For a number of years the primary vehicle for teacher development and school reform in Australia has been the externally funded school-based project whereby schools engage in programs of research and reform incorporating professional development of staff. Coulter and Ingvarson note this trend as early as 1984:

One of the outcomes of the focus on school-based reform has been a growing awareness of the range of structural and cultural conditions within schools that promote or inhibit positive change (Akin, 1991; Hargreaves, 1992). In a recent Australian research study teachers and school leaders identified conditions such as leadership, collegial support, time release and additional resources as supporting positive change in their schools, while conditions such as innovation overload, rapid change and the negative attitudes of other staff were identified as inhibiting change (Peters, Dobbins & Johnson, 1996).

Since 1993 in Australia, when the Accord with the Teaching Profession tied all funding for professional development to programs promoting partnerships involving teacher organisations, education authorities and universities, many school-based reform projects have been constructed around the notion of research partnerships between academic associates and school colleagues. The Innovative Links Project (Innovative links Between Schools and Universities for Teacher Professional Development), Australian National Middle Schooling Project Authentic Assessment Research Circle and School Based Research and Reform Project are three examples in which the researcher has been involved in the last five years.

Projects such as these have been based on the belief that there are particular benefits for teachers and academics when they work in research partnerships. Proponents claim benefits such as improved learning opportunities for teachers and academics (Calhoun, 1993; Garmston, Lindner and Whitaker, 1993; Louden, 1992; Yeatman and Sachs, 1995) and simultaneous renewal of schools and teacher education programs. (Center for Educational Renewal, 1994) Sachs (1997) highlights increased relevance of educational research as a further benefit of collaborative partnerships, as well as their potential to break down isolation and positively change the climate of schools and universities.

Although researchers have given attention to the conditions which promote change in schools and the benefits of school and academics working in research partnerships, there are two questions which have received little attention to date:

1. To what extent are expectations as they are constructed within specific school/university research partnerships compatible with the conditions under which the participants work?
2. Where conditions are in conflict with expectations, what are the costs to participants?

This paper will examine these questions in the light of the experiences of nine teachers and one teacher educator who worked "in partnership" for a period of eighteen months as part of the Innovative Links Project in South Australia.

The Innovative Links Project was an action research based professional development project initiated in 1994 as a National Professional Development Program. The grantee for the project was the National Teaching and Learning Consortium and comprised 14 universities at 16 campuses, each of which hosted a Roundtable of academic associates and representatives from schools, employers, the AEU and the National Schools Network. The project was funded on a year by year basis until the end of 1996.

Schools involved in the project worked in partnership with academic associates to use collaborative action research to implement programs of school reform aimed at improving teaching competencies and learning outcomes for all students. In South Australia, six teacher educators from the University of South Australia worked with teachers in six schools.

This study was conducted over an eighteen month period in which the researcher worked as the academic associate for one school in the South Australian Innovative Links Roundtable. Over the time she worked intensively with the School-based Research Coordinator and nine teachers on a research and reform program in the areas of critical reflection and constructing student success.

The school is in Adelaide and comprises year levels 5 - 12. Two of the teachers taught primary year levels and the other eight taught secondary classes, although the school was focusing on a middle years program for students in years 6-9.

Throughout the eighteen month period data was collected through:

• participant observation by the researcher at research meetings, seminars and informal discussions at the school over the period of a year. The researcher made field-notes of observations and research meetings were taped and relevant sections transcribed.
• two individual conferences and one semi-structured interview with each teacher at regular intervals throughout the period. All interviews were taped and transcribed.
• project documentation such as teachers' informal notes, written research plans, reflective journals and case studies and the minutes of the meetings.
• the researcher's reflective journal.

At the national level of the Innovative Links Project the main expectations were that school participants would work on programs of research and action to facilitate improved teaching competence and the enhancement student learning and engage in some form of written reporting. Academic associates were expected, among other things, to provide access for teachers to current research and theory in relation to the area of concern and act as a "critical friend" (National Teaching and Learning Consortium, 1994).

The school in this study interpreted the national expectations of school participants further. In consultation with some staff members, the School-based Research Coordinator developed a professional development plan for the first twelve months of the project, which was presented to the research team participants and the academic associate for approval. The plan consisted of regular meetings for the research team and a time-line for participants to develop, implement and review action research into an aspect of their teaching. In practice it meant that participants were expected to engaged in the following activities that were not normally a part of their everyday work in the school:

1. Project team meetings

• attend three to four Research Team meetings each term
• attend meetings in their own time
• come to meetings ready to share progress in their action research
• use meetings to enact the role of critical friend in response to others' research.

