Making partnership work : from passive participation to active collaboration

Abstract

This chapter is a reflective account of my experiences as a novice researcher trying to set up a collaborative research partnership with teachers and students in schools to explore and develop new ideas about assessment practices. It is an account of how I try to translate my theoretical framework of collaborative research into practice and the difficulties and limitations I encountered. The chapter is therefore divided into three parts. In the first part I explore my own philosophical underpinnings and give reasons why I thought it was important to engage in collaborative research. The second part of the chapter turns to my experiences and interactions with teachers with schools and critically explores the difficulties and problems which I encountered in trying to develop a collaborative partnership with the teachers. The third and final part of the chapter evaluates the research process and discusses why the partnership and collaboration I dreamed of did not materialise. I reflect on what went wrong and how I could make collaboration work successfully.