A Conceptual Framework for Third Spaces that Disrupt Power Dynamics and Transform Clinically Based Teacher Education

BackgroundorContext:Athirdspaceischaracterizedbytheongoingpoststructural negotiation of being and the ongoing quest for liberation and revolutionary cultural change. Third spaces are possible when two people expressing difference from one another come together in a discursive, in-between space that rejects binarisms and essentialisms. Third spaces are in-between spaces that allow for restructurings—new identities, new innovative cultural practices, and new representations of what society is to develop. Purpose, Objective, Research Question, or Focus of Study: We see clinically based teacher education as a space to cultivate a better way of living and being. Building the desire and capacity for such a utopia begins with conceptualizing the work through the lens of third space. The call for clinically based teacher education requires the cultivation of strong school–university partnerships (SUPs), which scholars are increasingly conflating with third spaces. The lack of clarity, superficial use, and misinterpretation of the term third space in the literature on teacher education and SUPs requires the development of a conceptual framework that can articulate and capture the dimensions of third spaces that honor transformative, humanizing partnerships. Research Design: This conceptual article synthesizes the literature on third spaces in SUPs and establishes a comprehensive framework with guiding questions to offer clarity and direction to educational partners seeking to develop and sustain third spaces for improved teaching, learning, and research. The framework includes five interrelated dimensions for humanizing third spaces in school–university partnerships that demonstrate how a third space can emerge when individuals across different orientations and representations (people) come together (actions, scope) to imagine more utopian ways of being/doing (shared purpose, generative learning). Conclusions or Recommendations: Third spaces require a fundamental shift in how partnerships are configured and how they are studied. By putting forward a conceptual framework of the third space in clinically based teacher education, we hope to enable teacher educators to use our heuristic to create third spaces through a humanizing pedagogy by transforming oppressive systems and structures, honoring more liberatory ways of being more fully human, and generating shared expertise/ knowledge among boundary spanning partners.