Improving Educational Equity through Research-Practice Partnerships and University-School Collaborations in the Post-Pandemic

• In Event: New research methods for improving education around the world

Proposal

Since the pandemic began, disproportionate impacts on youth, parents/caregivers, teachers, staff, and educational leaders have been highlighted in research. Yet, how university-school collaborations via research-practice partnerships (RPPs) and networked improvement communities (NICs) factor into differential impacts on youth and families during the pandemic and in the wake of it, are not well understood. In particular, how RPPs and NICs utilizing improvement science-based processes and tools that draw attention to different “user” (e.g. youth) experiences of systems such as schools and other human services, is an area in need of inquiry.
For this study, we use the following definition for RPPs and NICs:
• RPPs are defined as “long-term mutualistic collaborations between practitioners and researchers intentionally organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving district outcomes” (Coburn et al 2013)
• NICs are intentionally designed social organizations with shared aims and process for knowledge generation and utilization for continuous improvement (LeMahieu et al 2017). A NIC has four distinctive features: a well-specified problem, deep understanding of the problem within a given context, iterative cycles of improvement (i.e., plan-do-study-act) and coordinated spread of effective practice across different contexts.

During the pandemic, our university-based RPP partnered with a national non-profit and two local high schools in New York state to address critical diversity, equity and inclusion issues that affect students and families as a NIC. There are two levels of collaboration for this work:
Level 1 - Local RPP network: At this level, our RPP supports partner schools through agenda setting, sharing of improvement tools, identifying action steps and creating time and space for improvement work.
Over several meetings, a shared goal statement has been identified as follows:
We will address the barriers to learning and engagement for children, staff, and community members through our diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and mental health initiatives.
Currently, both partner schools have identified priority areas to achieve this goal and are using improvement tools (including aim statements and driver diagrams) to identify high leverage drivers they want to focus on for an improvement cycle.
Level 2: National network: The second level includes collaboration with other institutions in four states across the country via the national non-profit, allowing for learning to take place comparatively and ethnographically through an examination of trends, and inclusion of individual voices and experiences in partner communities.
The national non-profit engages in periodic check-ins on the work being done at level 1, and shares resources and tools (e,g. a longitudinal database containing “asset” datasets across sectors such as education, health, housing, social services, employment and access to technology – allowing a comparison of resources and constraints in various communities at a large-scale level).
This partnership allows participants to leverage diverse expertise, a variety of data, and collectively and collaboratively increase improvement capacities, with the shared aim of achieving equity in educational opportunities for youth of color and those most marginalized, minoritized and/or vulnerable.
This study uses a modified grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1997) to examine the role of RPPs and NICs in addressing issues around educational equity and improvement through improvement science principles and tools. The primary steps to a grounded theory study are to identify the central phenomenon of concern (e.g. equity of opportunity), the causal conditions, the intervening conditions, and the strategies and consequences of policies, processes and practices. This work has been guided by the Model of Improvement that prompts participants to engage with three key questions: 1. What are we trying to accomplish? 2. How will we know that a change is an improvement? 3. What change can we make that will result in improvement?
While, these three questions guide our work, the focal question we seek to answer through this study is: How has our NIC addressed educational equity issues in the wake of the COVID_19 pandemic?
The sub-questions that have been guiding this research are as follows: 1. What behaviors are exhibited by local network members showing indication of the building of improvement infrastructure (e.g. ability to use local evidence to inform equity-oriented changes)? (Ahn et al., 2022)? 2. How does the collaboration with the larger national network foster the generation of change ideas and accelerate learning across educational institutions? 3. What are the consequent outcomes of this collaboration aiming to address educational equity issues in the post-pandemic?
Through the incorporation of improvement science tools and processes, the researchers will be able to present change ideas, outcomes, and answers to the research questions.
To date, there are very few studies that explore the role of RPP’s and multi-state NICs in education within the emerging field of improvement research in education. Improvement science as an applied discipline emphasizes rapid-cycle testing, and scaling results to generate learning about what works for whom and under what conditions. This research will inform scholars of comparative and international education (CIE) and policymakers interested in collaborative improvement research in education in multiple ways: a. examining innovative change ideas for equity in diverse educational settings through a grounded and collaborative approach to inquiry b. sharing about the formation and workings of a NIC spanning various contexts c. encouraging conversations around systemic issues through data visualizations (e.g. asset mapping) allowing for large-scale comparisons.


Select References:

Ahn, J., Van Steenis, E., & Penuel, W. R. (2022). The Work of Improvement. In The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education (pp. 29-46). Rowman & Littlefield.

Coburn, C. E., Penuel, W. R., & Geil, K. E. (2013). Practice Partnerships: A Strategy for Leveraging Research for Educational Improvement in School Districts. New York: William T. Grant Foundation.

LeMahieu, P.G., Grunow, A., Baker, L., Nordstrum, L.E. and Gomez, L.M. (2017), "Networked improvement communities: The discipline of improvement science meets the power of networks", Quality Assurance in Education, 25(1), p. 5-25.

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. (1997). Grounded theory in practice. Sage.

(All names and identities are being kept anonymous for now in accordance with CIES submission guidelines)

Authors

• kristen wilcox wilcox, State University of New York, University at Albany

• Maria I Khan, University at Albany - SUNY