The paper outlines developments in research partnerships in Estonia in the last year. It relies on the Paper by Kaarel Haav to the ECER last conference in Crete in 2004 (see also Haav 2004). This framework also referred to the realist teacher education by Fred Korthagen and others (2001) and considered the teacher education as a social construction of teacher student identities, and the teacher professional development as a progress in his or her abilities to influence the students' identities in schools. Teaching, learning, identity construction and formation are most facilitated by democratic and partnership relations between teachers and students. Thus, there is a need to support the educational processes by building and functioning of informal partnerships between teachers and students. The concepts of identity and partnership are more elaborated in social psychological (H. Tajfel 1982, R. Brown 2001), organizational and political theories (D. Buchanan and A. Huczynski 1997, P. Thompson and D. McHugh 1993). The paper integrates these theories with the research framework. The paper also evaluates effectiveness of the teacher education. Traditionally, it has been heavily focused on the transfer of specialist knowledge in Estonia. The roles of theoretical pedagogy and psychology have been under- estimated. After all, there has been a bias on individual students and the roles of students' and school organization have been neglected (Haav 2004 a, b). The paper compares some recent investigations on teacher orientation and student satisfaction (E. Krull 2002 and 2003, T. Kuurme 2004, K. Poom-Valickis 2003) with those at the end of the Soviet period (H. Liimets 2001, E.-S. Sarv 1997). There have been numerous alterations, but the main problems have remained the same. The paper explains it by the one-sided teacher education with its separation of theory and practice. The paper will also present some data from an ongoing empirical investigation on differences between the novice and master teachers (E. Krull et al. 2005). It is expected that the latter take more advantage of the identity and partnership concepts as the former do. The concepts of identity and partnership are considered as powerful tools to overcome these shortcomings in teacher education and in-service training. To do so, the academic - teacher partnerships are vital. In these partnerships, teacher educators collaborate with some master teachers and some novices. Kaarel Haav will outline his recent experiences in this field. As a new trend, the role of institutional partnerships between universities and schools is increasing in Estonia. The University of Tartu has contractual relations with many schools in Tartu and its surroundings. Toomas Kink will disseminate the experiences and outline his ideas on network of the partner schools in Estonia. References. Haav, K. (2004a) Participation and Partnership in Estonian Education. - R. Ruzicka, J. H. Ballantine, J. A. Ruiz San Roman (eds.) Key Contexts for Education and Democracy in Globalizing Societies. Prague: Charles University, Agentura Action Publisher, 2004: 59-67. Haav, K. (2004b) Estonian Educational Forum 1995-2004. - 12th NISPAcee Conference, Vilnius, Lithuania, May 13-15, 2004. 10 pp. www.nispa.sk Haav, K. (2004c) Identiteedi kontseptsiooni osa ja võimalused Eesti õpetajakoolituses ja praktikas. - Kala, U., Kraav, I., et. Al. (2004) Võimalus ja paratamatus olla õppija. Tallinn: EAPS and TPÜ: 13-25. Korthagen, F. et al. (2001) Getting to the Heart of Learning to Teach: Realistic Teacher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Krull, E. (2002) Pedagogical Concepts and Attitudes of Estonian Teachers. Tartu: TU. In Est. Krull, E. and Oras, K. (eds.) (2003) Teacher Professional Development and Student Teachers' School Practice. Tartu: TU Kirjastus. In Estonian with English abstracts.