We examine how the notion of partnership permeated the methodology of a project concerned with investigating high quality educare for children under three. Partnership, in this specific sense of involving participants in the construction of knowledge, meant full participation in data collection leading to a high degree of involvement in later stages of research. The roots of this approach lie in an interpretive perspective, owing much to Vygotsky 's holistic theory of child development, from which stemmed the study focus upon interactions with children. We present particular qualities of the fruits of bringing educarers and parents into a perhaps uncommonly broad span of the research process.