ABSTRACT
I have made the claim that building more effective schools that continue to be very effective is dependent on ongoing partnerships. The forms and functions of those partnerships vary considerably. In the context of partnerships between professionals and researchers to change schools systematically, they take the form at one extreme of researchers helping to set up and resource a new school. More generally in school reform, external research partners design, implement and monitor a new programme that has been externally designed. More recently, there are partnerships that are collaborative and developmental, in which schools and partners redesign the schools’ activities. These latter are what Raphael and her colleagues call second generation models (Raphael, Au, & Goldman, 2009). The most effective of these are focused on processes which design instructional programmes that have fidelity. In each of these cases the partnership draws on research based expertise. This chapter is about what research partners can and should contribute.
