In Solidarity: Exploring How Partners Talk in a Research-Practice Partnership

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Developing Equitable Partnerships to Foster Equitable Systems

Abstract

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) bring together organizations whose identities are shaped by distinctive areas of knowledge, skills, and expertise. Effective communication between partners is critical, but not always easy, given the many institutional differences. More RPPs are incorporating intermediary organizations as key partners in their joint work to play a key boundary spanning role among partners. Drawing from positioning theory and updated conceptions of Emile Durkheim’s operational dimensions of social solidarity and status, discursive episodes among partner interactions in an RPP during the first 6-months of design work are explored using conversation analysis. Two themes emerge - overlapping talk being used to: 1) show solidarity and 2) convey status, with variation based on role hierarchies, types of expertise, and organizational identities.

Author

• Stephanie L. Brown, York College of Pennsylvania