In this study, I examine what happens when institutional partnerships between schools and universities and classroom partnerships between adults and students are viewed as being situated within multiple, interconnected, shifting systems of networks. Using a feminist framework, I raise questions about what 'partnering‘ means as I specifically explore various dynamics, such as embracing tensions, discovering a spirit of connectedness, and honoring a sense of becoming, that impacted a four-year school-university partnership involving my university and a public Boys School.

This study also explores the complex ways students engage as critical researchers in the classroom. Using a participatory and collaborative action research design, I worked closely with one of the third grade classrooms involved in the school partnership. Through the use of ethnographic methods, the class of third graders participated in a class-wide inquiry project investigating issues relevant to their school and community. Throughout their work, the students used digital modalities as self-reflective tools for documenting their participation in these critical inquiries. From analyzing the students‘ work and use of visual technologies, I examine how critical inquiry offered students a way to mediate their experiences and (re)consider conditions of possibility for their work.

Overall, this dissertation seeks to understand the complexities of building and sustaining partnerships at the macro (institutional) and micro (individual) dimensions of the school and what it means to form critical inquiry communities at both levels. In particular, this research serves a refusal to steal away the dynamic, evolving, social, and historical nature of teaching and learning that continues to face scrutiny from top-down, narrow-minded policies and reforms that currently exist within the nation's current educational agenda.