Research‐Practice Partnerships: Building Two‐Way Streets of Engagement

Abstract

P eople have long bemoaned the silos of research and practice. Researchers express frustration that practitioners do not use or misuse research. Practitioners respond that research is not relevant to their work, or is not easily accessible or understood. Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs) across the country are seeking to undo these patterns. Many partnerships involve agencies working in longterm collaboration with external researchers. Others are partnerships between research and program offi ces within government agencies. In this paper, we discuss how partnerships challenge researchers and practitioners to work together in new ways in order to improve education and human services, and ultimately to enhance child and youth outcomes.Discussion covers various types of partnerships, strategies and conditions for success, and exemplar models.Research-Practice Partnerships: Building Two-Way Streets of Engagment Over the past two decades, efforts to promote the use of research in practice have emphasized a one-way street approach: bringing research to practice (with a heavy focus on evidence-based programs). These efforts have fostered signifi cant advancements while also revealing limitations. The one-way-street approach has directed overwhelming attention to three strategies: 1) improving research rigor (i.e., by setting standards of evidence); 2) improving strategies to push out research (i.e., dissemination, scaling, communication, and marketing); and 3) increasing incentives and requirements for the adoption of evidence-based programs (Tseng, 2012). What the one-way street approach neglects is the need for practice concerns to drive research at the outset.The proliferation of research-practice partnerships (RPPs) represents a major shift in ideas about research production and use (Spencer Foundation, 2016). The focus in RPPs is on building two-way streets of engagement. It is not about bringing research to practice, but about sustaining a dynamic relationship between research and practice (Granger, Tseng, & Wilcox, 2014). Instead of focusing primarily on research-push strategies, RPPs seek to pull from practice so that key problems of practice shape research agendas. Such partnerships strive for mutual understanding and shared commitments from the outset as partners identify their joint research goals. They foster continued engagement as fi ndings emerge and are rendered into changes in programs, curriculum, or professional development. They integrate research and practice perspectives on mutually traveled two-way streets.

Designing educational systems to support enactment of the Next Generation Science Standards

“…It is in the context of partnerships and networks conducting DBIR that disparate bodies of knowledge relevant to problems of scale—about student and teacher learning, organizational change, and scale—come together (Russell, Jackson, Krumm, & Frank, ). In such partnerships, as illustrated above, there is a two‐way street between researchers and practitioners, such that researchers, teachers, and administrators play essential but complementary roles (Tseng, Easton, & Supplee, ). For example, grading rubrics developed by teachers provided a basis for improvements in the Three Questions and strategies for giving students credit for three‐dimensional learning.…”

Transforming evidence for policy and practice: creating space for new conversations

“…Researchers have explored strategies to increase evidence use (Dobbins et al, 2009;Haynes et al, 2012;Lavis et al, 2003), and developed structures to support knowledge production and use-in the UK, see, for example, the What Works Centres, Policy Research Units, Health Research Networks and so forth (Ferlie, 2019;Gough et al, 2018). Similar examples can be found in the US (Tseng et al, 2018;Nutley and Tseng, 2014) and the Netherlands (Wehrens et al, 2010). Alongside these practical tools, critical research has helped us to understand the importance of diverse evidence bases (e.g., Brett et al, 2014;Goodyear-Smith et al, 2015), of including patients and stakeholders in decision-making (Boaz et al, 2016;Liabo and Stewart, 2012), and to contextualise the drive for increased impact outcomes Locock and Boaz, 2004;Nutley et al, 2000).…”

“…Transforming evidence translation and mobilisation. Significant resources are put into increasing 'use' of evidence, through interventions (Boaz et al, 2011) or research partnerships (Farrell et al, 2019;Tseng et al, 2018). Yet 'use' is not a straightforward concept.…”

What sets the conditions for success in community‐partnered evaluation work? Multiple perspectives on a small‐scale research‐practice partnership evaluation

“…Research‐practice partnerships (RPPs) are “long‐term, mutualistic collaborations between practitioners and researchers that are intentionally organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving outcomes” (Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013) that follow the principles of a community‐based participatory research (CBPR) approach (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2003). RPPs have expanded considerably in recent years; many large‐scale models have been implemented and lessons learned distilled in the name of improving RPPs (Booker, Conaway, & Schwartz, 2019; Israel et al, 2006; Tseng, Easton, & Supplee, 2017). While examples and knowledge‐sharing from large‐scale RPPs are available, there has been less attention to the benefits and challenges of engaging in smaller scale RPPs.…”