Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: Advancing an Evolutionary Logic of Systems Improvement

Abstract

Over the past several decades, scholars have proposed a number of innovative approaches to bridging the research-practice divide. A relatively new approach involves the formation of research-practice partnerships (RPPs), long-term collaborations aimed at educational improvement and transformation through engagement with research, intentionally organized to connect diverse forms of expertise and to ensure that all partners have a say in the joint work. Th is paper develops the idea that RPPs have the potential to create sustainable change, if they are able to support the mutual learning of partners to change practice while continuously adapting to turbulent environments of schools. As an illustration, the paper describes the evolution of an RPP in Colorado (U.S.A.) from a relatively small group of people representing a university and school district focused on a single line of research to an ongoing enterprise linking multiple researchers and educators to multiple lines of work to transform science teaching and learning in the district.