2. Action research into practice

• plan action research individually or collaboratively about an aspect of their classroom practice related to the construction of student
• conduct action research in accordance with a set of guiding expectations
• complete particular research tasks in between each meeting of the Project Team
• meet with the academic associate to discuss their research.

3. Writing about practice

• write regularly in a personal journal
• use proformas to document aspects of the research process
• write a formal report of their action research to be published for a wider audience, but within a flexible time-line

4. Accessing resources to support practice

• take up the offer of funding for release time, support materials and literature, attendance at conferences, school visits etc
• read literature made available by the academic associate to support their research process.

The school's expectations of the academic associate were less clearly defined. She was expected to provide access to current research and theory and act as a "critical friend" in relation to the school's program of research and reform.

When viewed in total, it can be seen that the expectations of teachers, as they were interpreted in this particular research partnership, were very demanding. In addition to their normal work load, teachers were expected to engage in regular Research Team meetings, conduct rigorous action research, document research in a variety of forms and access resources to support their work, including reading relevant literature. The expectations of the academic associate were much less specific and, on the surface, less demanding. Her role was increasingly defined in practice as she responded to teachers' emerging needs for support as they grappled with the demanding expectations in the face of a range of conflicting conditions.

Before examining conditions that were in conflict with partnership expectations, and the ensuing costs, it needs to be said that this study also revealed conditions that supported participants in meeting expectations. These included their personal interest and commitment to professional development and change; the support of leaders at the respective institutions; collaboration with colleagues; some changes to restrictive institutional structures; some positive aspects in their respective work cultures; and opportunities to find out more about students' perspectives. School participants and the academic associate also identified significant benefits from their involvement in the project. These included positive changes in their self esteem, the ways they thought about their work, their professional relationships and aspects of their practice and greater professional recognition through participating in professional presentations and publications (Peters, 1998). The intention in dwelling on the more negative aspects of the partnership is not to in any way negate the many positive aspects of the work, but rather to draw attention to those aspects that are still problematic in research partnerships and need further attention.

It became clear as participants attempted to meet partnership expectations that some conditions were in conflict with these expectations. Some of these conditions were part of the existing school and university contexts:

1. The structuring of participants' time in the workplace

2. Participants' heavy workload

3. Other staff members' limited understanding of the research partnership

4. Restrictive institutional structures;

and some were the products of the research partnership itself:

5. Cultural differences between universities and schools

6. Confusion about interpreting partnership in practice.

Restrictive workplace time structures were problematic for school participants and the academic associate in their partnership work. For the teachers, the single greatest constraint on their attempts to meet the partnership expectations was the way time was structured in the school through the timetable. This determined the amount of time teachers had with any class and the amount of time they had free to engage in other professional activities.

The control of teaching time through the timetable meant that teachers found they had limited time in which to implement and monitor changes in their teaching as part of the action research cycle. For some teachers the problem was having lack of continuity with classes because contact was timetabled primarily in forty-minute chunks:

This was particularly the case for teachers in the senior years where classes tended to be single periods and there was pressure to get through the syllabus within the allocated time.

Further complications occurred for teachers where the timetable decreed that they only had students on particular days of the weeks or for only part of a semester. The timetabling of extra curricular activities such as camps, retreats and conferences also meant that there were times when either teachers or their students were absent from the school for several days, which also impacted on research.

Because teachers in this school, as in most schools, were committed to teaching for the greater part of every day between the hours of 9.00 a m and 3.30 p m, as well as having supervision duties in breaks, it meant that all other professional activities needed to occur after 3.30 p m. In this school the number of professional activities that were a normal part of teachers' working lives was high, which meant they constantly faced a range of competing demands for their time out of school hours:

The limited time available because of competing demands was a constraint for all teachers when it came to engaging with the Project expectations of on-going professional dialogue, planning and implementing action research and professional writing and reading. The main vehicle for professional dialogue was a regular Research Team meeting, but as these were held after school they often clashed with other professional commitments which meant that it was difficult for the whole group to attend. At times meetings were canceled because of the demands on teachers' time. When teachers did make it to the team meetings after school they were often tired and preoccupied after a hectic day in the classroom. As one teacher said:

Teachers also found it difficult to find any time to engage in professional dialogue outside of meetings, as can be seen in this comment:

When it came to conducting action research on their practice teachers found that it was difficult to find time to plan and trial new practices:

Teachers also found it difficult to find time to write. They simply did not have time in their busy working lives to do more than make quick jottings and were reluctant to take time away from their classes for sustained attempts at writing, although some did do this when formally documenting what they had done. However, even when time was given, it was not enough and for most teachers writing up their research meant a series of late nights, or in one teacher's case, devoting part of her holidays to completing her report.

