At Research-Practice Partnership Edges: Expanding Boundaries, Co-Creating Knowledge, and Supporting Racial Equity Joint Work

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 3:45 pm - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: From Collaboration to Transformation: Evolving Research-Practice Partnerships in Education

Abstract

This study examines how a racial equity-centered research-practice partnership (RPP) intentionally navigated racialized boundaries to co-construct knowledge and work toward systemic change. Through participatory design research between a Black women-led community organization and a White community-engaged researcher, we explore boundary practices, objects, and productive dissonance as mechanisms for epistemic stretching and anti-racist learning. Findings illustrate how naming harm, resisting equity essentialism, and balancing racial affinity with multiracial collaboration can enable deeper transformation. We argue that RPPs can serve as spaces of relational repair and justice-centered knowledge production when grounded in racialized histories and designed for collaborative, critical inquiry. This work advances a vision of education research as reparative and future-oriented, aligning with the theme of “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures.”

Authors

• Lindsey J. Kaiser, University of Maine

• David Goldenkranz, Technology Access Foundation

• Amrita Kauldher, Technology Access Foundation

• Heather Lechner, Hayward Unified School District

• Patricia Woods, Technology Access Foundation