在大學與學校協作所推動的學校改進工作中，大學的支援人員以「外來者」的身分與學校協作帶來改變，其角色的重要性毋庸置疑。據以往對西方大學與學校協作的研究發現，大學支援人員普遍給視作「專家」或「夥伴」，前者強調支援者的專業權威，後者着重與受眾的平等關係。學校教師對於支援人員的角色有何期望及理解，往往受眾多因素影響，亦隨協作過程不斷轉變。本文採用敘說研究（narrative inquiry）的方式，探析香港優質學校改進計劃學校發展主任推動學校改進的經驗，並匯入參與教師的意見，嘗試對大學支援人員擔當「專家」或「夥伴」角色有更立體的理解，期望擴大現存研究發現於華文社會的應用。

In the past few decades, an abundance of research effort was drawn to investigate the role of external change agents bringing about positive changes to school in the context of university-school partnership. No matter what titles given to external change agents, their roles have been widely recognized as “experts” and “partners,” with the former mainly as figures of authority and the latter as working affiliates with shared goals and accountability. School teachers’ expectation and perception of these roles are also found to be influenced by various factors, and would evolve along the course of collaboration. This article examines the process of role negotiation of school development officers in collaborating with schools under the Quality School Improvement Project (QSIP), a large-scale university-school partnership project for school improvement in Hong Kong. In the form of narrative inquiry, the article attempts to provide a contextualized basis in Chinese setting for further discussion of the roles of “expert” and “partner,” which is of crucial importance both to the enrichment of recent literature, and the success of any university-school partnership project.