According to the European Commission, a key question in education is: “How to inspire teachers to be proactive, reflective professionals who take ownership of their own professional development?” In order to achieve this, there is an international drive to enhance collaboration between teacher education, largely based in universities, and schools. PROTEUS will work with a range of university/school collaborations. The project will enable participants to see these approaches at first-hand in order to consider their strengths and weaknesses, whilst learning from each other. 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. PROTEUS will thus develop competences that enable teachers to develop their own practice, and that of their schools, based on systematic research, which is vital if human and economic resources are to be used effectively. Another aim is to enable student teachers to challenge the existing cultures of the schools where they are first employed. The objectives of PROTEUS are: 1. To identify the opportunities and constraints of existing university/school collaborations 2. To evaluate the potential of ‘university schools’ as a specific model of university/school collaboration 3. To evaluate the capacity of university/school collaborations to develop 21st century professionalism PROTEUS consists of seven universities/university colleges and two university schools, covering all levels of initial teacher education, from primary to higher secondary schools. The partners represent a broad range of European education systems and hence are able to produce detailed evidence about the opportunities and constraints of different forms of university/school collaborations and their integration into national systems. The project will produce knowledge about different forms of university/school collaboration, both locally at the partner teacher education institutions and internationally, through exchange visits and workshops with student teachers, school (mentor) teachers and university staff. It has three phases: START UP PHASE: 1. Start up meeting to discuss framework for country discussions with three teacher educators from each partner country, developing criteria for baseline measurement (Oct 2015) and resulting in Intellectual Output 1: 2. Baseline measurement. Measurement of teacher competence and professionalism among student teacher in all partner institutions (Jan 2016) Intellectual Output 2: 3. In each partner country, PROTEUS will facilitate discussions between teacher educators, teacher mentors and student teachers about their own understandings of ‘new professionalism’, and how it is facilitated within national teacher education systems. (to March 2016) IMPLEMENTATION PHASE 4. Summer seminar (Weingarten) where 9 participants from each country (3 each of teacher educators, teacher mentors and student teachers) meet to share the findings of their national discussions on ‘new professionalism’ and university/school collaboration. Outcome: Models for university schools as means for developing teacher professionalism (Summer 2016). 5. Three teacher educators from each country visit NTNU, Norway, for seminar on the emerging ‘university schools’ developments, and implemention of models (Autumn 2016) against the NTNU reference model. An interim evaluation report on development of models will be the intellectual output from this seminar. 6. Measurement of teacher competence and professionalism (Jan 2017), investigating the effect of elements within the model. FOLLOW-UP PHASE 7. Representatives of Governments, local authorities and teachers will be invited to a seminar to share observations and findings and to discuss ways forward in Europe. (Spring 2017). Other dissemination activities will be carried out in this phase. 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. PROTEUS will thereby support the development of theoretically informed clinical practice in teacher education. Through direct interaction in networks of teacher education stakeholders, the knowledge produced by PROTEUS will be socially robust and practically useful.