INTRODUCTION

We are thrilled to officially release “Indicators of Research-Practice Partnership Health and Effectiveness: Updating the Five Dimensions Framework” by Erin Henrick, Caitlin C. Farrell, Corinne Singleton, Alison Fox Resnick, William R. Penuel, Paula Arce-Trigatti, Danny Schmidt, Stacey Sexton, Kristina Stamatis, and Sarah Wellberg, an updated version of a 2017 framework conceptualizing research-practice partnership (RPP) effectiveness. The 2017 framework was authored by Erin Henrick, Paul Cobb, William R. Penuel, Kara Jackson, and Tiffany Clark and represented a critical inflection point in the education RPP space, articulating five dimensions of effectiveness that emerged from a field-wide scan of education partnerships. It offered a clear pathway to begin the study and assessment of the effectiveness of education RPPs and was a giant step forward in our thinking and practice of RPPs.  

As a part of a recent project to develop tools to support RPP health, a team across NNERPP and the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP) has updated the original 2017 framework. This revision is based on field testing and co-design with over 300 RPPers across 70 RPPs. The revised framework and accompanying tools are designed to help partnerships reflect on their joint goals, consider possible next actions, and foster improvement within their partnerships in ways that will fuel educational change and the transformation of systems more broadly. 

In this NNERPP Extra piece, we outline the major shifts in the revised version of the framework, share reflections from RPPers who had a chance to explore the framework and accompanying toolkit, and invite future engagement. We invite you to explore the full framework here and the toolkit here.

WHAT’S THE SAME? WHAT’S DIFFERENT?

The revised framework has many familiar features from the 2017 version. It is organized around the same five dimensions that reflect a set of desired goals RPP partners might want to work towards, with indicators that shed light on what progress on that dimension could look like or entail. Second, the dimensions and indicators continue to be applicable across RPP contexts. How a partnership meaningfully brings any one of them to life will depend on their context, relationships, and goals. The potential power of partnership work lies in their ability to be responsive to local contexts, people, and relationships – thus, we worked carefully to make sure we were being as general as possible in our framing, with the idea that each partnership will need to further specify what “health and effectiveness” means for them in relation to each dimension.

The revised framework also reflects significant shifts from the 2017 version. There is now explicit attention paid to equity, voice, privilege, and power across all dimensions and their indicators. This emphasis can be seen throughout each dimension, with an invitation for partners to meaningfully include the voices of students, families, and communities and to pay attention to how power dynamics unfold within partnership work. Based on clear direction from RPPers involved in this project, we intentionally incorporated this focus across the dimensions because the work of seeing and disrupting power dynamics requires us to rethink all the layers of work in partnership. 

Second, the revised framework is designed with a broad range of RPPs in mind that vary in their goals, composition, and ways of organizing, per the revised RPP definition from the recent state of the field report. The revision doesn’t call out specific “types” of RPPs anymore. Similarly, the language shifts from “researcher” and “practitioner” as set roles towards a wider range of possible participants with research, practice, policy, or community perspectives, with an acknowledgment that roles can be fluid. 

Finally, it’s one thing to put forth the framework vision of the dimensions and indicators of RPP Health and Effectiveness. It’s another thing to know how to see and improve those dimensions and indicators within your own unique RPP. To support RPPs in making sense of the framework in relation to their own partnership, we created an online toolkit to accompany the framework. Released in July of 2023 at the NNERPP Annual Forum, the RPP Effectiveness and Health Tool Kit contains a set of survey items, mini-routines, and reflection exercises meant to facilitate a partnership’s quest both to understand how the RPP is currently doing and to inform improvement goals.

REFLECTIONS FROM NNERPP MEMBERS AND FRIENDS

In December 2023, we hosted a virtual webinar where NNERPP members and friends had an opportunity to dig into the revised framework and explore the toolkit. Here are some of the ideas, questions, and feedback that emerged.

The group focused on Dimension 1, Cultivate Trust and Relationships discussed how the revised ideas around trust might look different in a partnership that was established with returning members, a partnership that had new members coming into an existing structure, or a partnership that was just getting off the ground. The group also discussed the conditions under which they’d want to use an anonymous survey scale or one-on-one interview questions to understand members’ sense of trust. 

A second group dug into Dimension 2, Engage in Research or Inquiry to Address Local Needs. This group appreciated the wide range of tools developed for RPPs and imagined many different ways for tools to fit together based on an RPP’s time and capacity. Several RPPers wanted to try out the 5-minute mini-routine at upcoming meetings, while one member… “liked the idea of using the survey scales to get a read on where our districts are within our RPP that has been running (and growing) for about 5 years. We haven’t done a lot of explicit work toward RPP health, and I think this could be a place to start to get a baseline.” 

Group three considered the revised Dimension 3, Supporting Practice or Community Organization in Making Progress on its Goals. The group talked about how comprehensive the updated dimension seemed, noted the many different ideas that were included in the indicators of this dimension, and brainstormed the different places their RPP might want to start with their own inquiry into this dimension. 

Turning to Dimension 4, Engage with the Broader Field to Improve Educational Practices, Systems, and Inquiry, the group discussed who is the “broader audience” for each of their partnerships. One RPPer “appreciate[d] the inclusion of other audiences and variety of messagers, centering community/practice voices, [and] the idea that we can share both findings and process knowledge, as well as tools, routines, etc.”  The group was particularly drawn to the reflection prompts in the discussion activities and mini-routines, noting the need to intentionally think through who to pose each, when, and how often.  

A final group focused on Dimension 5, Foster Ongoing Learning and Develop Infrastructure for Partnering. The group discussed the intentional shift towards mutual “learning” versus the earlier language of “capacity building.” They puzzled about if and how learning occurs sequentially or concurrently across the nested layers of individuals, organizations, and the RPP itself. They also discussed which individual or group in the RPP might be responsible for creating opportunities for learning across these multiple layers.

EXPERIMENTING AND LEARNING TOGETHER IN 2024

We invite all NNERPPers and the broader RPP field to engage with the newly revised framework and toolkit. Please let us know how you are making adaptations and using them within your context. Do you have ideas about how you might want support in learning and experimenting with the framework and tools? Want to be a part of a subnetwork focused on RPP health? Want a partner-in-crime to help adapt and test tools with your partnership? Have questions before you begin? We’re all ears. Please stay tuned for upcoming opportunities to engage with the NNERPP community around the framework tools in the days ahead!

Paula Arce-Trigatti is Director of the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP); Caitlin Farrell is director of the National Center of Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP) at the University of Colorado Boulder; and Alison Fox Resnick is Research Associate at NCRPP.

Suggested citation: Arce-Trigatti, P., Farrell, C., & Resnick, A. F. (2024). Indicators of RPP Health and Effectiveness: Introducing an Updated Framework. NNERPP Extra, 6(1), 23-26.