Partnering for Improvement: Improvement Communities and Their Role in Scale Up

Cannata, Marisa; Cohen‐Vogel, Lora; Sorum, Michael

doi:10.1080/0161956x.2017.1368633

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In some RPPs, practitioners are asked to contribute expertise at all stages of the work (Donovan et al, 2013), including as coinvestigators and researchers (Severance, Penuel, Sumner, & Leary, 2016). Sometimes, the lines defining “researcher” and “practitioner” are blurred, as partners adopt counternormative roles in unfamiliar tasks, like in continuous improvement efforts (Cannata, Cohen-Vogel, & Sorum, 2017; Cohen-Vogel et al, 2015; Tichnor-Wagner, Wachen, Cannata, & Cohen-Vogel, 2017).…”

Section: The Need To Focus On Role Negotiation In Rppsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most research on role negotiation comes from reflective pieces written by participants within RPPs. These pieces tend to highlight tensions that can arise when researchers and practitioners step into new, different, or counternormative roles (Cannata et al, 2017; Rosenquist, Henrick, & Smith, 2015; Tichnor-Wagner et al, 2017). For example, as researchers become involved in development and implementation, they may struggle with how their involvement conflicts with ideas of researchers as “objective” and “independent” (Penuel, Allen, & Ryoo, 2018).…”

Section: The Need To Focus On Role Negotiation In Rppsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

“What the Hell Is This, and Who the Hell Are You?” Role and Identity Negotiation in Research-Practice Partnerships

Farrell

Harrison

Coburn³

2019

AERA Open

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In research-practice partnerships (RPPs), the line between researcher and practitioner can be blurred, and the roles for everyone involved may be unclear. Yet little is known about how these roles are negotiated and with what consequences for collaborative efforts. Guided by organizational theory, we share findings from a multiyear case study of one RPP, drawing on observations of partnership leadership meetings and interviews with school district leaders and partners. Role negotiation occurred in more than one third of leadership meetings, as evidenced by identity-referencing discourse. When roles were unclear, collaborative efforts stalled; once partners renegotiated their roles, it changed how they engaged in the work together. Several forces contributed to these dynamics, including the partner’s ambitious yet ambiguous identity and the introduction of new members to the group. This study offers implications for those engaged in partnership work and provides a foundation for future research regarding role negotiation in RPPs.

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Section: The Need To Focus On Role Negotiation In Rppsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Need To Focus On Role Negotiation In Rppsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“What the Hell Is This, and Who the Hell Are You?” Role and Identity Negotiation in Research-Practice Partnerships

Farrell

Harrison

Coburn³

2019

AERA Open

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“…Given the tacit and relational dimensions of change, building a shared driver diagram or coordinated approach to improvement does not necessarily ensure that teachers and those actually implementing the reforms are fully on board with the change. Indeed, a persistent difficulty across NICs and NCSUs is for educators to connect their school-level improvement work with the broader aims of the network (Cannata et al; 2017; Martin & Gobstein, 2015; Tichnor-Wagner et al, 2017). Understanding that these maps will be used in politicized contexts with multiple, competing interest groups, we also wonder if they privilege what is legible, politically safe, and representative of dominant interests.…”

Section: Political Fragmentation: High Demand Turbulence and Incohementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Copland (2003) found that teachers facing external pressure for improvement who had limited time to engage in inquiry would often jump to solutions before understanding the problems they were trying to solve. As a result of these challenges, many studies have pointed to the important role of school-based leadership and advocacy in supporting this work (e.g., Copland, 2003;Hannan et al, 2015;Perry & Lewis, 2009), which in turn can be cultivated by having district leaders directly engaging in these methods as well (Cannata et al, 2017;Lockwood et al, 2017;Rigby et al, 2018;Roegman et al, 2015).…”

