Using Partnership Accountability to Promote Organizational Learning: A Case Study Exploring RPP Growth

• In Event: Are There Stages to This? The Case For (and Against) Research-Practice Partnership Developmental Trajectories

Abstract

Objectives
Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs) face significant institutional pressure to conduct evaluations that will justify their impact, growth, and existence to funders and universities (Coburn & Penuel, 2016). However, evaluation designs can often be highly time consuming, unsustainable, and geared towards external audiences (Cooper, MacGregor, & Shewchuk, 2020). This case study engages with the idea of partnership accountability as a potentially more sustainable method of documenting RPP impact for both internal and external audiences that privileges collaborative organizational learning within the partnership for more mature partnerships.

Theoretical framework
Many types of partnerships aim to change how research is traditionally conducted between universities and school districts so that research is integrated in decision-making (Coburn & Penuel, 2016) and more responsive to the needs of the local context (Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013). To enact these goals, RPPs need to be adept organizational learners. This case conceptualizes organizational learning as collaborative and embedded in the local context (Brown & Duguid, 1991). Partnership accountability refers to the creation of organizational practices, partnership structures, or routines that increase the sense of responsibility among members of the partnership for the purposes of promoting organizational learning towards changing the status quo.

Method
Using an organizational learning lens, this descriptive and exploratory case study (Yin, 2018) aims to identify some of the ways in which partnership routines and partnership structures can create partnership accountability among members of an RPP. This case relates vignettes from the [BLINDED] Collaborative, an eight-year RPP between University A and nine school districts. It uses documentation from meeting notes, agreements that have emerged within the partnership, and other written materials emerging from the partnership and affiliated research.

Substantiated conclusions
Informal partnership routines—such as scheduled check-ins with district leaders, researchers, and research and practice teams—are sufficiently informative for assessing the health of the partnership and adapting to the immediate and long-term needs of the partnership. These routines allow the RPP leader to develop trust so that members feel comfortable sharing honest and constructive criticism and positive feedback about the partnership, meeting structures, content, etc.

Importantly, two practices help with encouraging partnership accountability: (1) documentation and (2) storytelling. Internal documentation of partnership meetings, partnership gatherings, research findings, progress towards goals, areas of growth allow for monitoring and communicating the value, impact, and health of the RPP to both internal and external members of the partnership. Meanwhile, one-on-one and collective storytelling is useful in building momentum and convincing both internal and external members of the partnership about the importance of the RPP work, the power of the collective, and demonstrating early impact on student outcomes.

Significance
Overall, this case study encourages us to think more deeply about the purposes of RPP evaluation for more mature partnerships, especially as they relate to aims around improvement and impact. Additionally, it pushes us to consider how evaluation designs can more sustainably and realistically help RPP leaders support their partnerships in ways that allow them to document growth for both members of their RPP as well as external audiences.

Author

• Diana G. Mercado-Garcia, California Education Partners