This paper situates the philosophy and politics of partnership in educational development cooperation in the context of wider epistemological and axiological shifts in contemporary social theory. Partnerships in development cooperation are also considered in the light of the alleged failure of international development assistance, a claim that has received much attention with the publication of, among others, William Easterly's "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good" (2006) and of Dambisa Moyo's "Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa" (2008). Partnership as a development strategy offers one response to these claims, but if shared development objectives and policies, shared ownership, shared decisions about where aid is targeted, shared rights, shared responsibilities, and shared implementation strategies still leave the education development community facing challenges as big as ever, it might be time, the paper concludes, to consider whether the concept of partnership has not been expanded too far as a modality in development cooperation.