The effects of time constraints were compounded by the fact teachers felt they could not make use of funded release time because of the potentially negative impact on their students. Although they were prepared to access the financial resources supplied by the Project to purchase resources or fund travel to conferences, they were concerned that taking time away from their classes was too disruptive for their students and so opted to meet after school, rather than in school time. Some were also concerned that taking release time might cause disruption to other staff if they were used to cover classes because relief teachers were unavailable.

The academic associate did not have to operate under the same rigid timetable constraints as the teachers, and so was better able to juggle her commitments to meet their needs. However, the fact that she is a teacher educator meant that at times she was contending with the heavy demands of supervision in the practicum, as well as with increased demands on her time arising from significant staff cutbacks in the (then) Faculty of Education. She found that it was a constant battle to find the considerable amounts of time needed to provide support for teachers as they struggled to meet project expectations. For instance, the expectation that each teacher would write up a report of their research and a subsequent decision to publish these for distribution to teachers in all the Roundtable schools meant that she was engaged in many hours of editorial assistance.

The issue of time was compounded in the case of interaction between the academic associate and individual school participants because there was the double problem of negotiating a time when they were both free. The academic associate was very much aware of this constraint as can be seen in the tentative nature of her request for individual conferences with the teachers:

This study revealed that the structuring of time, particularly in the school context, was incompatible with the expectation that participants engage in the time consuming partnerhsip activities of meeting, reading, writing and action research.

Closely connected to lack of time for meeting partnership expectations was the issue of participants' workload. In addition to the already heavy demands of teaching, each of the teacher participants carried a range of other responsibilities and was involved in many other professional commitments. The academic associate too was experiencing intensification of workload brought about by staff redundancies.

In the school heavy workload demands came from a number of sources:

1. the school context which had a strong emphasis on staff professionalism including involvement in a range of decision making bodies, curriculum development and extra curricular activities. The range of responsibilities, even for teachers with no designated leadership status, can be seen in the following description by one classroom teacher:

2. each teacher's personal sense of professionalism and desire to be involved in as many professional activities as possible. This group of teachers was targeted for involvement in this partnership because of their commitment to ongoing professional development, which meant they tended to become involved in a wide range professional activities. As one teacher put it:

3. the school's commitment to on-going involvement in professional development projects. Part of this school's ethos was a commitment to improved learning opportunities for students and teachers. In practice this translated into involvement in a great many professional activities that at times competed for participants:

For the academic associate there was not only an increase in workload caused by staff reductions in her faculty, but also an increased emphasis in the university context on research and publication outcomes which "count" in terms of the research quantum. She was aware that the hours spent working in partnership with the teachers at the school would not seen as justifiable unless they produced tangible outcomes such as research publications or additional funding.

Overall, the workload demands on the teachers and academic associate who participated in this research partnership were such that they found the additional demands of the project made juggling their workloads extremely challenging.

Both the school participants and the academic associate found that some colleagues with limited understanding of the research partnership were critical of their involvement.

Although participants in the school Research Team felt that, on the whole, most staff were positive and supportive, there were some concerns that the wider staff had only a limited understanding of what the project was about and were not aware of its potential benefits to the school as a whole. The Coordinator reported that, although he had consulted the staff before applying to join the Project, most people probably had no real idea of what was meant by the area of 'critical reflection' selected as the school's focus. Some teacher participants felt that there had not been enough communication with staff in the early stages of the project to ensure that everyone had a good understanding of the project.

In addition to being unclear about the partnership, it was suggested by some teachers that some staff members tended to be sceptical about any new project in which the school became involved, because they felt the school was involved in too many projects.

