This dissertation explored a school-based professional development (PD) partnership between elementary educators in a rural school in eastern Colorado and literacy researchers from a large flagship university. I studied my collaborations with a team of second-grade teachers and school administrators to investigate nuances within teacher learning and school-university partnerships. This investigation took place during a distinctive moment in elementary reading policy, characterized by statewide top-down policy mandates inspired by a body of research known as the Science of Reading (SOR). Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions, including post structuralism, critical perspectives on policy, and practitioner inquiry, I engaged in qualitative data collection and analysis across several data sources collected throughout three years of close collaboration with my partner school. My findings illustrate that important tensions arose between administrators’, researchers’, and teachers’ expectations of professional learning against the backdrop of SOR policy (Article 1). They also demonstrate how directing analytic attention toward organizational factors like PD, curriculum, and leadership can help resist deficit narratives about teachers and illuminate possibilities for agentic positioning of teachers (Article 2). Finally, my findings suggest that pairing conceptual frameworks like place conscious paradigms with methodologies like research-practice partnerships (RPPs) holds special value in an age of elementary reading reform (Article 3). My study has implications for future inquiry into the rhetoric and implementation of SOR policy, elucidating the need for authentic partnerships with in-service teachers that build knowledge of the ecosystem of a particular school context in order to elevate fair, agentic, and multidimensional positionings of teachers.