This paper examines the role of teachers and their relationship with university researchers in collaborative educational research. Three models of collaboration are examined, literature on collaborations is reviewed, and preliminary findings regarding the effectiveness of an alternative collaborative model are presented. A review of reports on research projects that were labeled "collaborative" suggests that equitable collaboration between teachers and university researchers is problematic. One reason is that, generally, each partner has a different primary goal. The proposed alternative model of teacher-researcher collaboration, which was implemented in 1991-92, is based on a research team that had two distinct components: the school teachers, and the university researchers. Both groups had as their goal the better understanding of how teachers use representations (e.g., questions, examples, analogies, and metaphors). The university researchers were engaged in doing case study research, and the teachers were engaged in collaborative action research. There are complications built into this model and other complications that arose during implementation. These complications have contributed to the results of a preliminary analysis of data on the model which indicates that the model is not achieving its goal. (IAH)