What is the relation between research and teaching? Are they entirely distinct activities -- and should they remain so? What is the relation between research and teachers? Should teachers be positioned as either the objects or the recipients of research that is conducted by specialists, researchers who possess categorically different forms of expertise and equally different perspectives on what happens in schools and classrooms? This paper considers the ways in which education research is conceptualised in dominant discourses and offers the possibility of alternative approaches, informed by different epistemological and ethical understandings.