The substantive and the political are part of most educational endeavors. Researchers tend to be cast as more powerful in interactions between research and practice. This structural historical hierarchy is at the backdrop of research-practice partnerships (RPP) and threatens to marginalize practitioners' perspectives. Drawing on Bakhtin and…

This special issue joins the recent but growing effort to expand knowledge in the learning sciences, by examining the notion of participation in teacher-researcher collaborative design (co-design). Co-design is not just a means to an end; it is a context where professional learning happens. Each of the seven papers describes teacher-researcher…

Schools are valuable venues for research institutions. Research can also be beneficial to public schools. School administrators should be proactive in identifying research topics and establishing standards and expectations for the university researchers. This article describes the partnership between a university researcher and a K-12 director of…

The characteristics of the middle level philosophy as described in This We Believe closely parallel the collaborative research process. The journey of one research team is described in relationship to these characteristics. The collaborative process includes strengths such as professional relationships, professional development, courageous…

There is growing worldwide interest in Japanese lesson study as a model for professional learning, with large-scale adaptations of lesson study taking place in many countries. This paper describes how teachers and researchers collaborated in a lesson study project carried out in three Victorian schools. It describes Japanese lesson study and the…

The author's academic journey in learning to mentor and be co-mentored involved three rites of passage. In this reflective essay (invited paper), the author acknowledges his most influential co-mentors--former dissertation supervisees and long since colleagues--who helped form the "we" that is him. The first phase coincided with a…

In the ideal, reciprocity in qualitative inquiry occurs when there is give-and-take between researchers and the researched; however, the demands of the academy and resource constraints often make the pursuit of reciprocity difficult. Drawing on two video-based, qualitative studies in which researchers utilized video records as resources to enhance…

Reforming schooling to enable engagement and success for those typically marginalised and failed by schools is a necessary task for educational researchers and activists concerned with injustice. However, it is a difficult pursuit, with a long history of failed attempts. This paper outlines the rationale of an Australian partnership research…