Introduction to Research-Practice Partnerships

This course is an introduction to education research-practice partnerships (RPPs). It examines the distinctive characteristics of education research-practice partnerships, how they differ from other efforts to improve education, and the types of questions that have been explored by RPPs. We will discuss different types of RPPs including design based implementation research, networked improvement communities, community-engaged research, design-based implementation research (DBIR), and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). We will pay extra attention to the theories and methodologies used in DBIR, and to projects that DBIR scholars have conducted, as exemplars of RPP work.