Politics at the Boundary: Continuing to Explore Politics in Education Research-Practice Partnerships

• In Event: Politics, History, and Systems Improvement in 21st Century School Reforms

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes:
Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) utilize collaboration on and engagement with research to address some of the thorniest or enduring challenges in education. And yet, reverberations of sociocultural and political dynamics can derail partnerships, unless they intentionally attend to those politics. In this article, we consider the emerging research on the politics in and around education RPPs and propose a framework to reflect these dynamics. We also deconstruct RPP politics into four major phases of RPP work, and synthesize the current evidence illuminating how politics can shape both RPPs and their goals of equity, improvement, and organizational transformation.

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework:
RPPs support practitioners and community members in using research in their work (Farley-Ripple et al., 2018), decision-making (Wentworth et al., 2017) and outcomes (e.g., Allensworth, 2013; Cobb et al., 2013; Henrick et al., 2018). Yet, RPPs come with their own challenges, through their efforts to ensure research use through collaboration and to emphasize improvement by altering traditional power dynamics and adjusting roles and approaches to engagement among partners (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Ishimaru & Bang, 2016). We build on Farrell and colleagues’ (2022) framework for conceptualizing how RPPs support organizational learning and systems improvement by adding the political realities of RPPs to the framework including a) diverging timelines and cadences of RPP work created by educational politicking and organizational cultures b) inequities among RPP members which may come across in differences in status and power, and c) natural conflicts and disagreements that happen in RPPs involving partners with competing values.

Methods and Data:
This conceptual paper builds on a framework in a special issue of Education Policy (volume 37, issue 1) and seeks to establish more direct connections between RPP politics and commitments to continuous improvement, organizational learning, and equity. We do so by reflecting on the emerging literature on politics in RPPs, inclusive of and beyond the special issue, using the typology of political challenges in the framework as a building block for analyzing those connections between politics and improvement and equity, and refining the framework accordingly.

Results, Implications, Significance:
This paper lays out how specific types of political conflicts undermine RPPs’ commitment to equity and improvement. Some of the pitfalls and opportunities that politics introduce to RPPs span: the internal politics within partner organizations; operational politics of an RPP (e.g., starting up and sustaining support for the RPP over time); navigating the politics of producing and using research; ensuring that the research use and partnership focus is persistently aimed toward the equitable transformation and improvement of schooling. We hypothesize that, while the first two types may undermine RPPs’ commitment to process and structural equity, the second two can often undermine their commitment to improvements in outcome equity. More research is needed to better understand how RPPs implement and sustain their focus on equity and transformational improvements amidst political challenges.

Authors

• Kyo Yamashiro, Loyola Marymount University

• Laura P. Wentworth, California Education Partners

• Moonhawk Kim, University of California - Berkeley