Developing Sustainable Relationships Between Teachers and Graduate Students in Research-Practitioner Partnerships

• In Event: Advancing Research-Practice Partnerships: Leveraging the Positionality of Graduate Student Researchers

Abstract

Purpose:

Penuel (2017) argued that one reason education, specifically science education, has failed many marginalized students is the lack of sustained partnerships between researchers and educators. He states that these partnerships “present opportunities for collective efforts that challenge historically shaped inequities that many engaged in everyday science seek to address.” While it may be a common-sense perspective that educators and researchers need reciprocal and trusting work relationships, as graduate students, we have found these crucial aspects of research to be opaque. Far too often, there can be blurred lines in power relations, and the negotiation of goals and responsibilities, which can diminish the potential of successful RPP outcomes for students, teachers and researchers.

Theoretical Framework:

In describing educational efforts to reimagine community, Garcia and Philips (2018) stress that we cannot assume shared values and identities within schools, but instead we need to work to make them visible and coherent. Therefore, we believe it is essential to investigate these problems of practice to provide a framework to develop sustainable, transparent and reciprocal partnerships to improve RPP outcomes.

Methods and Data Sources:

Drawing from the experiences of two graduate students at a university-affiliated community school, this work seeks to map a template for establishing and maintaining a successful partnership. Our partnership involved one-on-one co-planning of instructional units to support a community-based science pedagogy. Inspired by questions of with whom in teaching and learning, we argue that a focus on relationality is central to success (Philip, Bang, & Jackson, 2018). While relationality has become an important topic in considering interventionist methodologies (Gutierrez, Engestrom, & Sannino, 2016), we hope to be part of the conversation to conceptualize relationality in the context of RPPs.

This work seeks to explore 1) What are possible steps to make relationality visible in establishing and maintaining a RPP? and 2) What routines can graduate students put in place to best support sustainable relationships with educators and school partners? Drawing on data from interviews, meeting agendas and meeting notes from our collaborations, we share strategies that we perceived as essential components to success.

Findings:

We propose three essential elements to establishing a RPP relationship: iteratively develop a problem of practice, ongoing negotiation of individual roles in the RPP and within the classroom, and consistent, in-person support in the design and implementation of materials. For example, researchers were present throughout classroom unit implementation to support teacher pedagogy and student learning. We then propose two essential elements for maintaining a RPP relationship: use established resources to structure collaboration, and use a plan-design-implement-debrief routine to consistently surface interpersonal dynamics that can be celebrated or modified. For example, we used a university-established lesson planning template to anchor our collaboration in a resource that teachers were incentivized to use, and spent time.

Significance:

We believe that in following these steps, our RPP work developed a productive, trusting and reciprocal relationship with teachers that supported better student educational experiences. It is our hope that this research will stimulate inquiry and potentially inspire blueprints sustainable partnerships.

Authors

• Symone Gyles, University of California - Los Angeles

• Heather F. Clark, University of California - Los Angeles