Although teacher educators frequently conduct research with school board partners, their experiences navigating these partnerships, particularly those that are long-term, and their learning as researchers through these partnership experiences, are not well explored (Ko et al., 2022). This self-study sought to extend understandings of this important domain of teacher educators’ work.

Participants

• 2 educational researchers (primary participants)
• 9 coaches (participants in the funded coaching research projects)
• 3 provincial literacy leads (participants in the funded coaching research projects)

Data Collection and Data Sources

• 6 reflective conversations between researchers (audiotaped and transcribed)
• Interviews with 9 coach and 3 provincial literacy lead participants
• Email communication between the researchers throughout the project (2016-2021)
• Artifacts including the funding proposal and field notes gathered during coaching project observations

Findings

Analysis of data collected in the first three years of the study (2016-2019), documented negotiating the need to change from our original proposal focus of literacy coaching, to a research program more broadly conceptualized as professional learning through coaching. In part, as a function of this change of focus, we encountered a plethora of dilemmas (e.g., leadership changes, evolving school board priorities, (re)developing research partnerships, planning and being responsive). We uncovered the applicability of the framework of Berry’s (2008) tensions in teaching teachers, to our experiences navigating these dilemmas in our school-board and university educational research partnerships. Briefly, our tensions were between:

• Telling and Growth: Deciding when to facilitate growth through active learning and when to “tell” research partners/participants information.
• Confidence and Uncertainty: Remaining confident while also aware of the uncertainty of the evolving foci and direction of school-board partnerships.
• Actions and Intent: Dichotomies that may exist between researchers’ actions and school board partners/participants’ perceptions of their intents.
• Safety and Challenge: Moving beyond safety and embracing the challenges of school-board/university research partnerships.
• Valuing and Reconstructing: Valuing while supporting school-board partners/participants’ abilities to reconstruct their perceptions.
• Planning and Being Responsive: Balancing planned directions or experiences with being responsive to unanticipated situations as they arise.

In the remaining two years of the study (2019-2021) additional insights were gleaned:

• Following uncoverage of the applicability of the framework of Berry’s (2008) tensions to our work as educational researchers, our language changed with this framework enhancing ongoing productive discourse about our dilemmas. For example, we discussed whether to move beyond safety to accept the challenge of valuing others’ perspectives while attempting to reconstruct our partners’ perspectives of the importance of enhancing teachers’ accountability for change.
• Our learning through self-study enhanced our ability to navigate our reiterative tensions, which were a function of the continually evolving educational context and we came to realize that our responsiveness to unanticipated teaching, learning, and research situations as they arose, rather than focusing on pursuing our carefully developed research plan, was the essence of our partnerships. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated our school-board partners’ DT coaches pivoting to assist teachers as they moved to emergency remote learning, we explored their experiences doing so, and shared our findings with their school board.