Research–Practice Partnerships in Education:

Outcomes, Dynamics, and Open Questions

(Coburn & Penuel, 2016)

הוכן על ידי: גלעד בנטל

Cynthia Coburn

Professor at the School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE:

• Relationship between instructional policy and teachers' classroom practice
• Relationship between research and policy
• Organizational theory
• Qualitative research methods

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William Penuel

Professor of Educational Psychology & Learning Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE:

• Teacher learning and organizational processes that shape the implementation of educational policies, school curricula, and afterschool programs
• Models of teacher professional development
• The dynamics of research-practice partnerships focused on instructional improvement in mathematics
• How children’s interests develop over time and across different kinds of settings

2010 - Research and Practice in Education: Building Alliances, Bridging the Divide (Coburn & Stein, Eds.)

2017 - Creating Research-Practice Partnerships in Education (Penuel & Gallagher, Eds.)

2018 - Connecting Research and Practice for Educational Improvement: Ethical and Equitable Approaches (Penuel & Bevan, Eds.)

Scope

A review of available evidence of the outcomes and dynamics of RPPs in education and related fields.

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Outlines a research agenda for the study of RPPs that can guide funders’ investments and help developing partnerships succeed.

Definition

RPPs are long-term collaborations between practitioners and researchers that are organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving schools and school districts (Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013).

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Problem

“RPPs of all types are currently proliferating, fueled by increased interest from local and national funders but also by researchers’ and practitioners’ desire to find new models of research that make a difference in public schools in more tangible ways. But …”

Questions

• What Do We Know About the Outcomes of RPPs?
• What Do We Know About the Dynamics of RPPs?

Outcomes

• Would the results be different if the intervention was developed outside the context of a RPP?
• What is the value of the partnerships themselves,above and beyond the particular innovations they produce?
• Is there any evidence about whether participation in partnerships is associated with increased use of this research for making decisions?
• What are the other potential outcomes of RPPs? (p. 50, right)

Dynamics

• First-person reflections written by researchers
• Typically, involve retrospective analyses, making them subject to hindsight bias
• Work largely focuses on the challenges
• Complex organizational structures, whom to partner with, turnover, change in leadership
• The degree to which RPPs exist in highly politicized environments
• The mechanisms by which RPPs foster the full range of intended and unintended outcomes

Research Agenda for RPPs

• Outcomes - the consequences, judge the early progress, individual and organizational change, research use ,spread and scale of innovation and attend to unintended or negative outcomes
• Comparative Studies - how RPPs of different designs interact with their contexts to impact various outcomes of interest
• Targeted Studies of Strategies - how tools, strategies, and routines used by participants address the challenges, to understand the relative efficacy of different approaches
• Political Dimensions of Partnerships - strategies for navigating the politics such that partnerships can continue to help practitioners address their critical needs