Defending Educational Justice Through Critical Research-Practice-Policy Partnerships: Reflections from a Visioning Process

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Abstract

Objectives

Expertise and science are under attack. Our goal, however, should not be to resuscitate science in traditional hierarchical forms but to re-imagine its role in serving democratically-derived efforts. This paper describes what we call, “critical-research-practice-policy-partnerships,” our conceptual foundations, and the lessons we learned as we attempted to use research to support networks resisting right-wing extremism in education.

University-based researchers have lamented that research, policy, and practice often fail to inform one another (e.g., Dumas & Anderson, 2014; Scott, 2020; Tseng, 2012; Weiss, 1979). In contrast, elite policy networks have used research, often produced in think tanks far removed from the educators and communities affected by policies, to advance neoliberal education agendas (Reckhow, 2013; Tompkins-Stange, 2016; Trujillo, 2014). As an alternative, we suggest building Critical Research-Practice-Policy Partnerships, which draw on what we’ve learned from research-practice partnerships and participatory research (e.g., Anderson, 2023; Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Farrell et al., 2022; Ishimaru et al, 2022; Riedy & Penuel, 2024; Vakil et al., 2016; Weddle, 2023).

Conceptual Framework

Critical Research-Practice-Policy Partnerships integrate three concepts: 1) hegemony (Burawoy, 2012; Gramsci, 1975; Hall, 1991), the social, economic, and cultural forces that construct and maintain a negotiated alliance to determine society’s benefits, burdens, and dominant ideologies, arguing that researchers should make visible these alliances and support counter-hegemonic efforts, or new alliances; 2) critical epistemologies, which critiques science for furthering injustices (Mignolo, 2015; Wynter, 1992), and centers indigenous and marginalized knowledge (Tachine & Nicolazzo, 2022; Tuck & Yang, 2014), emphasizing relationality, reciprocity, and power-sharing (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016); and 3) counter-hegemonic uses for research, through backwards mapping (Elmore, 1979) and a bottom-up policy-design process (Dumas & Anderson, 2014) so that policy research is done alongside those most impacted by policy, embraces complexity, and engages the larger public.

Results/ Discussion

Using these conceptual foundations, we co-designed and piloted a new process of policy research agenda-setting. Below we describe some of the structures and processes we used to construct the Collaborative and key lessons.

Determining who to invite into the Collaborative was important. We identified leaders in communities experiencing the strongest right-wing attacks and in regions often marginalized in policy debates. We recruited participants with diverse and intersectional perspectives across race, class, gender, sexuality, and professional role (e.g., community organizers, educational leaders). We recruited researchers with diverse methodological expertise so that we could meet the brainstormed research needs of Collaborative. However, we prioritized researchers with what we called “organizer sensibilities,” or those with prior experience with advocacy.

We built trust through one-on-one and group meetings, where we developed our core assumptions and theory of action. We created intentional structures to ensure power-sharing through a nested leadership structure where representatives of different participant role groups served on a Facilitation Team to provide leadership and feedback.

Significance
The current political context demands more of university researchers who seek to conduct partnered work with communities and advocacy groups. By providing reflections and guidance, we hope to encourage and provide organizing tools to other scholars and activists seeking to coordinate action in this current moment.

Authors

• Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, University of San Francisco

• Joseph J. Ferrare, University of Washington Bothell

• Huriya Jabbar, University of Southern California