The challenges of scaling-up and sustaining professional development school partnerships

•Addresses issues regarding the organizational culture and structure of PDSs.•Explores how the intensification of the professoriate has impacted PDS work.•Address tensions between school and university partners.•Applies the organizational analysis to Coburn's framework for going to scale.•Argues for more research on PDS systems using scholars from leadership.

This article addresses the challenges PDS partnerships face as they go to scale. Based on Coburn's (2005) notions of scale, the article uses organizational theory to analyze data from a ten-year qualitative meta-synthesis of PDS partnership research. Based upon the analysis, the article offers four recommendations: PDS partnerships should sustain strong trajectories of research regarding their work; Stakeholders in PDS partnerships need to ensure that faculty and staff have adequate support to thrive; PDS partnerships need to be based upon enabling bureaucratic structures; and PDS partners need to create opportunities to engage with each other in positive, normative spaces.