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Exploring research practice partnerships for use in K--12 computer science education

Authors:
  • SageFox Consulting Group
  • SageFox Consulting Group
  • SageFox Consulting Group
24  acm Inro ads  2021 Septe mber  Vol. 12  No. 3
CONTRIBUTED ARTICLES
ARTICLES
Monica M. McGill, CSEdResearch.org & Knox College, Alan Peterfreund, SageFox Consulting Group,
Stacey Sexton, SageFox Consulting Group, Rebecca Zarch, SageFox Consulting Group and
Maral Kargarmoakhar, Florida International University in Miami
Exploring Research
Practice Partnerships
for Use in K-12
Computer Science
Education
Since 2017, over $100 million in U.S. National Science
Foundation grants have been awarded to establish new
and extend existing Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs)
focused on K-12 computer science (CS) education. Given
this investment, what are RPPs and why is so much faith
being placed in them? eir unique promise for CS K-12
education is, in part, their intentional design for bridging
the gap between researchers and practitioners. In this
article, we provide an overview of RPPs, their benets and
challenges, methods for assessing RPPs, and additional
resources for those who want to dig deeper.
INTRODUCTION
Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs) have been increasingly
used in the U.S. over the last couple of decades to address
general problems of practice found in K-12 education. ese
unique partnerships involve the collaboration of researchers
and practitioners who are committed to designing and imple-
menting solutions to problems that practitioners (e.g., K-12
administrators, teachers, sta ) face. In the context of K-12
computing education, RPPs have been relatively rare.
In 2017, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) issued
its rst call for proposals for growing Research Practice Part-
nerships (RPPs) focused on equitable Computer Science (CS)
education [38]. is K-12 “for all” initiative seeks to foster re-
search into problems of practice practitioners face based on
mutual partnerships between researchers and practitioners.
From 2017–2020, 120 unique projects were supported by this
initiative, many of which have been for existing or new RPPs
for CS in various stages of progress (Figures 1 and 2). Projects
have ranged from seeking to address such problems as the lack
of computational thinking (CT) and CS education in middle
school [20] to the lack of equitable access of Advanced Place-
ment (AP) Computer Science Principles (CSP) courses for all
students [6,34] (Figures 3 and 4).
Adopting RPPs while K-12 computing education is still in its
infancy, particularly with respect to primary education, has the po-
tential of having meaningful and lasting impact given the known
impacts of RPPs in other elds. To shed light on the potential rea-
sons why the NSF is investing so heavily in RPPs for CS, we provide
an overview of RPPs in general, discuss their benets and challeng-
es, and highlight ways to measure their health and success. We also
provide a set of resources for those interested in learning more.
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Figure 1: NSF-funded CSforAll RPPforCS Awardees, 2017–2020. Of the
120 unique projects, 33 of these are collaborative submissions to the NSF
rather than a single submission (which may or may not have multiple
organizations).
Figure 4: NSF-funded RPPforCS school district demographic data,
2017–2020.
Figure 3: NSF-funded RPPforCS project details, 2017–2020.
Figure 2: Figure 2. NSF-funded RPPforCS projects across the U.S,
2017–2020.
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Exploring Research Practice Partnerships for Use in K-12 Computer Science Education
intervention, program, or reform strategy [8]. is enables the
district leaders to be able to analyze and interpret the data in a
way that considers their unique district’s frameworks.
RPP FRAMEWORKS
ere are similar and shared functions among dierent ways in
which RPPs are implemented. Connolly notes that even with
RPPs “everything grows from a strong foundation” [9,p.1]. Part
of this requires recognizing that the ecosystem of connected
academic enterprises and institutions can result in positive
change that impact student learners [9,56].
To facilitate the partnership, rules of engagement can help
lay the groundwork of expectations, roles, and responsibilities
for the RPP [32]. Partnership models include the following.
RPP Research Alliances—Typically focused on a specic
district, region, or state for ongoing problems of similar
interest [5,27]
RPP Design/Co-Design models— Typically focused on the
fully collaborative model of designing, studying, improving,
and then scaling classroom practices based on empirical
evidence [5,26,27,45]
Networked Improvement Communities (NICs)—often
short-cycle improvement eorts, these communities engage
education professionals, researchers, and designers to use
a continuous improvement model for exploring the usage
and renement of promising practices that address shared
problems [5,27]
Hybrid—Two or three of these methods combined [27]
Collaboration strengthens the RPP, demonstrates its value,
and can help institutionalize the work [9]. It can also ensure
that the right problems of practice are being addressed [54].
