Making Race, Racial Equity, and Power Visible in the Everyday Work of RPPs

• In Event: Making the Invisible Visible: Dynamics, Processes, and Outcomes of Research-Practice Partnerships

Abstract

Objective. We explore how a racial equity-centered research-practice partnership (RPP) made race, power, and equity visible in the everyday routines of collaboration. We focus on the invisible labor of racialized boundary work—relational, epistemic, and emotional labor often overlooked in RPP scholarship — that is central to advancing racial equity (Tanksley & Estrada, 2022). Our goal is to surface how race and power operate in routine practices and how deliberate boundary practices and objects can challenge dominant norms and support anti-racist joint work.

Perspectives. We draw on Penuel et al.’s (2015) conceptualization of RPPs as joint work at boundaries and Farrell et al.’s (2022) framework for learning at the boundaries of research and practice. We extend these frameworks by incorporating racial equity and epistemic justice lenses (Smith et al., 2023). We conceptualize RPPs as racialized spaces where trust, conflict, and knowledge production are shaped by power and identity, and how knowledge co-construction can challenge or uphold dominant epistemologies.

Methods. We used participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) in partnership with a Black-women-led community organization to co-design Ally Engagement, a racial affinity-based anti-racist leadership intervention for White educational leaders. The invisible component we illuminate is the racialized nature of boundary work— navigating positionality, surfacing harm, building cross-racial trust, and engaging in productive dissonance. These dynamics shape how partnerships evolve and how (or whether) progress is made. We analyzed over 40 hours of RPP transcripts, 28 hours of co-design sessions, and field notes using inductive and deductive coding. We traced how racialized boundary practices, objects, and tensions unfolded (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011), and we examined data to make visible how race and power shaped everyday routines and decisions.

Findings. We reveal how racialized boundary work—surfacing and addressing harm, engaging in what we call productive dissonance, and co-constructing knowledge—shaped the progress of our RPP. One Ally Engagement participant equated a racialized lens to a deaf and hard-of-hearing lens. While well-intentioned, our RPP raised concerns about diluting racial justice. “It could be harmful to put everything in one bucket, “one RPP member of Color warned. These reflections made visible the danger of what we call equity essentialism and the need to hold space for specificity. Boundary practices fostered productive dissonance, challenging our thinking and understanding. “There’s no such thing as a neutral lens,” one White RPP member emphasized. We grappled with how Ally Engagement created safety for White leaders. One partner of Color asked, “How transformative is this [space] if Black and Brown voices aren’t in the room?” Finally, our failure to name harm in a multi-racial space made visible the silence that maintains inequity.

Significance. We make visible how the everyday work of RPPs—what meetings entail, how data is discussed, and who makes decisions—can reinforce or challenge racialized power asymmetries. RPPs that aim to advance racial equity must attend to these relational and political dimensions of collaboration. By foregrounding racialized boundary work, we offer insights into how RPPs can become sites of critical reflection, shared power, and growth (Farrell et al., 2023; Teeters & Jurow, 2022).

Authors

• Lindsey J. Kaiser, University of Maine

• Amrita Kauldher, Technology Access Foundation

• David Goldenkranz, Technology Access Foundation

• Patricia Woods, Technology Access Foundation

• Heather Lechner, Hayward Unified School District