Actor Roles in Research–Practice Relationships: Equality in Policy–Practice Nexuses

This chapter offers insights into an education policy–practice nexus operationalised in a recent nationwide government initiative for the development of solid and stable research–practice relationships (RPRs) in education. Among the main challenges for productive RPRs are physical, linguistic, work-related, financial and cultural distances, which characterise and separate education research and education practice. Governments and universities alike have introduced initiatives aimed at strengthening these relationships through practitioner involvement in education research. Although practitioner involvement in research is not new, today’s expectations of newer ways of working collaboratively in education research bring forward several issues regarding the roles of the actors involved. In this chapter, we study and discuss the roles of practitioners in successful RPRs and the requirements for developing ownership and relevance in these research collaborations. The analysis shows that the equality issue of practitioners and researchers in RPRs is more of an epistemological question regarding how practitioner knowledge and researcher knowledge are activated in relationships rather than a practical question of how practitioners can become more involved in research work.