Identifying and decomposing the pressing problems can be
aided by the use of the Edelson’s design methodology [14] and
other step wise processes that include grounding the decom-
DEFINITION AND KEY COMPONENTS
ough practitioners and researchers both are outcome focused
and are interested in increasing academic achievement among
students, the gulf between the two has often been very wide
[48]. In the past, school-university partnerships [4,20,48] were
established for many of the same reasons that RPPs are today—
to solve the problems that arose from the deep separation of re-
search from practice. e traditional silo-ed research pipeline
has typically consisted of disseminating ndings to practitioners
once the research has concluded. e hand-o from researcher
to practitioner may not meet the critical needs that practitioners
face or adequately consider the context of their work [28,39].
Coburn et al. have dened RPPs as “...long-term collaborations
between practitioners and researchers that are organized to inves-
tigate problems of practice and solutions for improving schools
and districts.” [8,p.48] RPPs are intentionally organized and can
be focused within a single school, but typically they involve sev-
eral schools, a single school district, multiple school districts and
even supporting agencies. ey can be formed across distributed
networks (e.g., special education providers across a state) [7,8].
Full participation by practitioners in the course of conduct-
ing research, as designed in RPPs, can ensure that practitioners’
voices, contexts, and experiences are considered. Practitioners
also benet from research, building the knowledge needed to
leverage research in their decision-making within a particular
context [8,33,40,43]. Ghiso et al. points out nuances in the for-
mation of RPPs.
[RPPs] call on forms of professional knowledge that may
have traditionally been less visible or valued in the acad-
emy. Collaborative research teams are engaged in deeply
relational intellectual and emotional labor: ey have to
develop methodological sensibilities and skills that are at-
tentive to issues of power and have to negotiate social and
institutional boundaries. [19,p.1]
An RPP’s long-term structural approach and intent are par-
amount to their success. is approach allows for the time and
space needed to institute a continuous improvement paradigm
[50], including the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycle that can
be continually repeated to identify promising practices and
bring them to scale.
Basic tenets of RPPs are that they are long-term collabora-
tions, mutualistic, and consist of eorts to build and maintain
trust among their participants [26,53]. Mutualism equalizes the
power structure between researchers and practitioners and el-
evates the concept of joint work to design and implement solu-
tions, study their impact, and redesign and rene their solutions
[38]. Trust becomes a key element of a successful partnership—
reliance on roles and responsibilities that are established up-
front help ensure that proper boundaries are set, and trust is
maintained. is trust is built upon the discourse around the
problems which they seek to mutually solve [28].
RPPs also involve original analysis of data, a practice that in-
volves the collection of data within the context of the problems
being solved, the district(s) or school(s), and/or the specic
There are similar and shared
functions among different ways
in which RPPs are implemented.
Connolly notes that even with RPPs
“everything grows from a strong
foundation” [9]. Part of this requires
recognizing that the ecosystem of
connected academic enterprises and
institutions can result in
positive change that impact
student learners [9,56].
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It is important to nd meaningful ways to share ndings as well
as recommendations for change and action [36].
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
e impact of meaningful partnerships has been shown to in-
clude positive changes in teachers’ self-ecacy and sense of
ownership in the research, researchers’ deeper understanding
of school contexts, and improvement in students’ engagement
and learning [29,42,51,56]. Researchers and practitioners can
collaborate in many ways in RPPs, several of which share com-
mon attributes for achieving success [26,29,47]. In successful
partnerships, both parties know and fulll their negotiated
roles and responsibilities throughout the project to enable
high-quality relationships [9,48]. eir partnership should be
honest, transparent, and trusting [9,23,47].
Researchers and practitioners often have diverse roles. Re-
searchers can provide the research plan, take a leadership role
in structuring the shared learning, establish roles and responsi-
bilities, support teachers’ development of pedagogical content
knowledge, collaborate with district leaders, and provide evi-
dence to support a strong model [14,26,48]. ey act as knowl-
edge brokers, connecting practitioners to other knowledge in
real time as needed [10] and often bring connections to exter-
nal supports for implementation and evaluation and dissemi-
nate ndings [9,16,47].
