The project described here shows how much that our understanding of literacy learning can grow when schools and universities can work together to improve students’ learning.  A secondary English teacher and a university lecturer team-taught a year seven class of 30 boys from working-class and multiple-language backgrounds.  The project aimed to increase the effectiveness of the conventional, novel-based English curriculum with students whose cultural and linguistic resources needed to grow significantly if they were to be successful in the school system.  The action research model of shared planning, teaching and reflection gave both teacher and lecturer a supportive context in which to experiment with new approaches to literacy teaching.  The project found that teaching the novel can be effective but only if teaching approaches link students’ own cultural resources to the school-based texts.  The project also showed that the team-teaching/research model is invaluable as a way of breaking down the barriers which separate universities and schools as places of knowledge about learning and teaching