"Something Changed, but I'm Not Sure What": Relationships as Foundational Across Partnership and Co-Design Work

• In Event: Advancing Research-Practice Partnerships: Leveraging the Positionality of Graduate Student Researchers

Abstract

Purpose:

This poster examines a collaboration between a teacher and a graduate-student researcher and the understandings that emerged as their work transitioned from a large-scale research-practice partnership (RPP; Coburn & Penuel, 2016) toward a model of participant design work (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016). While research on RPPs often tends to focus on broad implications for stakeholders (e.g., Coburn, et al., 2013; Henrick, et al., 2017), I take the position that there is much to learn from the potentially restorative work of forming deep partnerships with individual teachers and their students (e.g., Fecho et al., 2003; LeCompte, et al., 1995; Smagorinsky, 2018). I situate this small participant design study within the larger RPP project to examine the ways that each of these methods of design informed one another and led to a deeper relationship between the teacher and researcher as a result of this situatedness.

Theoretical Framework:

This study draws on the rich body of scholarship that points to relationships as a key component of successful RPP and co-design projects (e.g., Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Penuel et al., 2015). Additionally, I examine the ways that participatory design frameworks (e.g., Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) can support the building and deepening of relationships throughout the boundary-crossing that inevitably takes place within these RPPs (Penuel et al., 2015).

Methods and Data Sources:

This study utilizes a subset of qualitative and ethnographic data from one teacher’s 9th grade English language arts classroom collected during the first three years of a large-scale RPP and a fourth year of data that took place as a co-designed project between the researcher and the same teacher. My analysis draws from fieldnotes, semi-structured interviews, audio recordings, design artifacts, and surveys in order to examine the process of collaboration across each project and the teacher’s reflections upon these projects as impactful within her classroom.

Findings:

Penuel et al. (2015) describe the ways that stakeholders cross boundaries within RPPs in order to both discover common ground and to establish new roles that allow for joint work across research and practice. In examining one teacher’s experience within two organizations of collaboration, I reflect upon the differences in the kinds of boundaries established within RPPs and more intimate partnerships. While the focal teacher in this study reflected a feeling of agency that grew out of the community of teachers participating in the large-scale RPP, she also reflected feeling a deeper sense of ownership and commitment to the project where she was positioned as partner and co-designer.

Significance:

The findings reemphasize the importance of relationship-building and support of teacher agency within co-design across different kinds of teacher-researcher partnerships. The work points to the need for continued exploration of the ways that RPPs can support both teachers and researchers in developing reciprocal relationships that lead to deeper understandings of research within practice.

Author

• Kristina M Stamatis, University of Nebraska - Omaha