While the term practitioner implies an array of practice-or-
ganization roles [30], teachers are often regarded as a unique
population. ey occupy a dual space as both the recipient of
project interventions and a critical voice within the project.
Teachers may participate in design work to create classroom
materials or take on leadership roles within the RPP, acting as
conduits to their colleagues and representing the classroom
perspective [1,3]. Roles and responsibilities of researchers and
practitioners depend on the RPP type. In Research Alliances,
their roles are distinct, and collaboration between them hap-
pens at the start and end of the project. e main responsibility
of practitioners is designing and implementing the policies and
programs, while researchers’ responsibility is to evaluate the
policies and programs [41].
e Design Research model shares elements with, but is
distinct from, the Research Alliances model. is model uses a
co-design approach, and researchers and leaders work together
in an iterative process in identifying challenges, test strategies,
and nding solutions over the long term [39]. Kali et al. notes
that these tasks require Design Centric (DC) RPP participants to
take on more than the traditional roles and often share respon-
sibilities of consultant/facilitator, designer, and researcher [30].
In a NIC, there is no clear delineation between researcher
and practitioner [39,40]. Researchers can take on the work of
facilitating and guiding members through the improvement
process, while practitioners can take on responsibilities for de-
veloping measures, gathering, and analyzing data [48]. In other
words, in NICs it is assumed researchers’ and practitioners’ roles
can be counter-normative to their routine responsibilities [8,39].
position in practice through the RPP team members’ vision,
by function, and in relation to the contexts to which it applies
[31,36,40,52]. is requires a range of perspectives and can
further identify relevant stakeholders who should be included
in the RPP [40].
A critical step of an RPP is to identify and implement solu-
tions [36] as well as formalizing the research questions that are
to be addressed (Figure 5). Ecosystems help in this process by
oering a “...powerful lens for researchers and stakeholders as
they can answer the key problems of practice.” [56,p.1] Inter-or-
ganizational practices for an RPP can ensure better communi-
cation and understanding across the research and partnership
communities, including meeting routines to encourage com-
munication and professional support [18,42].
Collaborative inquiry can be performed through a variety of
methodological approaches that are iterative in nature and test
and rene the new educational approaches [36,42,44]. A collab-
oratively developed research agenda is necessary for identifying
how ndings will be discovered [3,7,14]. Findings are often gen-
erated using shared tools and common practical measurements
[18,48], some of which may need to be developed for the RPP.
Collaboration is key in conducting the research within schools
and school districts to collect the data needed for the ndings.
Figure 5: The various steps of how RPPs function and the important
key processes within them [32,42]. Used with permission by Education
Development Center and the Research+Practice Collaboratory.
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Exploring Research Practice Partnerships for Use in K-12 Computer Science Education
RPPs have been shown to have a positive impact on its partic-
ipants (Figure 6). Benets to participating K-12 teachers include
increased condence and self-ecacy, improved classroom prac-
tices, and more awareness of advances in scholarship on improved
teaching [7,16,29,47]. Researchers also share in benets, including
a deeper understanding of the realities of school contexts and prac-
tices and an increased condence in the value of their work [30,47].
ere potentially may be another class of benets that have
yet to be documented by others or otherwise might go un-
stated, particularly at the macro level (e.g., policy, procedure,
culture of the participating organizations). ese may include
partnerships extending to new challenges and opportunities,
development of trust allowing dicult conversations to occur,
and acknowledgement and open discussion of power dynam-
ics/power relationships by participants.
GENERAL CHALLENGES
e rst two hurdles that RPP initiators face are the ability
to form the collaboration and infrastructure that can sustain
change and decompose the problem of practice that consid-
ers the holistic needs of learners [30,40,41,46,54]. Partnerships
can face organizational and knowledge management issues that
plague any institution—nding and potentially hiring qualied
researchers, long-term funding, employee and leadership turn-
over, complexities of institutional and RPP hierarchies, the needs
of external special interest, lack of focus on the guiding goals and
political inuences [1,3,5,7,13,26,27,42]. Partnerships are also
faced with decisions about choosing whether the benets of the
RPP outweigh the resources to conduct the research [36]. Dif-
fering priorities, shifting goals, diering visions and approaches
can all contribute to tensions among RPP members [3,12,27,49].