There was also a perception by some of the teachers that a minority of the staff regarded professional development as "getting out of work", in that it did not constitute a part of teachers' real work:

The Coordinator expressed the view that some staff resisted new projects because they were afraid of change:

For the academic associate the heavy time commitment needed for her work in the school (and she was also the co-convener of the Roundtable) meant that at times she was not able to participate in university activities related to her work as a teacher educator, such as course and subject planning meetings, teacher inservice workshops, enrollment and academic advice. This meant that her role in such activities was sometimes carried by colleagues who knew little about the Innovative Links Project and were not aware of any potential benefits to the university. Naturally some tensions arose from this situation. Even when project money was used to pay for additional Hourly Paid Instruction or marking, the academic associate was still aware that she was seen by some to be shirking aspects of the real work.

Lack of understanding by colleagues and varying levels of skepticism or resistance to new projects was a constraint for the participants at the level that they were concerned about the extent to which their efforts were valued. However, there was a feeling that non-participating colleagues became more supportive over time, as they came to understand the research partnership more fully.

For the teachers, and to a lesser extent the academic associate, some structures within their respective institutions made meeting the partnership expectations more difficult.

In the school there had been some changes to structures that made them more supportive of students' and teachers'. These included a focus on team teaching and integration in the middle years. However, there were school structures that constrained some aspects of teachers' attempts to improve practice. For instance, teachers in the senior year levels felt that the structures of the year level grouping and syllabus were hindering factors in trying to introduce changes, as can be seen in the following comment:

Some teachers found the structure of large classes another inhibiting factor while for others the particular composition of the group of students in the class made them reluctant to change aspects of practice.

The structure of changing classes at the beginning of each year was seen as a constraint by one teacher who had previously been at a school where class groups stayed with the same teacher for a number of years.

In this school there was reasonable stability of staff from year to year, and so they did not have to contend with the effects of high levels of staff changes on their attempts at reform. However, at different times some members of the Research Team moved into unfamiliar roles to replace staff members who were on extended periods of leave.

For the academic associate the structuring of campuses and schools in her institution meant that the six academics involved in the Innovative Links Project were spread across three campuses and three different Schools of Education. This limited the amount of collegial support she could access from her colleagues. Yeatman and Sachs (1995), in their evaluation of the first year of the Innovative Links Project, identified the lack of structures for collegial support in universities as a wide-spread problem:

As already mentioned, the reward structures in universities are such that research partnerships in schools are only valued if they lead to additional funding through research and publication outcomes. Theorists such as Fulwiler(1996) and Reynolds (1995) have commented on the role confusion for teacher educators as they are "caught between the field and academe's conflicting prescriptions for research." This "role confusion" provided a source of on-going concern for the researcher as she was caught between the practice-based nature the research partnership and the university expectations of academic outcomes.

The project expectations as they were interpreted in this school placed a heavy emphasis on teachers engaging in action research and writing about their research. Although research and professional writing are an accepted part of the culture of universities they are not a normal part of practice in most schools. Nor are the traditional ways of structuring time and workload in schools conducive to these activities. This school was unusual in that some teachers had previously been involved in action research based activities and writing journals and reports, but even so the expectations about research and writing proved challenging for the participants in this project.

A period of confusion for some teachers ensued when they were introduced to the expectations for the action research process in the two half day seminars at the beginning of 1996. For those teachers who had no previous experience of action research the expectations presented a range of challenges. Most teachers found it hard to quickly identify a specific focus or question for their research, while some found it difficult to work out which students to involve. All teachers struggled with trying to design and implement data gathering strategies:

For some teachers, many of the challenges in implementing action research arose from their expectation that their research needed to be "scientific" in the traditional sense if it was to be credible. Throughout the period in which they were designing and implementing action research these teachers worried about aspects such as the size and selection of the sample group of students, designing data collection instruments that were free from bias, controlling variables and having control groups as points of comparison.

Despite their best intentions, most teachers found it difficult to maintain a consistent focus on their action research in the face of a range of competing demands on their time and energy:

Over time there was evidence that dialogue with other teachers and the academic associate helped to overcome some of these concerns as teachers realised they could modify expectations to ones which could be managed as part of their normal work in their classrooms. However, for at least one teacher the expectations in the early stages of the research phase seemed inflexible:

He dropped out of the Research Team because he felt he was unable to keep up with the on-going demands of the research process.

