Power Shift: Illuminating and Challenging Hierarchies in Co-Design Processes

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

Abstract

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) position themselves as advancing equity through collaboration that disrupts traditional power relationships between researchers and practitioners, often emphasizing collaborative structures and routines (Farrell et al., 2023; Henrick et al., 2023). Limited research has focused on RPP discourse that reproduces or transforms power dynamics. Yet, power sharing between partners is negotiated and achieved through in-the-moment interactions as work is carried out. Using tensions that surface during RPP co-design meetings of an elementary school-based team as the unit of analysis, we examine: (1) how power hierarchies are disrupted through RPP structures; and (2) the extent to which power is shared in the moment of interactions. Power is the transformative capacity of actors, which is (1) conditioned by social structures and institutions and (2) negotiated through interaction (Ekström & Stevanovic, 2023). Prior RPP research on power has focused on structures that disrupt researchers’ normative capacity and agency due to their societal role. This includes creating boundary infrastructure (Farrell et al., 2022), valuing practitioners’ spheres of interest and influence to develop a research agenda (Meyers et al., 2023), and leveraging diverse expertise and creating space for practitioners to exercise their agency through co-design (Severance et al., 2016; Penuel et al., 2007). Emerging research has begun to unpack generative RPP discourse (Zala-Mezö & Datnow, 2024). We extend this work by considering discourse through the lens of power. RPP tensions are essential to analyze because they expose stakeholders' differing commitments and perspectives (Johnson et al., 2016) and provide a window into power dynamics at the structural and interactional levels. We analyzed RPP co-design meetings held at one elementary school over a two-year period. Meetings focused on designing site-level professional learning experiences in mathematics aligned to a broader PD initiative. Participants included four researchers, the principal, and three teachers. Primary data are audio transcripts from co-design meetings. Analysis began by identifying conversation segments surfacing tensions (14 in Year 1, 9 in Year 2). Thematic analysis exposed structures and routines that supported sharing. Discourse analysis revealed how power is shaped in-the-moment interactions. Our partnership was designed to disrupt traditional power imbalances; however, additional infrastructure needed to be created to ensure voices were heard, such as the Family Mathematics Team and the District Curriculum Team. Preliminary findings suggest practice partners were enabled to enact power, provided space by researchers to do so, and operated as equal participants in co-constructing generative joint work. When researchers employed power-sharing discursive moves, teachers were occasioned to voice their perspectives. At the same time, teachers employed a variety of subversive discursive tactics to enact power, such as narrating other teachers’ critical opinions as if they were not their own. Findings contribute to RPP literature on power, making visible the often invisible ways in which intentionally designed infrastructure may not be sufficient to negotiate and achieve authentic power sharing between researchers and practitioners. Findings can inform RPP facilitation practices aimed at realizing design commitments to disrupting power dynamics.

Authors

• Taryn M. Williams, University of California - Irvine

• Christina Kimmerling, University of California - Irvine

• Patricia Fuentes Acevedo, University of California - Irvine

• Rossella Santagata, University of California - Irvine