Maintaining a local context on the partnership work can be a
challenge, particularly when there are other forces at play [27].
GENERAL RPP BENEFITS
Benets of RPPs are multi-faceted and researchers and prac-
titioners can both be positively impacted due to the partic-
ipatory knowledge building process [46]. RPPs can result in
higher quality research that builds capacity among researchers,
practitioners, and their institutions that is more likely to have
a positive, timely impact [26,36,47]. By their nature, they are
more equitable and ethical since they leverage ideas, assets,
and “...community stakeholder experiences and perspectives
to inform research questions, methods, and meaning-making
[1;2,p.1;26]. RPPs have the potential to discover interventions
that have a higher adoption rate due to their usability and rel-
evance in the local context [2,7,26,28], since the rigorous re-
search often provides better assurance that the new practices
solve the targeted problem and are institutionalized [2,9,47].
e outcomes of these many benets include improved ac-
ademic achievement among students [7,44], student engage-
ment, and other social-emotional factors that have been shown
to aect learning [47]. An RPPs networked community enable
access to the research and its interpretation, and decision mak-
ing can then be based on the interpretation of this research
[3,7,26]. Tools and resources for improving curriculum can be
provided and shared more widely, and this generalized knowl-
edge can extend beyond the RPP [30].
e adoption of the continuous improvement model helps
ensure continued use of “social resources” through networking
as well as the continued sharing of ideas, processes, materi-
als, and tools [7,30]. eir long-term nature and open-ended
commitment lead to the acceptance and use of the continuous
improvement model dedicated to addressing persistent prob-
lems of practice [7,13,46] and results in a signicant amount of
original data that is produced over time [3]. Districts and state-
wide policymakers then build “...their own capacity to use and
generate research eectively” [3,p.6].
Figure 6: Impacts of RPPs on practitioners and researchers based on previously gathered evidence
[7,16,26,29,48].
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ARTICLES
including building trust and cultivating partnership relation-
ships and producing knowledge that can inform educational
improvement eorts more broadly. Various indicators are used
across these dimensions to actually provide assessment mea-
sures. is model, which is carefully aligned to best practices in
establishing and implementing RPPs, provides a strong sense of
how RPPs can be structured to support and embrace the equal
partnership RPPs seek to achieve.
THE WILDER COLLABORATION FACTORS INVENTORY
e Wilder Collaboration Factors Inventory can be used to as-
sess the collaboration and partnership qualities among groups
involved in an RPP [9,35]. is instrument has 44 questions
across 23 factors that groups utilize. Factors include the history
of collaboration/cooperation, exibility, ability to compromise,
open and frequent communication, and shared vision.
THE RPPFORCS HEALTH ASSESSMENT
Healthy partnerships will be proactive in giving their partner-
ship attention. Based on the Five Dimensions of Eectiveness
model, the RPPforCS Health Assessment Tool oers a matrix
for evaluators to evaluate the RPP design process over time to
assess the maturity of the RPP [59]. e Tool can help facilitate
the design of the RPP and reection among partners as a part
of the trust building process. For RPPs that are struggling to
function as healthy partnerships, it may facilitate dicult con-
versations needed to improve partner dynamics.
THE WENTWORTH ET AL. SURVEY
e assessment framework provided by Wentworth et al. can
be used to examine the impact of RPPs on behaviors, “such as
educators’ evidence-based decision-making, in the context of
school and district improvement eorts.” [55,p.251] Wentworth
et al. developed a survey instrument to measure several key
components of RPPs that accompanies the framework.
RPPs often highlight cultural gaps and dierences, includ-
ing inexible practices and policies [12,24,27]. Likewise, they
introduce a multi-party problem, which is amplied when the
practitioners and researchers have a limited history of interac-
tions and have not been trained to work together [27,48]. Many
of these organizational complexities multiply as more members
are added to the RPP [48].
Power imbalances can inhibit the goals for equity and in-
clusivity and inhibit the building of trust among the team
[1,2,12,19,27,32]. This is further complicated by the complex-
ities of communication, including issues of shared language
and communication about the partnership itself [30,46]. Eq-
uity within various aspects of research, including students,
can be addressed in RPPs, but often there are “...complex
and interrelated problems of practice associated with the
creation and scale of new practices that aim to position ed-
ucators as techquity designers and brokers” [31,p.6]. In this
regard, working towards justice also means that challenges
can arise when considering if and when research should be
conducted [12].