Teachers were not comfortable with the expectation that they keep a personal journal for recording and reflecting on aspects of their research. Most were not in the habit of using writing as a tool for reflection. They felt it was easier, less time consuming and more effective to think or talk about their practice, as can be seen in the following comment:

One teacher saw the expectation that he write about his research as conflicting with his interest in more practice-oriented activity:

The expectation that teachers write a report to publish their research for a wider audience was one that caused anxiety for most. Some of this anxiety arose from being unclear about specific expectations of the format and style for such writing, and some was the result of considerable trepidation about how others would receive their writing:

The academic associate became increasingly aware of the gap between the research partnership expectations for research and writing and the reality of the teachers' working lives. Half way through the research period she wrote in her journal:

She found that in addition to playing expected roles such as research consultant, encourager, critical friend and learner, she assumed the unexpected role of mediator between the partnership expectations and the reality of the conditions under which teachers were working. She attempted to alleviate some of the pressure teachers were feeling by assisting them to modify expectations to what was personally manageable. She stressed that what was important was not so much getting the process completely "right" but rather getting something useful out of it for their teaching. She encouraged teachers to make aspects of their research as time-efficient as possible and to think about how they could make their research, especially the gathering of data, a normal part of the learning experiences they planned for students:

Taking on the role of a mediator caused the academic associate to feel some anxiety because to some extent she was, at times, arguing against expectations that had been set up by the school in the early stages of the partnership. Fortunately, when she checked out her concern with the Coordinator he indicated he actually appreciated her taking this role.

The focus in this partnership on action research and writing about research were more congruent with university culture than school culture. Consequently the participants experienced considerable difficulties in reconciling these expectations with the demands of their every day work.

Although expectations for school and university participants were clearly out-lined at the national level, "partnership" was never defined, nor were any specific guide-lines for working in partnership developed. In South Australia this was left for participants to work out as the individual school/university partnerships evolved. The confusion about what the partnership relationship might entail meant that in this partnership some opportunities were missed in terms of developing a reciprocal relationship between the school and the Roundtable and the school and the academic associate.

At the level of the Roundtable, opportunities for school participants to engage in professional dialogue and sharing of practice with other school and academic associates were restricted to the school's two Roundtable representatives. Although they reported back to the wider staff in staff bulletins, and to the Research Team members in meetings, the Roundtable itself remained something that had little impact as a vehicle for partnership for the majority of participants. Even teachers on the Research Team had little idea of where they fitted into the bigger Roundtable picture, as can be seen from the comment below:

Several teachers commented on this as a weakness of the overall implementation of the partnership and suggested ideas for improving future partnerships:

When asked how much he was aware of the workings of the Roundtable, one teacher was adamant that he was not interested in the wider partnership on offer, and was sceptical about it's benefits:

It was clear from these participants' responses that the Roundtable was largely a "non event" for those who did not attend it.

At the level of partnership between the school participants and the academic associate, the relationship was one-sided in that the focus was on the teachers sharing and improving aspects of their teaching practice. The academic associate did not share aspects of her own teaching practice, nor did she seek to improve her teaching practice through engaging in action research focused on it. Rather she focused on developing her role as a facilitator of the teachers' learning.

Teachers did not show any particular interest in finding out more about practices at the university, no doubt because the partnership expectations had placed the focus so clearly on their own practice, but comments such as the following reveal that they were interested in what was happening in university courses:

Some teachers clearly felt that there was a need for university lecturers to improve their own teaching, as well as providing support to teachers to improve theirs. For instance, one teacher commented:

Another teacher suggested that he saw some reciprocal learning occurring through the partnership in that the academic associate was becoming more aware of the realities of teaching through working in the school.

The academic associate certainly felt that there was a great deal of incidental learning through her involvement in the school. Overall she felt she had greater understanding of the conditions under which these teachers worked, their concerns about teaching and learning and their practice. As she helped them struggle with the focus of constructing student success her own thinking about this issue was certainly challenged. However, she felt she did not maximise her learning by using the impetus from her work in this research partnership to review and initiate change in her own practice.

In retrospect, the lack of clear expectations of how the research partnership should be interpreted in practice meant that it evolved in a rather haphazard fashion and did not provide the opportunities for reciprocal learning which it might have if it had been constructed in a more considered way.

As can be seen, there were a number of conditions that existed within the school, university and partnership contexts that conflicted with the participants' attempts to meet specified expectations. These adverse conditions meant that although involvement in the research partnership produced a range of benefits for participants, it also resulted in significant costs. In particular, in trying to meet expectations the participants experienced the following costs:

1) intensification of workload and increased pressure on available time

2) living with uncertainty

3) professional vulnerability

4) missed opportunities for learning

At various times throughout their involvement in the research partnership participants felt completely overwhelmed by the intensification of their workload and increased pressures on available time. Some teachers felt they were losing control in terms of managing their time and workload, with damaging effects on their teaching. One teacher reported:

For another teacher, the sense of being overwhelmed led to a complete withdrawal from the project:

This caused him considerable distress in terms of feeling that he had let others down by not living up to the expectations.

