Nurturing research relationships: Showing care and catalysing action in a South African school research-and-intervention project

In this article we offer an account of a research-and-intervention project – called The 500 Schools Project: Making Schools Better – in which we were involved in various capacities. We focus on the design of this project in terms of its links with what Mertens in various publications calls the ‘transformative paradigm’. Further, we discuss the way in which Tlale tried to carry out the transformative remit in a particular case by his encouraging participants in a school – the case discussed as our exemplar – to recognise that learners' experienced challenges can often be considered to be socially systemic (and not rooted in individual deficits). We report on the catalytic effect of Tlale's engagement with the various participants, by our co-reflecting on some of their accounts as expressed during the ‘intervention visit’ and in follow-up telephonic interviews. We consider how indeed researchers can nurture research relationships towards inspiring the participants with whom they become involved, and what this might amount to.