Collaborative Education Research

Building the field for collaborative education research

To better understand the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to do partnership work, NNERPP is part of a multi-organizational effort on building the field for collaborative education research. This effort is not limited to but includes the RPP approach to doing collaborative work and was launched in response to a current lack of programs and pathways to support collaborative education research as well as limited knowledge about the learning that researchers, practitioners, and community members need to engage in to support such collaborative work.

As part of this effort, the design team organized a set of virtual discussions during the summer and fall of 2022 exploring what preparation is needed for working in collaborative education research. Over 150 people from a range of institutional homes participated in these discussions. In October 2022, the design team held parallel in-person and virtual design events to synthesize and build on the insights that emerged during the previous virtual events.

An initial report summarizes the work that took place and the thoughts that emerge during these events as well as subsequent sensemaking and work by the design team. It also describes the resulting shift from framing the work in terms of individual skills and knowledge needed to engage in collaborative education research to instead surfacing the range of critical questions that might be essential to engaging in the processes of collaborative education research.

Lastly, the report offers a framework representing the learning demands of collaborative education research by unpacking the kinds of critical questions those engaging in collaborative education research need to learn how to wrestle with individually and collectively. The framework groups critical questions into five core ideas:

• Systems landscape
• Interpersonal relationships
• Intrapersonal relationships
• Resource mobilization
• Educational research

Questions are also grouped by those that relate to “Critical Reflection on Past Practices” and those that relate to “Equitable Development of Future Processes.”

We invite you to explore the framework and full report here to discover how the “building the field” effort might inform your own efforts in getting better at RPP-ing.