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Learn more about what RPPing looks like in practice –from getting started to going deeper to evaluating and improving RPPs– and what kind of impact partnerships are making. RPPs in Practice
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Meet our members and hear about their success stories, find your specialized learning community in one (or more!) of our subnetworks, and learn more about joining the NNERPP community. Our Network
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Learn more about who we are, what we do, and why we do what we do. About NNERPP

Defined

“Supporting the partner practice organization in achieving its goals” is one of the five dimensions of RPP effectiveness put forth by Erin Henrick, Paul Cobb, William R. Penuel, Kara Jackson, and Tiffany Clark in their 2017 paper “Assessing Research-Practice Partnerships: 5 Dimensions of RPP Effectiveness.” As Henrick and colleagues point out, this stands in contrast to the traditional way of doing research, where there often is no explicit aim to support the practice organization’s goals. At NNERPP, we adopt Henrick et al.’s indicators of progress on this dimension as well, which include:

  • The RPP provides research and evidence to support improvements in the partner organization.
  • The RPP helps the practice organization identify productive strategies for addressing problems of practice.
  • The RPP informs the practice organization’s implementation and ongoing adjustments of improvement strategies.
In addition to those explicitly mentioned in these indicators, there are a number of other activities as well that an RPP engages in that relate to this aim, including the activities of brokering, communications and engagement, and activities related to supporting the use of research evidence.

How exactly an RPP might support the P-side varies by the structure and specific goals of an RPP, the expertise of team members, and sources of funding. For example, improvement science focused RPPs might work directly with teachers to develop solutions to a problem of practice in instruction, while other RPPs might evaluate a local policy or program (Henrick et al., 2017, p. 11).

Key Resources

Below, we list some key resources related to supporting the use of research evidence. You can browse a full list of resources in our RPP Knowledge Library.

“Systems for Instructional Improvement: Creating Coherence From the Classroom to the District Office”: This book outlines how the Middle-school Mathematics and the Institutional Setting of Teaching (MIST) Project went about improving the quality of mathematics teaching at the scale of a large district.

NNERPP Yearbooks and Annual Reports: These artifacts share annual reflections from the NNERPP community on their partnership efforts for the calendar year. Each report or yearbook contains a brief vignette describing how their activities impacted or connected directly to practice.

Connection opportunities

  • District Research Leaders Subnetwork: The District Research Leaders Subnetwork is a specialized learning community for those working in a research department at a district. Close to 40 district research leaders from the NNERPP community currently participate in this subnetwork.
  • Upcoming webinars
  • Workshops