William R. Penuel

University of Colorado Boulder | CUB · School of Education

Researchers in the learning sciences have explored a collaborative approach to developing innovations that fit into real classroom contexts. The co-design process relies on teachers' ongoing involvement with the design of educational innovations, which typically employ technology as a critical support for practice. To date, investigators have descr...

This paper presents a conceptual framework to analyze how researchers and district leaders perceive and navigate differences they encounter in the context of research-practice partnerships. Our framework contrasts with dominant images of partnership work as facilitating the translation of research into practice, emphasizing instead that partnership...

This article describes elements of an approach to research and development called design-based implementation research. The approach represents an expansion of design research, which typically focuses on classrooms, to include development and testing of innovations that foster alignment and coordination of supports for improving teaching and learni...

The implementation of equity‐oriented reforms is never simply a technical matter: it involves directly engaging with the norms and politics responsible for reproducing inequitable opportunities and outcomes, and with efforts to promote educational justice. To date, there has been little research on how leaders in science education navigate the poli...

An increasingly popular form of collaboration involves forming partnerships among researchers, educators, and community members to improve or transform education systems through research inquiry. However, not all partnerships are successful. The field needs valid, reliable, and useful measures to help with assessing progress toward partnership goal...

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) have the potential to affirm the dignity 5 of participants through caring interactions, which support good relationships. A key ethical principle to guide the cultivation of good relationships in an RPP is a quality of relating that we call dignity-affirming care. We define dignity-affirming care as speech, act...

Supporting student interest in science is critical for broadening participation in the field because interest, even more than achievement, is associated with pursuing future science education and careers. In this study, we explore the conjecture that equitable classroom cultures can support interest in science. Specifically, we examine the idea tha...

This study examined the ways in which an equity analytics tool — the SEET system — supported middle school science teachers’ reflections on the experiences of diverse students in their classrooms. The tool provides teachers with “equity visualizations” — disaggregated classroom data by gender and race — designed to support teachers to notice and re...

The Institute for Student‐AI Teaming (iSAT) addresses the foundational question: how to promote deep conceptual learning via rich socio‐collaborative learning experiences for all students?—a question that is ripe for AI‐based facilitation and has the potential to transform classrooms. We advance research in speech, computer vision, human‐agent team...

Key messages: 1. Causal reasoning about education should privilege an intentional rather than a natural notion of causation; 2. Education is namely a living ecology that can be conceptualized as an open, meaning-making, and recursive system. 3. If we do not expect generalizable timeless laws in education, there is no replication crisis. 4. We c...

Meaningful participation in science and engineering practices requires that students make their thinking visible to others and build on one another's ideas. But sharing ideas with others in small groups and classrooms carries social risk, particularly for students from nondominant groups and communities. In this paper, we explore how students' perc...

A key goal of science learning today is to support students in posing and answering questions about phenomena that matter to them while establishing a need to grapple with disciplinary ideas and practices reflected in standards. To be successful in this endeavor, teachers need to learn to partner with students on the direction of their learning whi...

In this conceptual paper, we describe the approach in storylines that builds on principles of project-based learning and focuses on supports for making science learning coherent from the students’ perspective. In storylines, students see their science work as addressing questions and problems their class has identified. We present design principles...

This framework explores the plurality of ways that research-practice partnerships (RPPs) conceptualize issues of equity, and with what consequences for what gets studied, whose voices are included in inquiry, and what knowledge is foregrounded in partnership activity. We draw on institutional theory and the perspectives of members from diverse part...

En este artículo se introducen e ilustran seis principios acordes con el aprendizaje equitativo. Dichos principios fueron sugeridos por un grupo de investigadores y profesores durante la primavera del año 2020, reunidos por la Fundación Spencer y el Learning Policy Institute, con el objetivo de orientar al cuerpo docente en relación a una visión pr...

This paper examines co-design as a space for collaborative learning with distributed expertise across generations and roles. We address a fundamental need in co-design spaces: to develop and surface expertise relevant to the design task across a team. We examine how knowledge building is experienced in a design process that has asymmetric expertise...

Objectives We examined the extent to which compassion practices helped guide skillful means of care among educators. We engaged educators in a collaborative design (co-design) process that foregrounded two components: (1) contemplative practice and (2) developing skill in how social interactions are embedded within wider systems through individual...

This chapter reviews empirical research on researcher-teacher collaboration in science education, from joint inquiry with individual teachers to large-scale efforts to transform science teaching, identifying commitments and tools of these approaches. Assumptions these approaches share are: (1) collaborations can be organized to support individual a...

