Chapter 2: Thought Buddies: How Partners in an RPP Expanded Roles and Navigated Boundaries

Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs) connect universities and K–12 schools who work together to improve pedagogy and student outcomes. While RPPs have demonstrated effectiveness, they often struggle with inequitable relationships between university-based researcher partners and school-based practitioner partners, typically prioritizing researcher knowledge as more valuable than practitioner knowledge. Through an exploration of how one RPP resisted such knowledge hierarchies, this study shares findings illustrating how three partners spanned institutional boundaries and exchanged ideas, language, and practices. Data were gathered in three phases over a four year period, using a design-based research (DBR) process, and went through an analytic induction process in which assertions were developed and tested. Data sources include researcher field notes and memos, transcripts from student interviews, RPP meeting transcripts, and email communication, and artifacts (e.g., curricular documents, instructional plans, student work). Findings reveal that partners spanned institutional boundaries by shifting and expanding their roles and co-constructing a space and structure whereby they exchanged ideas, language, and practices. Discussion contributes to the ways in which partners in an RPP can resist traditional research-practitioner status hierarchies and work towards more equitable collaborations.