Researchers and Practitioners Partnering to Hold Systems and System Leaders Accountable for Putting Practice Into Policy

• In Event: "Practitioners Are Scholars Too": A Critical Conversation on the Mentorship and Mentoring Practices of Practitioner-Led Research and Scholarship as a Vehicle for a Revised Educational Research Narrative

Abstract

To reform education, we need activity not passivity. We need a balance between theory and practice in P-12 settings. As a P-12 practitioner who has presented and attended several AERA conferences, first as a graduate student, then as a principal, and now as a central office administrator, the first author has asserted in multiple sessions, as a participant, presenter and chair, that AERA and educational research in general is missing the connection between theory and practice. At the first author’s first AERA conference, in 2014, it was Geneva Gay who the first author first heard mention that point. Because of her statement, the first author was determined to complete the Ph.D. and remain in P-12 as a practitioner scholar versus going into higher education where the focus on practice can get lost. The question the first author continued to hear at each AERA conference is “How can scholars and P-12 practitioners work in collaboration to impact and bridge outcomes in education and more specifically for marginalized youth?” The answer is bridging theory and practice in P-12 settings where the practitioner operates as both a practitioner and scholar. How to make this happen and a matter of the willingness of researchers to mentor practitioners to become scholars of their practice.
Practitioners remain in the trenches addressing the new directions and persistent shifts in both educational policy and practice. Practitioners interpret the laws and theory in order to help make sense of them to their stakeholders. The apparent gap in theory and practice is not one of ignorance but one of darkness and silence. The gulf that exists between higher education and P-12 is a simple bridge to cross. Anderson (2007) argued:
“Debates over relationships between science and practice have been around for a long time in applied psychology… Debate forms a key bridge between academic scholars and practitioners. It stimulates mutual reflexivity; the sedimentary issues carried along on its flow are causes for professional introspection. In short, it is a debate itself that is indicative of a narrowing of any gap between the scientific and practitioner wings in all knowledge-based disciplines” (p. 175)
This symposium will provide this bridge as practitioner scholars share their influence and impact of putting theory into practice. Far reaching significance is the inclusivity of practitioners in the national research narrative, conversation and agenda, not only as a passive participant but as a leading voice.

Authors

• Donna M. Druery, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Antoinette McDaniel, John Carroll University