I applaud this intentional convergence between research and practice! Indeed, far too often, the wisdom of practice from educators is forgone in light of what social science researchers espouse from “on-high,” and while potentially meaningful, without the input from teachers, the research may fail to make any meaningful impact on those it is intended to serve! I appreciate this video and project shifting the effort from a doctor-patient relationship, where interventions/treatments are administered on a patient to a more collegial model that has like-minded colleagues working together on solving meaningful challenges and generated co-developed solutions to improve locally germane problems!

 

I do have a couple questions that arose after reading the synopsis and viewing the video:

 

--As you develop protocols and processes for forging meaningful partnerships that endure in the complex and dynamic environment of k12 education, do they translate across what appears at the outset to be three very different learning environments: a) urban science, b) rural mathematics, and c) informal engineering/maker spaces after school?

 

--As you develop an evidence base for efficacy of these research-practice partnerships might you share an example or two of a particular piece of evidence that produces relevant, usable and sustainable results?

 

--Might you share or highlight one or two of what you feel are your most successful tools--and why you feel they are so? Do these tools translate across the three varied collaborator contexts posed in question one? I’m not assuming these tools need to be “transferable” across these three different educational/learning contexts, and welcome you highlighting one for each ed environment (urban, rural, informal), if better informing our audience reviewing this project online for their own unique needs/context!

 

--Engaging researchers in collaboration with educators I suspect is extremely powerful! I’m reminded of the principle of reciprocity from Richard Elmore in his book by Harvard Education Press, titled School Reform from the Inside Out: Policy, Practice and Performance (2004), where he posited that we can ask what we may of our educators, but we should not do so with reciprocating and engaging/empowering teachers to be successful in what we are asking from them! We should provide support, professional learning, and external expertise if beyond their existing capabilities, working side-by-side with them on improving the learning environment. This said, sometimes the dialog from researchers is so easily misperceived from educators, or accidentally stifled given “the Ph.D.” is in the room, even if this is not the intent of the researcher working within a school. How do you break these barriers down as your efforts goes to scale hopefully beyond the life of the NSF grant, ensuring consistency with your “team” or those representing your “collaboratory”?

Thank you for sharing this innovative project. I do work with rural communities and after-school programs and I am very interested to learn if you already have some findings, best practices or tools to share to support both researchers and educators in working together on increasing participation in STEM in your distinct populations. What would be the most important advice you have for someone implementing an educational research project in rural communities as an after-school program? And/or can you point me to some of your tools? 

Thanks for this overview of the R+P Collaboratory, and for emphasizing the importance of developing more equitable relationships between researchers and educators in order to investigate questions of import to the world practice and not just the world of academia.

Can you tell us more about some of the ways that partnerships are established and maintained? For example, in your work, how did researchers and educators initially connect with each other? What kinds of front end work is needed to develop both the interpersonal relationships and the shared commitment to a research/development agenda that will address key issues of practice?

Anne and Al also raise the question of tools, which you note are available on the R+P website: http://researchandpractice.org/resources/

I, too, would be interested in hearing about whether you have information regarding the (kinds of) tools that are particularly useful for supporting productive partnerships. I'm also curious about whether students sometimes serve partnership roles, and what your work might be revealing about the nature of partnerships themselves. 

 

Hello Al, Anne, and Lynn,

 

Thanks for these comments and questions!  We have co-developed, and tested within our RPPs, a set of tools for maintaining partnerships, which can be found here: http://researchandpractice.org/toolkit.

We have also begun to parse out the different points of entry for people interested in RPPs, which sometimes involve different tools to even begin conversations about forming a partnership, which can be found here:  http://researchandpractice.org/gettingstarted.

We have years of detailed accounts of the partnerships, describing the processes, emerging outcomes, etc. Which can be found here: http://researchandpractice.org/latest, and we are in the process (this year) of starting to synthesize results across the RPPs to get at common (and divergent) issues, dimensions, and challenges across the different contexts.  When we began this project, using design-based research approaches, we developed a set of design conjectures that have been guiding our work.  These include conjectures about the conditions in which RPPs are effective, key strategies for developing them, and outcomes.  Along the way we have been collecting data related to these conjectures so that we can do the synthesis work.  I will ask some of my other colleagues to respond with additional insights, including specifics about rural contexts.

Bronwyn Bevan

 

 

This is such a fabulous effort, Bronwyn and team!
We at SRI have recently started working with some districts around their implementation and expansion of CS education. Each year we work with them to identify what data and research they need our help with in order to inform scale-up - district supports, teacher preparation, and student attitudes/learning being among the key issues. I would love to learn more from your toolkit in order to keep the equity focus front and center (which is hugely important for the districts in CSForAll)..
Thanks for your good work!

Hi, Ann and readers,

 I am glad to see the Research and Practice Collaboratory's video here as a video presentation! Their STEM tool kit is mentioned and I've found it a great assisting element for teachers to identify with and explore from this site based materials-

http://stemteachingtools.org/tools

What a great project that is producing useful tools and resources! Do you have a sense of how many folks are using them? (e.g, are you tracking access to / downloads from your site?)

Bronwyn, 

  Thank you for the additional links. I especially found the reinforcement of toolkit materials by your project critically important. Enjoyed the language level as well as the emotional needs between groups..." Celebrate successes. Socialize, socialize, socialize. Proactively manage uncertainties, anxieties, and conflicts that arise."  (from Operating Principles for Building Sustainable Partnerships.)  We often need to be given permission by someone to ensure that the communication is as sustained as the activities.

Also giving processes that I've found successful new, more defining labels like "Value Mapping" is extremely helpful out in the field!   What is next for your toolkit series?   Would love to see someone study how the sharing of data can build long term collaborations!  

 

Bronwyn,

 Thank you for considering the view of the STEM project manager’s task.  We both follow learned processes for summarizing a project and encourage extensions to “scale up” to address identified needs. Using the technology that we are building into the project for more research options can be ahead of where the actual projects are in their process of STEM development.   Easily missed in summarizing expectations are the elements that are indicators of change that  may only be notice later as we review with 20/20 hindsight.  Great to have this opportunity to discuss your work and progress