Going Deeper

Defined

Broadly defined, a research-practice partnership’s theory of action identifies a set of goals or objectives the partnership is interested in working towards and describes the process by which the partnership expects to achieve those aims. In more basic terms, a theory of action clarifies how change is expected to occur. The format of a research-practice partnership’s theory of action will vary considerably, especially given the nature of the goals, the current capacity and constraints of participating organizations, and preferences for how the work will unfold.

There are multiple levels at which theories of action might make sense for RPPs: Most RPPs develop an overarching theory of action that connects processes and goals at the partnership level; additionally, individual research projects conducted by the RPP likely require their own theory of action. Furthermore, there might be other distinctions, for example at the staff level, that require their own theories of action: For example, the RPP might be interested in “building capacity” of early career researchers within the RPP, and a theory of action would detail the processes and conditions that need to be in place to support that kind of learning at that level of staff.

Importantly, theories of action should be living documents: To really make them valuable, partnerships should come back to them regularly, iteratively updating them with new information surrounding the original “theory” describing how they might achieve a particular goal. This type of iteration also helps get partnerships into a learning mindset, where past mistakes can be learned from.

Why a theory of action?

We have learned over time that a research-practice partnership theory of action is critical to establishing and operating RPPs with the potential for success. Without one, a partnership risks a number of possible opportunities for failure.

These may include having untested, unrealistic assumptions about how the partnership’s activities will lead to changes in practice; allocating already scarce resources inefficiently; having an inability to learn about why something is or is not working; and making it difficult to communicate and justify to multiple stakeholders why the partnership is engaging in a particular activity.

By investing time in developing and implementing a partnership theory of action, the RPP may be able to enhance their potential for success through the following: clarifying the activities necessary to support the hoped for change; communicating the partnership’s priorities both internally and externally; having a platform for negotiating roles across both the research and practice sides of the partnership; and enabling the partnership to continuously learn and improve on partnership processes, activities, and outputs.

Co-developing a theory of action

Because there are a variety of dimensions to consider when developing the partnership’s theory of action, there is no one accepted way to co-develop one. Additionally, our knowledge of how theories of action might be utilized to support successful partnering is still limited. We offer some key resources below and additional ones in our RPP Knowledge Library that provide some initial thinking on how one might go about creating a research-practice partnership theory of action, including sample templates / guides. The key is “co-development” – as with anything else in RPP work, theories of action need to be developed collaboratively across all partners.

Key resources

See three key resources on theories of action below. You can browse a full list of resources in our RPP Knowledge Library.

Defined

There are several important RPP activities found under the broad category of “communications and engagement,” typically organized into two large buckets: those that support internal communications goals and those that support external efforts. Some RPPs may have dedicated communication specialists that specifically support this work; others may have an RPP broker leading both the internal and external efforts.

Internally, communications and engagement strategies help to support relationship building within the partnership, ensure the work itself gets done, and aim to create opportunities to center all voices in the work. Externally, communications and engagement strategies tend to focus on how constituent groups who are not necessarily directly involved in the partnership might engage with the work of the RPP – these groups might include school board members, community members, university leadership, and students, for example.

Publishing and sharing partnership research findings can be an internally-directed or an externally-facing activity, depending on the specific target audiences of a given research project and on the structure of the RPP. For example, some RPPs do not share their research externally but only with their specific practice-side partners. Others seek to reach various audiences outside of the partnership with their research as well, in which case communication and engagement strategies around a new publication might include a variety of public relations activities to reach specific audiences. Whether internally- or externally-facing, when sharing research findings, it is helpful to plan for “engagement” rather than “dissemination,” since an RPP’s goal is generally to inform key audiences’ thinking in some impactful way –including actually putting the research into practice–, rather than have them passively scan a research report.

We outline more specific internal and external communication activities elsewhere on our website and invite you to explore there for further details.

While some early stage RPPs might have the capacity to already develop external communications plans, most do not have the resources available to support communications personnel and activities. Additionally, external engagement may become important only later on, once the partnership has produced some work and is ready to prioritize the learning of others beyond the RPP. Internal communication efforts may be more important in younger RPPs, at least those activities centered around relationship building. Typically, those engaged in RPP work dive deeper into the communications and engagement aspect of the work once the RPP is more mature, as shared by members of the NNERPP community who generally recommend leaving the development of communications plans for year 2 of the RPP and beyond.

