frameworks that represent multifaceted dimensions of sustainability, equity-centered definitions of sustainability and a focus on mutual learning over time, and related areas.

2. Challenging conceptions of partnership sustainability: Interrogate dominant assumptions that shape the current discourse around sustainability. Considerations may include how funding models or policy expectations may complicate sustainability in SUPs and challenges to the notion of scale as a metric of sustainability.

3. Generative possibilities for partnership work in turbulent times: Generate innovative and flexible ideas for partnership work in times of political, social, and economic instability. Considerations may include how partnerships have thrived through extreme upheaval, agreements and rituals that promote resilience and growth during challenging times, ways to harness collective creativity and care to combat uncertainty, and more.

4. Partnership sustainability in diverse contexts: Explore the context-specific nature of sustainability in partnerships. Considerations may include how geography, size, resources, histories, and traditions shape how partnerships function and the roles that community and culture play in sustaining diverse partnerships.

5. Critical reflections on notions of responsibility, accountability, and impact in partnership work: Critically examine how the work of partnerships is assessed and evaluated. Considerations may ask who participates in decision making and who is left out, how the goals of the partnership are developed and how progress towards meeting the goals is measured, who determines success, how partners share responsibility for their work, and how else the impacts of partnership work might be viewed through relational and contextual lenses.

Publication of the Themed Issue

This themed issue will be published in the second quarter of 2026.

For full consideration, articles must be submitted to the Guest Editors by December 1, 2025.

Tentative Schedule for Publication

● Submission Dates: August 1, 2025 – December 1, 2025

● Authors will be notified of publication decisions and receive feedback through a double-blind peer review process: March 1, 2026

● Final article revisions submitted: April 1, 2026

Submission Guidelines

Articles should be a maximum of 10,000 words in length. This includes all text, the structured abstract, references, tables, figures, and appendices. Article files should be provided in Microsoft Word format and follow APA 7 guidelines. More details can be found on the SUP website under the author guidelines tab. Submissions must be blinded, including a blinded title page and structured abstract. Each submission will undergo double-blind peer review. Target number of accepted papers is 8-10 manuscripts.

Proposal Submission

Please submit themed issue articles via the online system found at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/emerald. You may address questions to jill.ordynans@touro.edu.