Researcher–Practitioner Collaboration in Educational Design Research: Processes, Roles, Values, and Expectations

Extending the applicability of design-based research through research-practice partnerships

“…Therefore, we extended the context for which it was developed in Phase I, and explored the way it was implemented in a very different context -school. To do so, we established in Phase II a RPP (Coburn & Penuel, 2016;McKenney, 2016) with Kadima Mada -World ORT, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that specializes in the implementation of educational innovation within school-contexts. This led to the formation of three practitioner-teams from three different schools who volunteered to be involved in co-design and enactment of technology-enhanced interdisciplinary learning environments, based on the BBIL model.…”

“…RPPs are defined as long-term collaborations between practitioners and researchers that aim at investigating issues of practice in various contexts (Coburn & Penuel, 2016;McKenney, 2016). Rather than addressing gaps in existing theory, such partnerships are motivated by key dilemmas and challenges that practitioners face.…”

“…Even before the term RPP was coined, studies have explored the nature of partnerships between researchers and practitioners and the mechanisms to support them in educational research (e.g., Wagner, 1997). Recently, such studies have begun to take place in the context of DBR (Ormel et al, 2012;Mckenney, 2016). These studies delineated common processes, values and roles in design research partnerships, led by either practitioners or researchers.…”

“…By definition, RPPs involve different perspectives, expertise, and motivations that lead to various forms of engagement of the various participants. These are reflected in the types of issues facing the RPP (e.g., defining key processes of the RPP, common roles, agreeing on core values that serve the mission, and setting up common expectations) throughout the different phases of the work: analysis and exploration, design and construction, evaluation and reflection (McKenney, 2016).…”

“…For the purpose of the current introduction, it is important to note that recently, a new line of research has emerged that has the potential to foster the development of PPK in DBR studies. It focuses on Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs) (Kali, Eylon, McKenney & Kidron, forthcoming;Coburn & Penuel, 2016;McKenney, 2016) that can be established as part of DBR, and has been termed Design Based Implementation Research (DBIR) to highlight the collaboration with practitioners (Fishman, Penuel, Allen, Haugan Cheng, & Sabelli, 2013). Tabak, Nasser and Asher (2015) have suggested that RPPs in such research endeavors can raise the different concerns that are necessary for the production of PPK.…”