This paper reports on the development, operation and outcomes of a schools-university partnership in Nottingham, England.  This partnership, called the Knowledge Transfer and Exchange Network (KTEN, see: www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/kten), brought together members of the Centre for Research in Educational Leadership and Management (CRELM) at the University of Nottingham School of Education and the head teachers, senior leadership teams and teachers of seven schools.  This work builds on a range of other partnership studies which have been undertaken in a variety of international settings including in the UK (McLaughlin, Black-Hawkins, Brindley, McIntyre, & Taber, 2006; McLaughlin, Black-Hawkins, McIntyre, & Townsend, 2007) Canada  (Earl, Torrance, & Sutherland, 2006), the USA (Darling-Hammond, Ancess, & Falk, 1995; Lieberman & Grolnick, 1996), the Netherlands (Veugelers & Zijlstra, 2002), the middle east (Jarchow, Harold, McAskill, McGrew-Zoubi, & Walker, 2005), Austria (Rauch, 2013) and Hong Kong (Wu, Chan, & Forrestor, 2005). 

The aim of the KTEN project was to apply the accumulated academic knowledge on effective leadership for learning to the co-construction of the design and application of professional learning and development activities through which school leaders build teachers’ capacity for effective teaching and learning within and across their schools.  But whilst this project intended to make available the outcomes on research on leading learning it was itself intended as a knowledge generating activity which: helped to refine our collective understanding of the nature of leading learning in school facing challenging circumstances; allowed us to appreciate the meaning of, and approach to, research in the work of each partner and finally allowed us to understand how relationships between partners from different backgrounds could contribute to the use of research to inform practice, and visa versa.

It is this final aim of the KTEN project which is the focus of this paper.  This specifically concerns the ways in which relationships between academics, school leaders and teachers, could be formed and developed through research and how these relationships could contribute to efforts to establish both research informed practices, and practice informed research.  Partnerships of this nature are believed to arise in part to satisfy a need for interdependence (Hadfield, 2005) in education settings characterised by neoliberal ideals of competition with their resulting individualising effects (Townsend, 2013).  To that end we saw this network as a way to bring together academics leaders and teachers who shared a common interest in developing education practices in schools facing challenging circumstances.  But the desire to establish the KTEN partnership also arise from a desire to bring the activities of research, leadership and teaching closer together, to challenge some of the preconceptions that ‘research’ and ‘practitioner’ communities occupy different, separate, worlds and are involved in entirely different forms of work.  As a result we wanted to work together to develop knowledge about how the conduct of research by groups of collaborators can inform educational practices.   This required a significant investment in time and effort by all partners in building and sustaining trustful relationships, which allowed for an appreciation of each other’s contexts, aspirations and motivations and as a result to establish productive means of work through and for research.

This paper draws on data collected by partners to present arguments about the ways in which such relationships can be established and sustained.  It explores some of the challenges faced by the partners and outlines some of the understanding that we feel has arisen about what can make these partnerships a success.  We also examine just how this kind of partnership work can lead to new practices and knowledge which satisfies the needs and interests of all partners.  

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