For the teachers who stayed involved throughout a further consequence was that they felt frustrated, anxious and guilty about not being able to fully meet the partnership expectations, as can be seen from the following comments:

They also experienced feelings of guilt about perceptions (by themselves and others) that students were being neglected and other staff overloaded if they used release time to cope with the additional workload demands.

This study confirmed the findings of researchers such as Hargreaves (1994) that participants involved in reform work in schools experience substantial costs in terms of additional pressures on their time and workload. Adelman and Panton Walking-Eagle (1997) refer to these pressures as a "Catch-22" whereby teachers often experience considerable feelings of guilt as "they are forced to compromise their work in one area in order to fulfill equally important responsibilities in another." (p101) All except one participant in this study survived these pressures, and stayed with the partnership, but the heavy price they paid in doing so needs to be acknowledged.

As reported earlier, there were no national guidelines for how this research partnership should work in practice so both the teacher participants and the academic associate entered the partnership with only the vaguest idea of what was expected of them in terms of working together. This meant they each spent varying lengths of time in which they lived with uncertainty about what they were going to do and whether or not they were going to get anything useful out of their involvement.

For the teachers, even once they became aware of the expectations as they had been interpreted by the school, it took considerable time to work out what these expectations might look like in practice in their own classroom. This was particularly true in respect to action research. In the first half of 1996, teachers expressed considerable anxiety about whether or not they were "getting it right", as can be seen in the following excerpts from transcripts of Research Team meetings and interviews:

Another area of uncertainty arose from the expectation that teachers' action research would lead to improved learning outcomes for their students. Most teachers found it impossible to definitely determine that there had been improvement in student learning outcomes that could be directly attributed to their action research. This meant that they spent a great deal of time and effort developing and trialing new strategies without any certainty that the time and effort were well spent.

Furthermore, for all teachers action research uncovered new questions and complex dilemmas about their beliefs and current practice, none of which leant themselves to immediate solutions. This meant that some teachers were left feeling less certain about their teaching than before they started trying to improve it.

The academic associate experienced feelings of uncertainty about how she could contribute productively to a research partnership in this school. This uncertainty was compounded by the fact that the school had several teachers who had expertise in action research and used them to introduce the research process in the early stages. The academic associate wrote about her doubts in an early entry in her journal:

Feelings of uncertainty also came from not knowing to what extent her contribution to the partnership was useful. It wasn't until near the end of the eighteen month period, at a staff meeting to celebrate and report on the partnership work, that she heard teachers comment on how much they valued her role:

This study revealed that entering into a new research partnership involves participants stepping into the unknown and living with uncertainty until a clearer picture emerges of what will be involved and what positive outcomes can be expected from participation.

Teachers and the academic associate exposed their professional practice to critique by others by involving themselves in the research partnership. Teachers were expected to share their beliefs, assumptions and teaching strategies with a range of others including the Coordinator, the academic associate (with whom they were completely unfamiliar before the partnership commenced) and the other members of the Research Team. The additional expectation that they publish a report of their research in writing meant that they also faced the additional demand of sharing their work with the rest of the staff and with other professionals in schools and universities.

This study revealed a number of fronts on which teachers experienced feelings of vulnerability about exposing their practice within the research partnership. One teacher reported that simply by agreeing to participate he knew he was exposing himself to criticism by others:

Another source of vulnerability arose from teachers' concern that the research process they used needed to stand up to the scrutiny of others. For instance, one teacher expressed his concern that his research might be seen as reinventing what is already known.

For some teachers the prospect of writing about their research for a wider audience exacerbated feelings that they may not have anything of value to say, or that their writing style would be found wanting by others:

Surprisingly, teachers did not seem to be anxious about sharing their practice with a previously unknown academic associate. One reason given for this was that the teachers who participated in the Research Team tended to be confident about their practice. Another reason given was that the academic associate quickly made it known that she was not there as a judgmental "expert", but rather as a fellow learner.

