Democratizing Inquiry in Improvement Science

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session Seven
  In Roundtable Session: Toward a Critical, Social Justice–Focused Improvement Science (Table 3)

Abstract

National school improvement efforts, mired in top-down strategies, fail to deliver on the promise of equitable learning opportunities and outcomes for the increasing number of culturally diverse and language-minoritized students. Improvement science and networked improvement communities (NIC) have emerged as powerful strategies to redress systemic educational inequalities and injustice. When applied in the absence of sociopolitical consciousness, these approaches can result in the reproduction and exacerbation of inequality (Safir & Dugan, 2021). Thus, while improvement science is promising, its implementation runs the risk of positioning partners, practitioners, and ‘users’ as the objects, subjects, and agents of change (Cohen & Ball, 1990). The paper presents an examination of researcher-practitioner relationships in the context of improvement efforts and problematizes the concept of democratizing inquiry in engaged scholarship and practice. I draw on the work of a multi-year research-practice partnership (RPP) improvement effort in a K-12 school. I present an analysis of researcher-practitioner relationship in the context of iterative participatory design work (Vakil et al., 2016) and offer examples of democratizing inquiry.
Improvement science relies on working closely with frontline members in the design and iteration of educational innovation (Bryk et al., 2015). A core principal of improvement is ‘user-centeredness’ where the voices and experiences of those whose perspectives are traditionally absent from problem definition and problem solving activities are actively sought and included. This is also central to working within a participatory design research (PDR) framework where collaborations reveal important conceptions of whose knowledge is valued (Schuler & Namioka, 1993), who is essential to collaborative design activities, and who stands to learn from the collaboration [careful process of shared inquiry and reflection] (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2014; Gutiérrez & Penuel, 2014; Teeters, Jurow, & Shea, 2016). PDR “reflects a commitment to issues of culture, race, power, and equity” (Bang & Vossoughi, 2014, p. 416) and is an approach that attempts to eliminate researcher-researched hierarchies.
I draw on data collected in the context of a multi-year collaborative design partnership, examining the development of relationships over the first two years of the partnership. Data sources included field notes (department meetings, planning meetings, classroom observations), teacher interview transcripts, team planning notes, planning artifacts, and email correspondence. I focused my analysis on the identification of examples that revealed historicized conceptions of traditional researcher-researched relationships and examples that revealed points of departure from such conceptions, signaling opportunity for democratizing inquiry.
Findings suggest that improvement science tools anchor democratizing inquiry opportunities, contributing to increased confidence in partners’ participation, decision-making, and advocacy. Shifts revealed historicized views where partners felt more like the researched than collaborators at the onset. Through continued engagement in joint work, partners constantly reimagined collaborative arrangements and negotiated tensions in competing goals and aims within the partnership. This work aims to contribute expanded notions of PDR work that problematize the democratization in inquiry and research (Gutiérrez, Engeström, & Sannino, 2016). An explicit focus on the development and sustenance of relationships can yield powerful examples of undertaking design work in the service of impacting real-world learning and democratizing inquiry in improvement science efforts.

Author

• Maritza Lozano, California State University - Fullerton
  Presenting Author