Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) provide opportunities for researchers to support school districts in addressing the complex challenges they face. Cynthia E. Coburn, William R. Penuel, and Caitlin C. Farrell situate RPPs in the history of educational research and discuss the needs they were designed to address. They then describe what contemporary RPPs are and what they do and close by discussing ways that RPPs can contribute to educational improvement and transformation.
Arce-TrigattiP.ChukhrayI.Lopez-TurleyR. (2018). Research-practice partnerships in education. In SchneiderB. (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology in education in the 21st century (pp. 561–580). Springer.
2.
BoothJ.L.CooperL.A.DonovanM.S.HuygheA.KoedingerK.R.Paré-BlagoevE.J. (2015). Design-based research within the constraints of practice: Algebra by example. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 20, (1/2), 79–100.
3.
BrownS.AllenA. (2021). The interpersonal side of research-practice partnerships. Phi Delta Kappan, 102 (7), 20–25.
4.
BurkhardtH.SchoenfeldA.H. (2003). Improving educational research: Toward a more useful, more influential, and better-funded enterprise. Educational Researcher, 32 (9), 3–14.
5.
CobbP.JacksonK. (2012). Analyzing educational policies: A learning design perspective. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 21 (4), 487–521.
6.
CoburnC.E.PenuelW.R. (2016). Research-practice partnerships: Outcomes, dynamics, and open questions. Educational Researcher, 45 (1), 48–54.
7.
CoburnC.E.PenuelW.R.GeilK. (2013). Research-practice partnerships at the district level: A new strategy for leveraging research for educational improvement. William T. Grant Foundation.
8.
CoburnC.E.SteinM.K. (Eds.). (2010). Research and practice in education: Building alliances, bridging the divide. Rowman & Littlefield.
9.
CorcoranT.B.FuhrmanS.BelcherC.L. (2001). The district role in instructional improvement. Phi Delta Kappan, 83 (1), 78–84.
10.
CousinsJ.B.SimonM. (1996). The nature and impact of policy-induced partnerships between research and practice communities. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 18 (3), 199–218.
11.
FarrellC.C.CoburnC.E.ChongS. (2019). Under what conditions do school districts learn from external partners? The role of absorptive capacity. American Educational Research Journal, 56 (3), 955–994.
12.
FarrellC.C.HarrisonC.CoburnC.E. (2019, April). “What the hell is this, and who the hell are you?” Role and identity negotiation in research-practice partnerships.” AERA Open.
GlazerJ.L.PeurachD.J. (2013). School improvement networks as a strategy for large-scale education reform: The role of educational environments. Educational Policy, 27 (4), 676–710.
15.
IshimaruA.M.RajendranA.NolanC.M.BangM. (2018). Community design circles: Co-designing justice and wellbeing in family-community-research partnerships. Journal of Family Diversity in Education, 3 (2), 38–63.
16.
KaestleC.F. (1993). Research news and comment: The awful reputation of education research. Educational Researcher, 22 (1), 23–31.
17.
KellyA.E. (2004). Design research in education: Yes, but is it methodological?Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13 (1), 113–128.
18.
LagemannE.C. (1997). Contested terrain: A history of education research in the United States, 1890-1990. Educational Researcher, 26 (9), 5–17.
19.
PenuelW.R. (2019). Infrastructuring as a practice of design-based research for supporting and studying equitable implementation and sustainability of innovations. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 28 (4-5), 659–677.
20.
PenuelW.R.FishmanB.J.ChengB.H.SabelliN. (2011). Organizing research and development at the intersection of learning, implementation, and design. Educational Researcher, 40 (7), 331–337.
21.
PenuelW.R.GallagherD. (2017). Creating research-practice partnerships in education. Harvard Education Press.
22.
PhillipsE.K. (2019). The make-or-break year: Solving the dropout crisis one ninth grader at a time. The New Press.
23.
TsengV.CoburnC.E. (2019). Using evidence in the U.S. In BoazA.DaviesH.FraserA.NutleyS. (Eds.), What works now: Evidence informed policy and practice (pp. 351–368). Policy Press.
24.
TuckE.YangK.W. (2014). R-words: Refusing research. In ParisD.WinnM.T. (Eds.), Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223–247). SAGE.
25.
VakilS.McKinney de RoystonM.NasirN.S.KirshnerB. (2016). Rethinking race and power in design-based research: Reflections from the field. Cognition and Instruction, 34 (3), 194–209.