Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: "Outcomes, Dynamics, and Open Questions." Conference Paper.

Policy makers, funders, and researchers today view research-practice partnerships (RPPs) as a promising approach for expanding the role of research in improving educational practice. Although studies in other fields provide evidence of the potential for RPPs, studies in education are few. This article provides a review of available evidence of the outcomes and dynamics of RPPs in education and related fields. It then outlines a research agenda for the study of RPPs that can guide funders’ investments and help developing partnerships succeed. RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS 1 Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: Dynamics, Outcomes, and Open Questions There is currently more talk than ever about the role research should play in improving educational practice. Three major task force reports have investigated the relationship between research and practice, calling for changes in business as usual (Donovan et al., 2003; National Academy of Education, 1999; National Research Council, 2012). Policymakers, funders, and researchers are creating new mechanisms to ensure that research plays a stronger role in educational improvement, developing new resources for practitioners to increase access to research findings, introducing new funding streams that encourage researchers to focus on problems of practice, and pioneering new ways for researchers and pracititoners to work together. As part of this trend, there is a growing interest in research-practice partnerships (RPPs). 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). Advocates argue that RPPs can enable greater use of research in decision making (Tseng, 2012), address persistent problems of practice, and improve educational outcomes (Donovan, 2013; Fishman, Penuel, Allen, & Cheng, 2013). Perhaps because of the perceived success of high profile RPPs such as the University of Chicago Consortium for Chicago School Research (CCSR), the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), the Carnegie Foundation’s Networked Improvement Communities, and others, funders are beginning to invest resources to support the development of new RPPs. The most prominent entrant into this arena is the Institute for Education Sciences (IES). In the last five years, IES has developed new RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS 2 initiatives to fund the development of RPPs, support projects that foster cycles of continuous improvement in districts, and reconfigure the Regional Education Laboratories with some qualities of RPPs. 1 IES is not alone. Some universities and a myriad of local and national funders are also providing funding to support this new strategy. For example, in 2015, the Spencer Foundation ran its first competition to support established RPPs. 2 But, what do we know about the degree to which RPPs foster research use and support educational improvement? How do researchers and practitioners actually work with one another in these projects? How does the design of partnership or particular strategies they use matter for the process and outcomes of RPPs? What are potential negative or unintended consequences of doing research in the context of RPPs—for the district, the researchers involved, or the field as a whole? In this article, we review empirical research on RPPs in education and other fields. We argue that while there is evidence of success of the interventions developed within RPPs in other fields, research on the impact of RPPs in education is sparse and focused on a narrow range of outcomes. We also argue that the research on the dynamics of partnership—how RPPs actually work and the mechanisms by which they foster educational improvement—tends to focus on the challenges, providing little insight into how partnership designs and strategies used by participants can address these challenges. We argue that building a body of research on these questions is crucial given the current investment of scarce resources in this approach and the potential for assisting newlyfunded partnerships. We close by framing a research agenda for investigating RPPs as a strategy for improving US public schools. RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS 3 What are Research-Practice Partnerships? The term “partnership” is used widely in US education to refer to a broad range of arrangements between researchers and practitioners: consulting agreements, use of schools or districts as places to test university-developed innovations, sites for teacher training and internships. RPPs are a very specific form of partnership. They are long term. Rather than being focused on a single study, researchers and system leaders share an open-ended commitment to build and sustain a working collaboration over multiple projects. Rather than developing studies that address gaps in existing theory or research, they focus on problems of practice: key dilemmas and challenges that practitioners face. They are mutualistic: the focus of the work is jointly negotiated and there is shared authority. RPPs employ intentional strategies to foster partnerships, with carefully designed rules, roles, routines, and protocols that structure interaction. Finally, they involve original analysis of data; participants collect their own and sometimes use sophisticated analytic techniques to answer districts’ questions using administrative data (Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013). RPPs can involve different types of partners and focus on a wide variety of problems of practice. Some RPPs form between researchers and leaders in a single district; others form among researchers, schools, and other youth-serving agencies in a region. Still others comprise networks of geographically distributed institutions, such as community colleges or school districts. RPPs can focus on doing independent analyses of district policies and their implementation, providing findings to educational decision makers, and working with them to develop solutions (e.g., Research Alliance for New York City Schools). They can involve researchers and practitioners co-designing and RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS 4 testing solutions for improving teaching and learning or orchestrating system-wide change (e.g., Middle-school Mathematics and the Institutional Setting of Teaching; Cobb & Smith, 2008). They can also involve systematic methods for fostering continuous improvement research among networks of schools, districts, or other institutions (e.g., Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015). Some focus on in-school and out-of-school spaces and the connections between them (e.g., The John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities), while others focus on issues of policy and practice within public schools. Some involve university researchers (e.g., Stanford University/San Francisco Unified School District Partnership), while others involve researchers in intermediary organizations (SERP; Donovan, 2013). 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, what do we know about when and under what conditions RPPs make a difference in schools and school districts? What Do We Know about the Outcomes of Research-Practice Partnerships? Most research on the outcomes of RPPs in education and other fields has focused on the impact of interventions developed in the context of a partnership. Thus, they do not investigate the impact of the partnership itself or other outcomes of RPPs. Studies of interventions developed in the context of partnerships have shown overwhelmingly positive outcomes. Many studies come from outside of education, from fields as diverse as public health, mental health, and criminology. However, the research is relevant for education because the partnerships have similar features to those in education: they are long-term, mutualistic, and focused on collaboratively-defined RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS 5 problems of practice (King et al., 2010; Metzler et al., 2003). In addition, these fields involve professionals whose work, like teachers, focuses on changing people’s thinking and behavior. In public health, RPPs can involve multiple organizations that serve community members working alongside researchers to develop and test interventions collaboratively (e.g., Bullock, Morris, & Atwell, 2011; Israel, Schulz, Parker, & Becker, 1998; Wallerstein & Duran, 2010). For example, in the Communities That Care (CTC) model, researchers work with multi-agency collaboratives to assess needs and then select and implement evidence-based programs in primary prevention for adolescents to meet those needs. The model aims to build a culture of evidence-based decision making and commitment to primary prevention across a community. Researchers tested whether the CTC model can help build such a culture and produce positive impacts on youth development outcomes in a large-scale, crosscommunity randomized controlled trial. They found that when compared to control communities, leaders in communities that formed partnerships with researchers to implement CTC were more likely to devote resources to primary prevention than in comparison communities (Brown, Hawkins, Arthur, Briney, & Fagan, 2011). They also found positive impacts on youth in CTC, documenting lower levels of alcohol and cigarette use and fewer delinquent behaviors compared to youth in control communities (Hawkins et al., 2008; Hawkins et al., 2009). In the field of mental health, one RPP comprised of social service providers, parents, and researchers developed and tested interventions that targeted behavior of elementary-school aged youth (Garland, Plemmons, & Koontz, 2006; Horsfall, Cleary, & RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS 6 Hunt, 2011; Kazak et al., 2010). Researc