Over the last decay, democratic, participatory, and collaborative research methodologies have gained momentum. This call for co-operation between researchers and practitioners are evident within the field of educational research (Lather 2004, Christie et al. 2007, Cousins & Simon 1995), and within the field of inclusive education (Slee 1999, Barton & Clough 1995). Despite the strong arguments for methodological innovations and for change in the culture of research, reflections on the possibilities and pitfalls of these collaborative models have not kept pace. Drawing on experiences from a collaborative research project exploring “The school for all; its practices and legitimization” (Ohna et al 2007), the paper addresses the complexity of partnership between university researchers and school practitioners. Here, focus is on the dynamic of the co-operative research- and knowledge generating processes as an independent problematique, albeit closely linked to the actual projects’ fields of knowledge. The aim is to explore the recourses and the risks of co-operative research and to contribute to a reflexive research discourse.

Three interrelated themes are central to this discussion: - The cultural differences between research and practice communities, and how these differences play into the questions of how to initiate, establish, and uphold collaborative partnerships, and for what purposes - Divisions of labor and power, and their implications for the nature, intensity, and impact of practitioner participation throughout the various fazes of the research process, i.e. related to the design and structure of research, the data construction, analysis and interpretations, and to the types and breath of dissemination - Methodological, epistemological and ethical consideration on how partnership research constrain or stimulate the generation and dissemination of knowledge

In the concluding section, it is suggested that it is time to move both the research literature and research activities beyond a naïve trust in the emancipatory wonders of collaborations between researchers and practitioners. It is argued that the potentialities of collaboration presuppose further explorations of various partnership arrangements, complemented by informed debates and methodological reflections.