For the academic associate feelings of vulnerability came from the expectations that she work with an unfamiliar group of teachers in an unfamiliar school setting, on a research project focused on areas about which she was not particularly confident. She was fully aware of many teachers' perceptions that teacher educators lack credibility because they lack recent, ongoing knowledge and contact with the day-to day operation of classrooms (Dawson, 1994). Journal entries such as the following indicate the extent to which she felt vulnerable in the early stages of the partnership:

Commentators such as Goodson (1992) have made reference to the feelings of vulnerability that can arise when teachers begin to critique their practice, while Johnson (1998) makes the point that working with university partners can make some teachers feel vulnerable. This study revealed that both the teachers and the academic associate felt vulnerable when they were expected to expose different aspects of their practice to scrutiny.

It is inevitable in any research partnership that decisions will be made that result in some missed opportunities for learning and feelings of frustration for some participants. In retrospect there appear to be three areas that are worth considering in relation to missed opportunities for learning in this research partnership:

1) the selective involvement of school participants in the partnership

2) the one-sided nature of the focus on improving teaching

3) the over-emphasis on the technicalities of action research

All schools face the dilemma of which staff to involve in professional development and how to spread what is learnt to the wider staff. In this school the decision was made to invite a specific group of nine teachers to participate in the first round of the professional development program. Those invited were selected because of their interest in professional development and their representation of particular groups in the school. Overall, selection on this basis seems to have worked well in that it resulted in enthusiastic and highly committed participants who were keen to influence colleagues in their respective areas of teaching.

There is some evidence, however, that this kind of selection process engendered feelings of alienation in some of those who were not involved in the Research Team. Some of these feelings were related to a lack of understanding of what the partnership was about and it would appear that at the time of decision making about who was to participate in the Project work, staff did not have sufficient information upon which to base a decision about whether to volunteer to be involved. This undoubtedly means that there were some staff who missed out on the learning opportunities provided by the partnership because they were not informed enough to volunteer.

The comments of the participants reveal that they also perceived there to be suspicion by some staff members that a particular group of staff members spent the majority of their time engaged in professional development programs rather than the real world of teaching. Even one of the Research Team members echoed this suspicion:

There was also the perception reported earlier that some staff members did not volunteer to participate in the partnership work because they saw it as just another example of a select few exploiting others for their own professional advancement, rather than for the good of the school as a whole. While this kind of attitude continues unaddressed, these staff members will continue to miss out on opportunities for professional development such as this one.

The rather haphazard construction of this partnership, with the focus solely on school participants improving their practice, meant that a potential opportunity for reciprocal learning was lost. The academic associate focused on supporting teachers' research on their practice and researched her own practice as a facilitator of teachers' learning, but did not think to share aspects about her own teaching in teacher education. Nor did the school participants ever ask her about her work at the University. In retrospect it seem hypocritical that the teachers were expected to expose their practice to critical scrutiny, when the academic associate was not. The research focus of "constructing students success" was just as applicable to her own teaching situation as it was to that of the school participants. She could have modeled action research upon an aspect of her own practice as a means of facilitating teachers' learning about research, while at the same time giving them reciprocal insight into the work of teacher education. As it was, she learnt a great deal about the world of teaching in schools, while teachers learnt absolutely nothing about the world of teacher education.

In this school there was a great deal of emphasis placed on achieving rigor in the action research process. Because of this, together with some teachers' expectations that the research needed to be 'scientific', teachers were constantly worried about the validity of their research. While participants are to be whole-heartedly commended for their commitment to "getting it right", an unwelcome consequence of this was that a great deal of time in Research Team meetings and individual research conferences was spent discussing the technicalities of action research. This was at the expense of time spent on theorising about what the data was saying about students' constructions of success. This was a matter of on-going concern to the academic associate, as can be seen in the following journal entry:

A further unwelcome consequence was that the teachers experienced considerable anxiety about the action research process, especially when it became obvious that the expectations of rigor with incompatible with the way time and workload were structured in the school.

The experiences of both the school participants and the academic associate in this research partnership indicate that in many respects the research partnership expectations were in conflict with a range of contextual conditions. As a result there were significant costs to participants as they attempted to meet these expectations. Those engaged in planning future research partnerships need to closely examine the extent to which expectations are in conflict with the conditions under which participants' work, and either modify the expectations or help participants to recognise and change conflicting contextual conditions. There are no easy answers because many of the structural and cultural conditions in schools and universities are entrenched and resistant to change. However, if we continue to ignore the conflict between expectations and some contextual conditions there is the likelihood that some participants will experience costs that are so high they will choose not to participate in future research partnerships.