Developing a Research-Practice Partnership With a Bottom-Up Approach: KOOV Academy Project

• In Event: Research-Practice Partnerships for Educational Transformation: Methodologies for Systemic Educational Transformation: Building Infrastructures for Educational Transformation Through Research-Practice Partnerships

Abstract

Perspective and objectives
KOOV Academy Project, funded by Sony Electronics, Inc., is a new research-practice partnership (RPP) in collaboration with practitioners from San Diego public schools. The project aims to introduce robotics as a learning tool using Sony’s KOOV robotics kits to promote students’ interest in learning computer science concepts, coding and acquire related subject knowledge. It initially involved five teachers. While a 3rd grade teacher from one school initially was taking part in the project, she invited other 3rd grade teachers in her school so that educational robotics learning experience could be provided to all 3rd grade students. Her initiative to ensure all students receive the same hands-on learning experience led to the idea to develop a practitioner-driven RPP. This study examines how a practitioner-initiated RPP develops to transform educational practice and student learning.

Methods
To be a successful RPP, KOOV Academy requires a structure and culture that recognizes the need for joint work, while also noting that participants need individual professional development. A Communities of Practice framework guides KOOV Academy to evoke learning collectively and individually. Tenets of Communities of Practice include seeing learning as inherently contextual; assuming learning communities can be deliberately formed; flexibility in focus, and various types of participants. Effective Communities of Practice have the following features (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002):

Joint Enterprise: Deciding on a shared pursuit or aim. This can and should be negotiated and re-negotiated over time by members of the Communities of Practice.
Mutual Engagement: Regular and desired interaction and the building of relationships toward the joint enterprise.
Shared Repertoire: Description of the tools, language and knowledge, and artifacts that characterize group participation.

In KOOV Academy, we develop these three facets by meeting regularly enough such that 1) we develop local meanings, jointly constructed and re-negotiated over time, on what we work on (joint enterprise), 2) we can specify how often, when and where we work (mutual engagement), and 3) we develop specific knowledge, practices and tools for our work (shared repertoire). KOOV Academy will use these three frames from the communities of practice literature to guide our meaning-making and practices.

Preliminary Results and Significance
The data from the group interviews of the practitioners and undergraduate fellows showed that students, in general, enjoyed hands-on learning that robotics tools could provide and some of the students who are less engaged in learning showed their interests and engaged in the robotics lessons. This led to the practitioners’ interests in not only continuing to offer robotics lessons in coming years but also to engage more teachers from their school in hands-on project-based learning with educational robotics. The results show that the practitioners became interested in making changes in their school to broaden computer science learning in their schools after witnessing the impact that educational robotics can have on their students.

Author

• Amy Eguchi, University of California - San Diego