CONFLICT, LEARNING, AND CHANGE IN A SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP - DIFFERENT WORLDS OF SHARING/

TENSIONS IN SCHOOL REFORM efforts in the areas of African and African American curriculum and multicultural education form the focal points here for our analysis of a partnership that attempted to involve unive rsity researchers and school administrators as well as preservice and inservice teachers in action research projects. In this article, we te ll a story of our work together, its intentions and its out comes, as well as the processes we each found significant.We begin by describing aspects of our work in the African and African American Curriculum Pr ogram (AAACP), forming a backdrop against which we explore the commitm ents that brought us to this work and the tensions we encountered. The final section addresses what we think we have learned about both curr iculum reform and collaboration. It matters, our story demonstrates, t hat collaborations between schools and universities take place within a highly racialized culture, one in which actions toward social. justi ce often seem in conflict with the world of academic research embodied in these words.