BUILDING RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS

University of Colorado Boulder

Starting and maintaining collaboration among educators and researchers involves not only identifying prospective partners for joint work, but also collectively identifying the focus of that work (i.e., a problem of practice of mutual concern), the aims or desired outcomes, the roles of participants, the process through which the team will work together, a means to kick off collaborative problem-solving, and so forth. Partnerships typically involve a series of negotiations and renegotiations as work proceeds.

The team at the University of Colorado-Boulder School of Education aims to support the development of research-practice partnerships (RPPs) among networks of researchers, educators, and educational leaders, while in turn learning from the challenges faced by both newly developing and mature RPPs.

Want to learn more about building, supporting, and sustaining RPPs? Join every third Thursday of the month, as CU-Boulder’s Bill Penuel hosts the Research-Practice Partnerships Forum, a monthly webinar series created by the Research + Practice Collaboratory to discuss challenges, successes, and strategies for doing collaborative work in education. Each month, Bill leads a conversation with a panel of researchers and educators involved in research-practice partnerships (RPPs) across the country to share their experiences and resources for new and ongoing collaborations.

Researchers at all stages of their careers and members of several professional associations in STEM education (such as NCTM, NSTA, and CSSS) have formed RPPs that meet on a regular basis to engage in continuous improvement with regard to identified problems of practice, as well as to address challenges of working collaboratively in RPPs. Together with these RPPs, the CU-Boulder team is developing tools and routines designed to address common issues that can be shared across partnerships.The CU-Boulder team brings a

The CU-Boulder team brings a Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) approach to its work with RPPs, and grounds the wide range of work of the R+P Collaboratory in the principles of DBIR: (1) Deciding on a focus for joint work; (2) Organizing a design process; (3) Doing research in DBIR; and (4) Developing capacity for continuous improvement in DBIR. These principles aim for researchers, educators and educational leaders to collaboratively design strategies that address complex problems of practice in a way that is sustainable and equitable.

To find out more about DBIR and how it might be useful in your own work, visit learndbir.org.