This paper considers the nature of professional learning arising through the processes of carrying out action research in professional organizations. It suggests that communicative space opened up outside of the professional context can lead to unanticipated professional learning. Such learning could be considered transformative in the way it leads professionals to reframe their understanding of the dilemma arising from doing action research. To illustrate this, two cases are presented to show the pivotal role university tutors can play not only in the way they create and maintain communicative space but also in the way they purposefully employ strategies to interrupt and challenge viewpoints, assumptions and practices held by professionals doing action research, enabling professional learning to become transformative.

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This study, based in a small rural school, explores the opportunities provided by collaborative learning with a mixed aged class of 7-11 year olds (Year 3-Year 6). This paper specifically focuses on those children aged 7-8 years (Year 3) and how they worked on improving the quality of their writing through optional and directed collaborative group work. Data were collected predominantly through a series of observations and interviews. The findings suggest that optional collaboration does not always lead to shared ideas or improvements in the quality of writing. However, directed collaboration and structured conferencing can enable powerful learning to take place within a group context. The study concludes that with skilled adult support children are not only 'learners' but can also become 'peer teachers' within a supportive context.

The paper explores the current rationale for primary science in England with a focus on how competing perspectives arising from perceptions of educational ideology and policy discourse have helped to shape current practice. The aim will be to provide a conceptual understanding of this by focusing specifically on how policy has influenced practice. In particular it will consider the way in which discourse and policy text have contributed to the emergent rationale for primary science which in many ways reflects conflicting influences, views and policies. Data were collected over a year from a regional survey and from four case-study primary schools. The findings suggest that teachers in primary schools face tensions between promoting both an educational and a political rationale for learning primary science. The paper will conclude by suggesting that the justification for primary science should be based on what we already know about how children learn science as well as helping them to develop an understanding of science and how it influences and is intrinsically linked to the needs of society.

"Partnership" is often promoted as an unquestioned "good" for higher education institutions in relation to its various stakeholder organizations. This paper seeks to problematize this uncritical valorization through a critical interrogation of the concepts and socio-material practices associated with partnership. In the name of partnership, new forms of governance are inaugurated that have far-reaching effects. More specifically, this paper is concerned with a critical analysis of partnership in relation to a longitudinal study of the relational practices between a university and five local authorities within a Scottish educational context. In particular, we trace how a "signature event" transformed a partnership assemblage, from one characterized by a grammar of participation, to a formal partnership aligned with a set of principles that we characterize as a grammar of representation. We argue that this transition led to a new assemblage that enacted new accountabilities, performativities, and alignments under the sign of partnership.