A framework is needed so that economically richer countries with more developed, historically better resourced and higher status research cultures can collaboratively develop knowledge in equal partnership with countries with historically less well funded and renowned research cultures. International collaborative projects are increasingly funded to help to adjust policies, practices and concepts from richer countries to alleviate the effects of poverty and enhance economic outputs for poorer countries. Our three-year research and development project, which focuses on inclusive education (funded by ERASMUS+ Capacity Building in Higher Education see www.inclute.eu) is an example of this practice. Ostensibly it involves an equal partnership between four Chinese and four European universities: South West University, Guangxi University, Sichuan University, Tibetan University for Nationalities, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Autonomous University of Lisbon, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Bath. The goal is to co-produce knowledge for four masters in inclusive education for educators and researchers studying at the four Chinese universities. However, there is a well-known tendency for the intellectual ideas and research practices of Europe to dominate and 'colonise the minds' and cultures of non-western researchers and potentially their wider society (Chen, 2013; Harding, 2008). Unequal and unjust power permeates practices and interactions between researchers leading to a failure to develop context relevant knowledge and practices and cementing western malestream dominance (Carrington et al, 2017; Harding, 2008; Pant-Robinson and Singal, 2014). We focus on the work we have undertaken to try to generate knowledge regarding gender and inclusive education to illustrate the difficulty of having the epistemologically, politically, socially and culturally engaged debate and exchange between researchers that is needed to coproduce knowledge. Language barriers, different expectations, different gender cultures, intellectual cultures, limited meetings, cultural, social and political difference, along with project targets and timeframes all intervene. Our survey of over 6000 teachers, interviews with teachers and representatives from NGO's and Local Education Authorities and the workshop led by the UK for 40 Chinese colleagues all include colonising tendencies and gendered inequalities. However, by developing a concept of socially just knowledge and a method for achieving it we have started to tackle these difficulties. Drawing upon theorists of knowledge such as Bernstein (2000), Chen (2010), Fricker (2007), Harding (2008, 2011) and Young (2008), we argue that an underpinning notion of socially just knowledge that distinguishes the type of knowledge building that needs to take place is critical to such an endeavour.

Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory Research, Critique, Maryland: Rowan and Littlefields Publishers. Carrington, S., Pillay, H., Tones, M., Nickerson, J., Duke, J., Esibaea, B., Malefoasi, A. and Fa'asala, C. J. (2017) A case study of culturally informed disability-inclusive education policy development in the Solomon Islands, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 21 (5) 495-506. Chen, K.S. (2010) Asia as Method: Towards Deimperialization, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pant-Robinson, A. and Singal, N. (2013). Guest Editors for the Special Issue: Researching ethically across cultures: issues of knowledge, power and voice. Compare, 43 (4). Michael F. D. Young (2008) Bringing Knowledge Back In: From Social Constructivism to Social Realism in the Sociology of Education. London and New York: Routledge.