In this paper, we explore how co-design creates opportunities to learn practical design knowledge related to clarifying and balancing goals for a particular class of design contexts: developing materials that meet ambitious, externally defined disciplinary learning goals that also connect to the interests and priorities of students from minoritized...

Despite calls for evidence-based decision making, the field has a limited understanding of how educational leaders actually engage research. This study draws on a nationally representative sample of 368 district and school leaders who named pieces of research that were useful to their work. Educational leaders found frameworks and practical guidanc...

Given the rapid growth of research–practice partnerships (RPPs), we need a framework that helps the field understand how RPPs can facilitate organizational learning in service of local educational improvement and transformation. Drawing on sociocultural and organizational learning theories, we argue that learning can happen for the organizations en...

The COVID-19 pandemic led states and districts to take a break from grading students and pause standardized testing. As part of an ongoing series of articles on how schools might reconceptualize their work, William Penuel considers what kinds of assessment practices should be carried forward, as schools attempt to become more equitable. He suggests...

The vision of the Framework and NGSS requires important shifts in teaching approaches and instructional materials. We argue that this commitment to engaging learners in meaningful practice and supporting students’ epistemic agency entails that we support coherence from the students’ perspective. This coherence arises when students see their science...

OpenSciEd is an ambitious effort to implement the vision of the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards broadly across the United States. The premise of OpenSciEd is that high quality instructional materials can play a critical role in transforming science teaching and learning at a broad scale. To achieve its...

Educational research is repeatedly confronted with the question of its relevance. Current interpretations of relevance narrowly focus on outcomes and impact of research. In this essay, we propose an alternative, ontological conceptualization of relevance, arguing that more is at stake than outcomes and impact. We characterize the ontology of educat...

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) provide opportunities for researchers to support school districts in addressing the complex challenges they face. Cynthia E. Coburn, William R. Penuel, and Caitlin C. Farrell situate RPPs in the history of educational research and discuss the needs they were designed to address. They then describe what contempo...

Over the past several decades, scholars have proposed a number of innovative approaches to bridging the research-practice divide. A relatively new approach involves the formation of research-practice partnerships (RPPs), long-term collaborations aimed at educational improvement and transformation through engagement with research, intentionally orga...

Background/Context Research on data and evidence use suggest that productive use depends on interactive processes, including sustained interactions between educators and researchers. Recent research on research-practice partnerships (RPPs) has examined conditions under which these sustained collaborations support evidence use. Findings from these s...

Por aprendizaje conectado se entiende aquella actividad, práctica o experiencia que vincula los intereses de los aprendices con oportunidades académicas, profesionales y cívicas, a través del apoyo y promoción ofrecida por otros y otras. El propósito fundamental de este artículo consiste en situar dicha aproximación, a la vez teórica y aplicada. Pa...

A group of collaborative approaches to education research sits uneasily within the existing infrastructure for research and development in the United States. The researchers in this group hold themselves to account to ways of working with schools, families, and communities that are different from the ways envisioned by models for education research...

State-level leaders face a difficult challenge of determining where to invest scarce professional learning dollars. To address this challenge, a team of researchers and state-level science educators surveyed teachers to learn more about their vision for science education and what kind of learning opportunities they preferred. The survey enabled the...

Purpose Empirical investigation into the e-learning innovation, FUSE Studios, is both timely and relevant because FUSE is rapidly expanding domestically and abroad and there is continued interest in the interdisciplinary fields of information and learning sciences in the constructs of choice and interest as they relate to the provision and design o...

Developing an understanding of education as a complex, adaptive system can be useful in helping leaders understand the impact of various interventions on the system as a whole. This paper describes the design of two learning opportunities, which draw on Actor Network Theory, for assisting state science coordinators in exploring complex educational...

Research-practice partnerships are collaborative research arrangements that seek to transform the relations among researchers, educators, and communities. There is a wide diversity in partnership forms and research methods used in them. In addition, there remain questions about the value of partnerships, given the time and resources they require to...

The Mixed Methods Working Group, sponsored by the Spencer Foundation, included senior-level scholars and funders who use or support the use of multiple methods in education research. The group was convened to discuss guidelines for mixed methods research that addresses broad and enduring educational problems in an increasingly diverse and unequal s...

This chapter integrates insights from earlier chapters in this volume by naming ways how co-design can support building collective capacity in educational systems for equitable change. By targeting infrastructure rather than innovations in isolation, co-design with teachers has the potential to bring about more coherent guidance for teachers and mo...

The vision for science proficiency presented in A Framework for K‐12 Science Education calls for significant shifts in both teaching and assessment. In this paper, we describe an effort to develop and validate a set of proximal transfer tasks for high school biology classrooms where teachers were implementing a problem‐based curriculum. The proxima...