Building and maintaining trust among the RPP members
can require signicant time and commitment [3,12,26,27,48],
which can be dicult when sta time may be limited [36].
Teams must also be exible and adaptable, since at times the
focus of the work may shift [42]. An example of this is the shift-
ing required to address the impact of COVID-19 on the RPP
team, the RPP’s goals, and the impact on students.
Sharing knowledge from the original data produced and les-
sons learned throughout the team can be challenging [41,45].
Ensuring that practitioners understand the research methods
and processes requires adeptness at meeting practitioners
where they are [12,27,29,44]. Findings are often presented at
academic conferences and practitioners may not have the time
or resources to commit to attending [19].
Research ndings may challenge the practitioners’ funda-
mental beliefs and institutional obstacles and require that teach-
ers take the time to shift their teaching to include practices re-
lated to ndings [3,7,27]. It may also be dicult to build teacher
capacity to engage in the RPP and the implementation [13].
ASSESSING RPPS AND THEIR VALUE
Assessment of RPPs is important in ensuring that the key com-
ponents and the value of RPPs are being continually addressed.
In this section we highlight several assessment methods that
enable formative assessment to grow the RPP and summative
to describe the progression of the RPP against a framework for
benchmarking purposes.
THE FIVE DIMENSIONS OF EFFECTIVENESS MODEL
Although relatively new and not specically designed for RPPs
in CS, the Five Dimensions of Eectiveness assessment model
[27] has already been used and referenced across a variety of
projects [9,25,29,31] and has evidence of validity. In this model,
RPP progress is measured across the following ve dimensions,
Assessment of RPPs is important in
ensuring that the key components
and the value of RPPs are being
continually addressed. In this
section we highlight several
assessment methods that enable
formative assessment to grow
the RPP and summative to describe
the progression of the
RPP against a framework for
benchmarking purposes.
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SWOT ANALYSIS
A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and reats (SWOT)
analysis is a well-known assessment measure used in businesses
to help identify the strengths, mitigate weaknesses, seize on op-
portunities and identify threats, all in an eort to improve the
processes and functions of an organization. A SWOT analysis
is another method for evaluating an RPP’s health [22,24]. e
concept of SWOT as an indication of each component at a par-
ticular point of time could potentially be useful for principal in-
vestigators/directors of RPPs in order to improve the processes.
STUDENT OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT MODEL
e Student Outcomes Assessment Model measures outcomes of
an RPP’s interventions. is model uses a “dierence-in-dierences
estimation strategy” to “...compare student outcomes among the
innovations schools to the remaining schools in the district.” [5,p.
5] Outcome measures are dened collaboratively with stakehold-
ers (e.g., district leaders) based on jointly desired outcomes. is
can include a mixture of quantitative and qualitative measures and
should take the context of partnership participants into account.
RESOURCES
ough it will take time to understand their short- and long-
term impacts on building equitable CS education ecosystems
in K-12, research on RPPs in general indicate that RPPs for CS
hold great promise. If you or your team are interested in form-
ing an RPP for building and/or improving your equitable CS
education ecosystem, consider investigating these resources:
RPPforCS [10]
National Network of Education Research Practice
Partnerships [37]
NSF RPPforCS Call for Proposals [38]
Research+Practice Collaboratory [42]
Searchable Database of existing NSF-funded RPPforCS [44]
WT Grant Foundation supported projects [57]
Acknowledgements
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation
under Grant No. 1745199. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the National Science Foundation.
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Monica M. McGill
CSEdResearch.org & Knox College, Peoria, IL
monica@csedresearch.org
Alan Peterfreund
SageFox Consulting Group, Amherst, MA
apeterfreund@sagefoxgroup.com
Stacey Sexton
SageFox Consulting Group, Amherst, MA
ssexton@sagefoxgroup.com
Rebecca Zarch
SageFox Consulting Group, Amherst, MA
rzarch@sagefoxgroup.com
Maral Kargarmoakhar
Florida International University in Miami, Miami, FL
Amkarg002@fiu.edu
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3477607
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