“Making room”: Negotiating democratic research relationships between school and academy

There is growing strength in the argument that the primarily separate communities of educational researchers, academic researchers and teacher researchers, working together, have much to contribute to knowledge on teaching and learning. This article reviews literature on the intersection of these communities. Reflecting on this literature, the author analyzes a research project involving four novice teachers and an academic researcher who engaged in collaborative inquiry. The author employed qualitative analysis to examine the collaborative inquiry and identified factors within its structure. These included tensions involved in the process, knowledge generated within those tensions, fusing of teacher and researcher roles for the teacher participants, and use of outside resources (such as academic literature, findings from other teacher research, and guest speakers) as part of the theory-building process. The discussion offers insight into how the participants created a research process that included the interests and methods of both practitioners and the academic researcher. Implications include consideration of research methods that address the needs of the practitioner community, but also encourage blurred boundaries and greater sharing of expertise.