Dissolving the boundaries: the challenges of collaboration and reciprocity in practice’

In this paper, we will explore some of the collaborations we have been involved with over the last few years, and in the process reflect on the challenges, the learning opportunities and the overall how these experiences have enriched us as educators, in effect to begin to more fully appreciate the process of education as both a collaborative and a creative process. As academics on a youth work and community development programme we have always worked closely with a broad range of community partners, but does this in and of itself mean we manage to successfully navigate, what Martin and Brown (2013) term the distinction between the ‘in here and the out there’ In our teaching we emphasise the importance of relating theory to practice, and are aware of Raelin’s (2007) warning that theory can very easily lose its vitality if we have no practice on which to reflect.