Strategies for involving partners in the research projects:

- build trusting relationships, even if it takes time
- engage in long-range planning
- facilitate mutual learning about the funding and implementation process
- involve teacher educator networks (Wisconsin has a mandate to include EE in teacher education) -- started collaboration at higher ed and got an NSF grant to build iterations of research-practice
- overcome institutional barriers (Vancouver hosts an institute to foster loose affiliation between universities with same focus, collaboration vs. competition).
- shift research focus from "me" to "we" (resist the "take the data and run" approach)
- challenge research identities to need/service-based
- put forth the questions more broadly, rather than identifying one participating institution as a context or setting
- undertake unfunded research for a while because it leads to funding
- leverage private donors to get the work done well
- design investigation that couples research and evaluation (asking the right questions)
- involve informants in broader science issues vs. deliver a program to constituents
- adopt alternative methodologies (narrative, e.g.) and/or give up some of the methodological "fussiness" for "fuzziness"
- rethink EE community vs. field vs. discipline in relation to journal requirements for publication (e.g., action research) and/or tenure process