The last decade has seen a resurgence of interest in practitioner enquiry to support school improvement and the professional development of teachers. Teacher research has received political legitimation within the UK and elsewhere as national policy communities respond to the need to reform teacher education for new times and enhance the capacity of schools with devolved responsibilities to engage in robust self-evaluation. The move towards integrated professional development frameworks within the United Kingdom and Europe has emphasised the imperative of career-long professional learning based on critical reflection, curiosity and engagement in and with research (Jephcote et al, 2007). This paper explores some of the tensions and dilemmas involved in sustaining school-university research partnerships within government-funded school development programmes. The paper draws on a three-year project funded by The Scottish Government, Research to Support Schools of Ambition (2006-09). There are 52 ‘Schools of Ambition’ (secondary schools with pupils aged 11-16/18 years) distributed across the 32 local authorities of Scotland. Each school is receiving an additional resource for three years to support a locally negotiated ‘transformation plan’. Teacher-researchers within each of the schools are working with a university-based ‘mentor’ to evaluate progress towards the achievement of the goals expressed in this plan, with the support of a regional Adviser from the Scottish Government (Menter and Hulme, 2007). The promotion of practice-based research requires partners to consider ‘technical’ issues of means (developing research skills and capacity) and also ethical and political issues regarding the parameters, purposes and ends of enquiry. Of significance here is the degree of self-determination involved in identification of research ‘problems’ and the need for problem posing as well as problem solving approaches and practices. Practitioners involved in the building school-university research ‘partnerships’ are charged with working through new and socially complex relations of collaboration; a process that is dependent on sustained dialogue and the nurturing of relations of trust. The negotiation of research relations between participants with different backgrounds, experiences and expectations necessarily involves brokerage, accommodation and compromise (Baumfield and McLaughlin, 2006). The paper considers: • The challenges of meeting the dual objectives of organisational learning and teachers’ professional learning in school self-evaluation. • The role of the university-based ‘mentor’ in supporting teachers leading school-level change within government sponsored programmes. • The negotiation of research relations between national policy officers, regional advisers, teachers and university-based researchers.

An experienced researcher within the lead university, but outside the immediate project team, was invited to support the development of an explicit ‘reflexive strand’ to this work. The research design draws on reflexive methodology as well as reflexive sociology (Pillow, 2003; Kenway and McLeod, 2004; Gewirtz and Cribb, 2006) and connects with attempts to problematise ‘partnership’, ‘collaboration’ and research governance in education settings (Stronach and McNamara, 2002; Saunders, 2007; Day, 2007). The research reported here draws on a series of semi-structured interviews with research participants in three partner universities and policy officers and advisers within the Scottish Government (January-August 2008). The process of reflection was supported by analysis of documents generated from the inception of the project (September 2006), which includes reports, minutes of meetings, draft instruments, research protocols and fieldnotes.

The paper reports on a national project and identifies some key challenges in: (1) developing shared purposes and meanings in school-university partnerships; (2) moving towards ‘joint work’ at cross-school and inter-professional levels; and (3) integrating practitioner-led, school self-evaluation within national frameworks of accountability. At a time when practitioner enquiry is being actively promoted across the career phases, this research makes a contribution towards understanding the contextual constraints on school-based enquiry. It also makes a contribution towards problematising the role of higher education in supporting teachers-as-researchers and draws attention to the need for reflexivity in considering partnership work with schools.