Dufera, Derebssa (Professor)Kesete, Gebrehiwot2018-06-292023-11-102018-06-292023-11-102011-02http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/5102The study was suited in cluster school-Teacher Education Institutes relationship in Tigray Region which aims to investigate the status accomplishment, practice and challenges, impact along the contours of teacher’s class room practice, continuous professional development, and sense of collegiality learning environment with the intention of engendering the ways/means for sustainable partnership. Towards achieving this purpose, the study employed better combination of qualitative and quantitative - mixed research. Consequently, the study involved participants such as deans of the colleges, cluster unit coordinators of the college, school teachers, college instructors, cluster supervisors, school directors, woreda education heads and group of council students of the schools; using mixed sampling techniques. Corollary, data was collected through questionnaire, in-depth interview, classroom observations, and document analysis as enriching and triangulating data for the study. Following this, quantitative (descriptive and inferential statistics) and qualitative(thematic analysis and interpretation) sub report, mixed data analysis findings reveal that the partnership status vitality includes most descriptions of goals and benefits at planning stage, however challenging implementation process and loosely monitoring and evaluation system. The trainings and materials support provision the colleges render to the schools on the one hand, and what all these supports the schools receive on the other hand, was considered as mainstay with the partnership’s practice towards meeting its purposes. In effect, TEIs/cluster school partnership offers tremendous opportunities in establishing model classes and pedagogical resource center in the schools was unprecedented. Further to this, increasing repertoire pedagogical knowledge and skills, initiating conducting action research as tool for professional development were emerged to accrue from TEIs/cluster school partnership. However, most of these partnership impacts found at the infancy stage with little desired ‘trickledown impacts’ of the potential advantages of partnership. On the top of this, the TEIs/cluster schools partnership embedded the dearth of documentation and comprehensive impact research, loosely monitoring and evaluation system, lack of budget, time constraints, lack of delineated responsibilities and involvement of stakeholders, lack of organizational supports as multitudes challenges which increases the pressure for enduring positive outcomes of the partnership in more meaningful and sustainable manners. There was an apparent absence of evidence that underpins TEIs/cluster schools were immersed in the authentic collaborative atmosphere, hitherto, as to securing contrasting reciprocal opportunities in the quest for quality of education improvement. Through the education partnership lenses, the research findings encouraged critical [re]thinking of school/TEIs partnership to emulate its potentially enduring impacts and far reaching developments for the quest quality of education improvements. To this end, context based strategies and plausible recommendations call for unceasing concerns and robust collaborative efforts of stakeholders perhaps an imperative to nurture and sustain the future direction partnership. Keywords: TEIs/cluster schools partnership, teacher professional development, collegiality learningenTEIs/cluster schools partnership; teacher professional development ;collegiality learningThesis