Tensions in a multi-tiered research-practice partnership

Abstract

Bridging the research-practice gap remains an important focus of much learning research. An important challenge is for researchers to organize design to leverage both the expertise of practitioners and that of researchers in an equitable arrangement. This study examines such an arrangement by analyzing the joint work of a design-based research-practice partnership. It focuses on the design tensions (Tatar, 2007) associated with coordinating the needs of participants from three different tiers of design-involving teachers, researchers, and district administrators-related to the content of designs and to the mechanisms for bringing content to scale within the district. This study argues for the value of a common vision and design methodology to enable design tensions at multiple levels to become generative influences on design.