Research and Inquiry

Defined

Research and inquiry activities that help partners advance toward their stated aims are essential to RPP work. RPPs typically pursue a wide range of inquiry approaches meant to address similarly wide-ranging questions usually co-determined by all partners – often, these practice or policy questions relate directly to a real challenge experienced by practice or community partners. Everyone in the partnership can engage in these activities, from all “sides” of the work and through all stages of a given research project. How the RPP decides to divide who does what depends on the expertise or capacity of each partner. This is in contrast to how “traditional” research is produced, where researchers usually work solo and share findings via a journal once ready.

Co-developing a mutually agreed upon research agenda that will guide the work of the partnership is often one of the defining features of RPPs, and is usually a first step to diving into research and inquiry activities. Another key artifact is a partnership’s theory of action, which describes the process the RPP plans to adopt as they pursue their identified goals. In particular, a theory of action clarifies how an intended change is hypothesized to occur. The format of an RPP’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.

RPPs can engage in a number of inquiry activities that often take many forms, including descriptive and evaluative approaches, continuous improvement activities, community-based or participatory action research, and many other approaches. Here, the structure of the RPP may also affect how the partnership engages in research and inquiry activities. For example, an RPP partnering directly with teachers and curriculum specialists to develop improved curricula may engage in rapid cycles of inquiry to test improvement ideas, while an RPP involving one or several districts may develop a focal question with various stakeholders, and then base a longer-term research agenda on that.