Moving from RPP Broker Practices to RPP Broker Practicing

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

Abstract

Research–Practice Partnerships (RPPs) operate in complex, evolving contexts that demand adaptive leadership and improvisation. Yet, the everyday practices of RPP brokers including how they plan, coordinate, and navigate shifting roles and power dynamics, are often invisible. Specifically, we share how RPP brokers developed tools and routines to guide their planning, reflecting, and analysis of relational and organizational learning and change. We conceptualize RPP broker "practicing" as a complex, relational, and improvisational process involving research production (Wentworth et al., 2013). In this light, tools and routines to support such practice need to (1) accommodate adaptive integration (Russell et al., 2019), e.g., “the use of systematic methods to learn how to implement a new practice or work process in a new context, one other than where it was developed” (p. 151); (2) attend to the disruption in traditional power dynamics (Farrell et al., 2021); (3) honor and challenge traditional ways of leading a collaboration among organizations; and, (4) support coherence in the RPP brokers’ practice (Forman et al., 2017). Using principles from design-based research (The DBR Collective, 2001) and participatory inquiry, we engaged in an iterative process involving two RPP leaders and two design inquiry partners. During bi-monthly design meetings, we co-developed a set of tools and routines to support RPP broker practicing. These tools were piloted with four research–practice teams (n=8) from two RPPs to evaluate their utility and impact. Through piloting, we were able to surface and discuss “invisible” elements of each broker’s practice. Data included design artifacts, drafts of frameworks and tools, planning documents, and pilot notes. These materials supported both real-time reflection and cross-case analysis of broker practice-in-use. The inquiry led to several contributions: An updated framework of RPP fundamentals, a framework for analyzing and addressing power dynamics, a capacity review tool to prioritize focus areas with RPP teams, a learning planner tool that structured RPP leaders' brokering actions and reflections,and a designated routine based in RPP brokers’ existing schedules and timelines to engage in these tools over time. For each research and practice team, the RPP brokers used the capacity review tool to identify relevant RPP fundamentals and elements related to power dynamics to work on for the year. Then the RPP leader piloted the learning planner tool for two of the four research and practice teams. Evidence from the piloting suggested the learning planner did focus RPP brokers’ behaviors, allow them to reflect on their practice, and was associated with some changes in the RPP fundamentals among teams. Managing the complexities of education RPPs require moves by RPP brokers that are less documented. This study decomposes RPP brokering into a set of visible practices with tools and routines designed to support inquiry and planning. As organizations consider how to operationalize RPPs, this inquiry suggests that brokering requires tools and routines to address the complexity of the RPP that may not currently be supported by organizations involved in the RPPs.

Authors

• Diana G. Mercado-Garcia, California Education Partners

• Laura P. Wentworth, California Education Partners

• Caitlin Farrell, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Alison Fox Resnick, University of Colorado - Boulder