Writing About RPPs

Another aspect of communications and engagement that becomes important as you dive deeper into the work is how RPPs themselves are written about. Building a literature base is important to the continued growth and understanding of RPPs, and there is an increasing number of published articles about partnerships. Given this growing awareness and the importance of literature on RPPs, those writing about RPPs might need to challenge the norms of typical research writing to more accurately reflect the disruptive goals of RPPs and the uniqueness of a given partnership. At NNERPP, we have examined and reflected upon these norms and how partnerships can better be written about in our NNERPP Extra article “Writing and Researching About RPPs: An Invitation to Reflect.” The article considers the core tasks that are involved in writing a research manuscript: (1) framing the focal intervention, approach, or challenge, (2) summarizing and drawing on current literature, (3) being specific about the context of a study, and (4) designing inquiry questions. For each of these tasks, we examine a problematic norm or trend in research articles more broadly that could be unintentionally brought forward into writing about RPPs and offer suggestions for challenging these trends.

Brokers

Brokers are becoming increasingly critical to facilitating the work of RPPs, serving as a bridge or connecter between the worlds of research and practice. There are a variety of names under which they appear in the literature, including boundary spanners, brokers, and intermediaries. Some of the primary responsibilities associated with this role include translating research to practice and connecting otherwise unconnected actors in both the research, policy, and in-between spaces. As such, brokers play an important role in partnerships’ communication and engagement efforts. RPP brokers can come from research, practice, or community organizations; organizations, in addition to individuals, can also play this role. To learn more about brokers and brokering in RPPs, we invite you to explore this section of our website dedicated to the topic.

Key resources

See three key resources on communications and engagement in RPPs below. You can browse a full list of resources in our RPP Knowledge Library.

Defined

The University of British Columbia’s Indigenous Initiatives shares two useful definitions of positionality and how it relates to power. Generally, positionality “refers to how differences in social position and power shape identities and access in society.” In a research context, positionality can be described as a methodology that “requires researchers to identify their own degrees of privilege through factors of race, class, educational attainment, income, ability, gender, and citizenship”, as described by M. Duarte (2017, p.135).

In the context of an RPP, power and positionality show up in many ways, including but not limited to: Power differences resulting from individual identities, including race, gender, educational attainment, sexuality, age, nationality, and the intersectionalities of these; those resulting from organizational hierarchies that position people differently across roles; those resulting from funding practices, where research-side organizations are commonly still the ones who receive grant funding; and those resulting from histories of oppression of marginalized or non-dominant populations that have often been the subject of research. If not specifically and critically examined and addressed, racist systems, histories, and power imbalances can persist within partnerships. Attending to power dynamics should thus be an intentional and continual activity for those engaged in RPP work and should encompass all aspects and activities of RPP work, including research and inquiry activities, partnership meetings, and onboarding, for example.

We further examine power and positionality here and race and racism in RPPs here and invite you to explore these pages for further reading.

Building Trust in RPPs

Trust between all members of the partnership is an essential element to all aspects of RPP work. This is one of the ways that research-practice partnerships differ over a more traditional researcher-as-consultant model: In an RPP, research and practice side participants, as well as any number of other partners, commit to working together repeatedly and over a longer time frame, and thus, must dedicate time to learning how to collaborate productively.

Given its importance, however, trust is not something that comes easily or quickly and must be continually tended to over time. Considering that research and practice side participants often work in strikingly different environments, with unique norms, cultures, expectations, and timelines, establishing trust and building relationships across these entities is challenging. While we currently can find few resources that are expressly dedicated to addressing these challenges, you will find that trust and relationship building is a very common underlying theme to many RPP challenges. In general terms, members of the NNERPP community have shared the following strategies for laying the groundwork for trusting relationships based on mutual respect in RPPs: Communicating frequently and openly among all partners, valuing everyone’s expertise, and creating the space for all partners to safely share ideas and concerns. Part of this effort will include actively working to address underlying power dynamics shaping how partnership members interact and collaborate.

We can also venture outside the world of RPPs, to the world of business, where an RPP might be referred to as “a cross-industry” team. In “Wicked-Problem Solvers,” author Amy C. Edmondson (2016) summarizes some key findings from her research on cross-industry teams and offers some take-away lessons that we think are wholly appropriate for RPPs:

• Foster an adaptable vision that allows the project to be flexible as new goals are added, new team members are incorporated, and learned lessons feed back into organizational processes.
• Promote psychological safety so that the diverse group of partnership members are encouraged to share ideas, thoughts, and concerns without fearing ridicule for lacking expertise or sharing a different viewpoint.
• Enable knowledge sharing in order to solicit more contextual information around partnership members’ thought processes: this type of “cross-domain” learning can help avoid conflicts among members with different expertise or experiences.
• Foster execution-as-learning, meaning, place an emphasis on experimentation of organizational processes; no tried and true blueprint exists when cross-industry teams come together so it’s best to embrace the unknown.

Key resources

See three key resources on power dynamics and building trust in RPPs below. You can browse a full list of resources in our RPP Knowledge Library.