In this response to Osborne's commentary, we clarify the bases for our case for drawing on both scientific studies and learning research to guide current reforms in science education. While acknowledging “the constructivist's dilemma,” we assert the fundamental importance of positioning students as knowledge builders in science classrooms.

Efforts to align educational assessments with the sociocultural foundations of learning and with instruction are limited because we lack evidence of how such systems can be developed and maintained in inherently complex educational settings. Credible use cases are helpful to developing the evidence base, and we present one here: a research-practice...

This study examined the conjecture that engaging students with contemporary science-related ethical dilemmas and modern methods for deliberative dialogue to negotiate such dilemmas will increase their science capital. About 80 students participated in a World-Café out-of-school event, along with about 20 adults (teachers, parents, scientists, commu...

This essay presents infrastructuring as a useful construct for guiding efforts to support more equitable implementation and sustainability of resources developed to support student learning in design-based research. Infrastructuring refers to activities that aim to redesign components, relations, and routines of schools and districts that influence...

In recent years, the focus of science education reform has shifted to engaging students in three‐dimensional science learning experiences aligned with the National Research Council's () Framework for K‐12 Science Education. This movement has been associated with a focus on students participating in science as practice, which represents a significan...

Much of the impact of a policy depends on how it is implemented, especially as mediated by organizations such as schools or hospitals. Here, we focus on how implementation of evidence‐based practices in human service organizations (e.g., schools, hospitals) is affected by intraorganizational network dynamics. In particular, we hypothesize intraorga...

Recent scholarship suggests that research use is an interactive, social phenomenon, and that brokers play important roles in facilitating the exchange of research evidence. We add to this body of literature by exploring the role of brokers in the exchange of research evidence among state education agency leaders involved in K-12 science education p...

This article reports on a design‐based implementation research (DBIR) project that addresses the question: How can classrooms be supported at scale to achieve the three‐dimensional learning goals of the Next Generation Science Standards? Inherent in this question are three key design challenges: (i) three‐dimensional learning—the multidimensional c...

The phenomenon of "brokering"-or connecting youth to present or future opportunities-is now well known in the field of learning and youth development as an integral part of how and why youth pursue and remain in particular interest-related learning opportunities. More recently, the related term sponsorship refers to the multiple ways in which youth...

Recent scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of the learning sciences has focused on the ways that young people use digital tools to connect learning experiences across different settings and over time. Two aspects stand out in this research: (i) the potency of youth agency in creating new activities, communities, and pathways for interest-rel...

In the 21st century, what role does interest play in the organization of equitable learning opportunities for young people? Drawing on a large corpus of interview data from a longitudinal study of fifty-four adolescents involved in interest-driven afterschool activities domestically and abroad, we investigate the role of youths’ interests in their...

This study explores how involving education leaders in the process of research can enhance the practical value of research for them. This paper describes: 1) a design process used for engaging US state science leaders in participatory research; and 2) shifts in understanding that state leaders reported based on their participation. The authors expl...

This paper describes a Networked Improvement Community comprised of a network of 13 states focused on improving coherence and equity in state systems of science education. Grounded in principles of improvement science adapted from healthcare, we are developing and testing resources for formative assessment in science, with the aim of developing sys...

More than 20 years ago, the New London Group (1996) framed a powerful vision for literacy pedagogies informed by the emerging networked world defined by local diversity and global connectedness, new digital media and fast capitalism. We now fully inhabit the world they described, but the contours of that world’s racial dynamics and growing inequali...

This paper presents a social practice theory of learning and becoming across contexts and time. Our perspective is rooted in the Danish tradition of critical psychology (Dreier, 1997; Mørck & Huniche, 2006; Nissen, 2005), and we use social practice theory to interpret the pathway of one adolescent whom we followed as part of a longitudinal study of...

In participatory cultures, the lines between producers and consumers of text are blurred, and communities emerge that are based on shared interest and peer support. Although literacy scholarship has mostly focused on youth engagement and literacy practices within online participatory cultures, scholars in the learning sciences investigate these ide...

While there is an abundance of data-use literature available, there is still a need to develop methodological approaches for studying naturally occurring data use in decision-making processes over time. The central contribution of this paper is a strategy to understand the use of data in long-term observations of educational leaders’ policy-making...

This study examined how school and district leaders access, value, and use research. From a representative sample of school districts across the United States, we surveyed 733 school and district leaders as part of an effort to develop understanding of the prevalence of research use, the nature of leaders’ attitudes toward research, and individual...