Internationally, there are calls for education in the public sector to be improved by evidence from research, as part of a broader, ‘evidence-informed practice’ movement that includes broad public policy areas such as health, social work, and crime reduction (Bristow, Carter, & Martin, 2015). In education, governments expect research to provide teachers ‘with evidence about what works’ in the expectation that this will improve the quality of teaching (e.g. Goldacre, 2013; DfE, 2013/2014). In various countries, different policy levers have been used to encourage evidence-informed practice. These include Open Access of research, government-sponsored clearinghouses of research and in some countries, requirements that universities are judged on the ‘impact’ of their research on the social world beyond academia. (e.g. Cain, Weiser & Livingston 2016). Such initiatives encourage researchers to work with teachers and school leaders through ‘pushing’, ‘pulling’ and ‘mediating’ research into practice (Gough, Tripney & Kenny, 2011.) In many instances in the UK, both schools and universities have responded to these policy requirements through forming partnerships around research. Such partnerships are not new but have a history based around teacher education. But the increased efforts to form partnerships around research give a new purpose to these partnerships – one which is currently under-researched. Drawing on interview data from three research studies involving eleven schools, this presentation argues that schools enter partnerships with universities in order to develop and to be recognised as ‘thinking schools’. Contrary to previous research findings, the teachers and school leaders in these studies valued the intellectual activities associated with evidence use and sought out opportunities for conversations about research and teaching (Cain 2015). They formed and maintained partnerships around regular discussions (including online discussions), joint projects, and Teacher Research. Teachers valued these partnerships for the opportunities they gave them to see their work from a different perspective and to think about their teaching in new ways. This research points to new forms of schools-universities partnerships. Whereas previous partnerships had the student teacher as the focus, the new partnerships have research as the focus. In these partnerships, research provides a space for questioning, critique and argumentation.

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