This paper examines the ways in which school teachers and university faculty can work together for the purposes of school reform, professional development and educational research. The paper describes the ongoing interactions between teachers and university personnel in two sites in Australia. Each case considers the ways in which the interaction between teachers and academics contributed to the nature of professional learning for all participants, and transcended some of the boundaries between school and university. We argue that the exchange of ideas across institutional boundaries is an important condition of professional learning within partnerships, and that the negotiation and codification of knowledge serves important research and practice purposes. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)