The disconnection between university-based preservice teacher education and field experiences has been highlighted internationally in the literature as a main barrier to better preparing prospective teachers for the complexities of teaching (Adoniou, 2013; Zeinchner, 2010). Alternatives approaches emphasize less hierarchical relationships; integration of school and university expertise; and the importance and need to develop research capacity at the university and school levels (Tanner & Davies, 2009). The integration of the university and practicum contexts is particularly important as some educational systems are moving toward school-based approaches to teacher preparation.

Collaborative research models seem to propose new ways to connect both school and university knowledge and expertise and build a new set of relationships. They are particularly useful to explore ways of bringing a diverse set of “voices” and “expertise” disrupting more hierarchical structures and homogeneous systems, and therefore, can be used to enhance diversity in education practice and research in teacher education. When collaborative research models are used to design partnerships, they have the potential to foster reciprocity, a coalition of interests, innovation, and synergy and be ‘emancipatory in the formation of new relationships and systems of working’ (Baumfield & Butterworth 2007).

In the context of Teacher Education, collaborative engagement with research had impacted positively teacher-educators professional practice, improving the knowledge, skills, and critical awareness, benefiting the learning of students (Tanner and Davies, 2009). Likewise, the exploration of new roles in research partnerships (i.e., research champions) has demonstrated that these alliances can enhance the link and use of research findings that can inform local practices and create networks beyond schools and universities to become open to new ideas and to judge research that is relevant for local systems (Burn et al., 2021).

Despite its attractiveness, developing equitable and genuine collaboration between teachers and researchers is not exempt from difficulties. Authors have questioned whether this relationship can be called collaborative (Feldman, 1993), while others have identified resistance of school-based staff’ to take full ownership of the process (Oates and Bignell, 2019), and differences in the assumption of responsibility and power in the process (Hamsa et al., 2018).

In the enactment of school-university collaborations that promote engagement with research, the notion of agency is central. Teacher agency is understood from the framework of ecological agency (Priestley et al., 2015) due to its focus on the temporal frame and the idea that the achievement of people's agency is only within given structures and cultures. Furthermore, this study draws onto the notion of relational agency (Edwards, 2011, 2015; Edwards et al., 2009) as it centres on the agentic relationships that professionals involved in education establish and the professional learning that emerges from those relationships.

Unlike the most common understanding of partnerships between school and university as the arrangement to facilitate, support and assess student teachers in practical teaching experience, ‘The Research Teams’ is a programme of work developed in an international collaboration between a Chilean and Scottish university to engage initial university staff, pre-service teachers, and school teachers in collaborative research to address issues of practice identified by practitioners. The ‘The Research Teams’ were composed of teams of university tutors, schoolteachers, and pre-service teachers; the university coordinator and external advisor overseeing the programme. Each team identified a problem of practice and developed a 12-months research project. The expected outcomes were the implementation of the project and an academic article for submission. The initiative was designed before the pandemic, and it was implemented online during 2020-2021.

The research questions how the engagement with the Research Teams supports/influences professional learning; brings to the fore new professional identities; and offers new insights into teacher preparation.

A qualitative research design guides the study. Qualitative data was gathered during and after the implementation of the Research Teams programme. The data analysis framework is grounded on Priestley’s and Edwards’s and colleagues' work on ecological and relational agency, expertise and common knowledge. Data Sources and Analysis Qualitative data was collected from the following sources: (a) field diaries of the participants (n=15), (b) semi-structured individual interviews with all participating teachers (2021 cohort) (n=10), (c) focus groups with different participant groups (university staff, pre-service teachers, and school teachers), and (d) documentary analysis of data from the seminars sessions. The material was analysed using qualitative content analysis (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Researchers used an iterative and reflective open coding process that yielded categories and emergent themes. The codes became sub-categories and then generic categories. The research questions were used to organise the most abstract categories. Triangulation between researchers was implemented. Investigators coded a subsample of interviews and focus group transcriptions individually and then shared codes to identify similarities and discrepancies.

This paper explored the emergence of teachers’ professional agency in a collaborative research model with a specific focus on professional learning and identities as a result of engaging with collaborative research. The analysis of the data illustrates themes in connection with professional learning and identities, participants highlighted learning about principles of collaborative research, distinction and similarities with traditional educational research, and pedagogic and disciplinary learning about the topic of the research projects. This learning seems to be less visible for those experienced researchers. The initiative impacted dimensions of identity showing complex interactions between possibilities and constraints for teachers’ professional agency. For example, university staff’s authority may be questioned with the change in notions of expertise and more horizontal relationships with student teachers and school teachers. Findings show how the pandemic has accelerated new ways of working and facilitating but at the same time limiting interactions and more informal learning. The experience of the Research Teams also highlights the apparent dilemma of rhetoric versus reality experienced by pre-teacher students in their professional preparation offering an opportunity to move beyond foregrounding only the university’s values and discourse. The initiative highlights the reality of life in the classroom as messy, complex, and often contested social interactions with a range of potential outcomes. This moves beyond the university’s preparation for an “ideal situation/setting.” Finally, the artificial dichotomy theory and practice in teacher preparation are in some ways addressed. The experience blends different types of knowledge, expertise, and experiences from the university’s world of theory building to the classroom’s world of enacting practice. This shifts the dynamic and the hierarchies as all involved are both learning from each other and teaching each other by offering insights into the complexity and nuance of each other’s professional worlds (university and school).

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