Section: Political Fragmentation: High Demand Turbulence and Incohementioning

confidence: 99%

Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change

Yurkofsky¹,

Peterson²,

Mehta³

et al. 2020

Review of Research in Education

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As a result of the frustration with the dominant “What Works” paradigm of large-scale research-based improvement, practitioners, researchers, foundations, and policymakers are increasingly embracing a set of ideas and practices that can be collectively labeled continuous improvement (CI) methods. This chapter provides a comparative review of these methods, paying particular attention to CI methods’ intellectual influences, theories of action, and affordances and challenges in practice. We first map out and explore the shared intellectual forebears that CI methods draw on. We then discuss three kinds of complexity to which CI methods explicitly attend—ambiguity, variability, and interdependence—and how CI methods seek a balance of local and formal knowledge in response to this complexity. We go on to argue that CI methods are generally less attentive to the relational and political dimensions of educational change and that this leads to challenges in practice. We conclude by considering CI methods’ aspirations for impact at scale, and offer a number of recommendations to inform future research and practice.

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“…While bearing many potential benefits, RPPs also pose numerous challenges (Coburn et al, 2013). Researchers and practitioners often use different language to discuss problems, and their expectations, interests, goals, and incentives related to these problems do not always align (Cannata et al, 2017;Cohen-Vogel et al, 2015;Firestone & Fisler, 2002;Goldring & Sims, 2005;McKenney & Pareja Roblin, 2018). Practitioners often perceive researchers as distanced, irrelevant, or judgmental, and hesitate to share their problems with them.…”

Section: Research-practice Partnershipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dilemmas of Leadership and Capacity Building in a Research–Practice Partnership

Vedder‐Weiss

Lefstein

Segal

et al. 2020

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background Research–practice partnerships (RPPs) are proliferating in education, generating increasing interest and posing many challenges. In this study, we shed light on the challenge of supporting practitioners> leadership and building capacity in an RPP. In the RPP literature, practitioner leadership is often highlighted as both a way to improve design development and enactment and as imperative for capacity building and sustainability. However, cultivating leadership also creates challenges which have not yet been adequately explored. Purpose We explore these challenges and related dilemmas in a large-scale Israeli RPP designed to cultivate teacher leadership and build district capacity. We investigate how local actors asserted their leadership, the resources they drew upon, and the dilemmas this posed for us as researchers in an RPP. We critically reflect on how we addressed these dilemmas, and the consequences and implications of our courses of action. Setting This study explores our partnership with two large Israeli districts, as part of a state-wide professional development reform supported by the Ministry of Education and a philanthropic foundation. The partnership aims to support teachers> collaborative, reflective inquiry on teaching and learning, in weekly in-school meetings facilitated by in-school leading teacher. The partnership began six years ago and currently includes 158 schools (458 leading teachers). Research Design We use linguistic ethnographic methods to analyze leadership assertion in three focal cases, representing three different leadership roles, at different levels of the system: (1) a leading teacher demonstrating creative non-compliance in the team meetings she facilitated, (2) a coach exercising her voice and authority in her professional development workshops, (3) and a district manager independently shaping structures. Data Collection Data were collected during the first three years of the RPP, including (participant) observations, audio-recordings, and field notes of in-school meetings, professional development workshops, interviews, and informal conversations. Findings and Conclusions The analysis shows that leadership assertion played an important role in constructing actors’ identities as competent leaders but posed dilemmas for us, such as how to acknowledge leaders> expertise while also maintaining program integrity. The case studies underscore the difficulties involved in managing a partnership in a large-scale educational intervention and the challenges to maintaining productive dialogue with different partners. The paper advances our understanding of the complexities involved in supporting leadership at different levels of the system, in day-to-day interaction, and at multiple micro and macro contexts in which it unfolds, in particular in a large-scale RPP.

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Partnering for Improvement: Improvement Communities and Their Role in Scale Up

Cited by 23 publications

References 25 publications

“What the Hell Is This, and Who the Hell Are You?” Role and Identity Negotiation in Research-Practice Partnerships

“What the Hell Is This, and Who the Hell Are You?” Role and Identity Negotiation in Research-Practice Partnerships

Research on Continuous Improvement: Exploring the Complexities of Managing Educational Change

Dilemmas of Leadership and Capacity Building in a Research–Practice Partnership

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