What does it mean to “partner” in an RPP? What expectations should be shared for new partnership members? How do you communicate about the ways of working together in your partnership? These are just some questions you may encounter when onboarding or integrating newly hired staff that are not only new to your partnership, but may be new to RPPs more generally. Given the complexity of partnership work, it can be challenging to determine what essential information you should consider sharing as you introduce new members to the team. In this Extra Credit piece, we share three slides you might consider including in the onboarding deck to welcome new members, whether these newcomers are joining in an “R”, “P”, or other capacity. (And for information on how to run an equitable partnership meeting, especially in terms of setting the tone for working across R and P, please see this recent NNERPP Extra article.)

Before sharing our suggested slides, we first invite you to consider what goals you may have for the onboarding process. What are you hoping to communicate to your new teammate(s)? Relatedly, what do you hope to learn from them during this initial integration effort? How you answer these questions may depend on a number of factors. For example, if your partnership is already established and has had a long history, one goal for the onboarding process may be for newcomers to learn about and understand the RPP’s story, to hear about significant changes that were experienced by the partnership over time, and talk about anything else that has shaped the current identity of the partnership. If your partnership has only launched recently, a quick summary of efforts to date may suffice, and so you might spend more time thinking together about the next steps for the partnership. In either case, creating space for new members to (i) provide input on the partnership’s intended direction, (ii) hear about how they see themselves in the work, and (iii) engage in relationship building among new and existing RPP members will be critical. Articulating the aims of the onboarding process will thus be an important first step in determining the information you ultimately decide to include in the onboarding slide deck. 

Slide 1 | What is an RPP?

We suggest starting with what may be obvious but nonetheless fundamental: Defining research-practice partnerships. The purpose of this slide is two-fold: First, to ground everyone in understanding what the field means by “RPP” (which may or may not closely align with your own take on it — more on that in Slides 2 and 3), and second, to provide a field-level description of where RPPs are in their development in light of the growth and changes the field has seen in recent years (Arce-Trigatti, Chukhray, and López Turley, 2018).

We share with you here a forthcoming working definition by Farrell, Penuel, Coburn, Daniel, and Steup that represents an update to the previous definition put forth by Coburn, Penuel, and Geil (2013). Given the rapid growth of the RPP field in recent years, including the emergence of new RPP types not captured in the 2013 paper (Arce-Trigatti et al., 2018), this updated definition represents a more current understanding of RPPs. According to the new definition, an RPP is:

“A long-term collaboration aimed at educational improvement or equitable transformation through engagement with research. These partnerships are intentionally organized to connect diverse forms of expertise and to ensure that all partners have a say in the joint work.” (Emphasis added.)

Let’s dive a little deeper into the main components of an RPP according to this definition:

1. An RPP is a long-term collaboration: The longer time horizon of RPPs –versus the short time horizon of a one-off research project– allows for the development and cultivation of deep relationships, trust, and respect so that an actual committed partnership around multiple projects can form.
2. An RPP aims for improvement and equitable transformation: The goal of the RPP is not only to answer some theoretical research question but to also improve the educational experience of various stakeholders and to equitably transform education policy and practice.
3. An RPP prioritizes engagement with research: This improvement and transformation is brought about by and anchored in rigorous and relevant research. By jointly negotiating research questions, talking through research methods, and making sense of data and findings, R, P, community, and other relevant stakeholders actively engage in the research rather than Rs simply putting research out there in the hopes that Ps might find and use it.
4. An RPP connects diverse forms of expertise: An RPP acknowledges that researchers, practitioners, community members, and other education stakeholders all hold different kinds of valuable expertise and ensures that they all get to actively contribute their expertise to the partnership work.
5. An RPP engages in joint work: The research- and practice side actively work together at various points of the creation and development of the partnership and throughout the research process, including negotiating the aims of the partnership, the questions investigated in the various research projects, and the milestones of partnership success, in ways that require them to step outside of traditional R and P norms and roles.

What these main components look like in action can differ significantly across partnerships, since there are varied approaches to RPP work. This is illustrated in our own NNERPP Annual Report, a collection of vignettes of our members’ work over a given calendar year. In the absence of a field-level census of RPPs, the Annual Report can give partnership members that are new to RPPs an overview of at least one slice of the sector. If your partnership is a member of NNERPP, the Annual Report can also help introduce newcomers to the overall NNERPP community, including where and how similar lines of work are being conducted.

Slide 2 | Who are we?

A second slide to consider including in your onboarding materials is one where you share the “who” of your specific RPP. The purpose of this slide is to bring awareness to how you see your own RPP relative to the field-level look shared in Slide 1. As such, you may wish to emphasize some elements of the RPP definition over others, and perhaps add or omit partnership components that may better align with your team’s vision for partnership work. You may also want to elaborate on some of these elements, such as sharing how your partnership engages or plans to engage in joint work. As an example, the Stanford-Sequoia K-12 Research Collaborative’s guiding values illustrate how this particular partnership views itself while bringing together several of the elements from the RPP definition in slide 1. 

This would also be a great place to invite your new teammates to share how they see themselves contributing to the partnership and what role(s) they hope to play. This slide may also include more structural elements of the partnership, such as primary funders, an organizational chart outlining team members’ roles, and an overview of projects (past, current, and planned) and perhaps who is involved in these projects. For example, when onboarding new team members, the Stanford-San Francisco Unified School District Partnership shares this project map that also illustrates how the projects align with the district’s goals, priorities, and strategies. Additional structural elements to share could be a list of the data the partnership uses and information on any data contracts and agreements, and a theory of partnership change or theory of action describing how the partnership envisions its efforts leading to action (see some resources on theories of action here). You might also share information about steering committees, advisory councils, and similar governance structures. Lastly, you might want to share a brief history of the founding and evolution of the partnership.

Slide 3 | Why do we partner?

Finally, we also recommend sharing an overview of the “why” behind your partnership efforts – this will be related to the “who” of your partnership, but can dive a little deeper into why you do the work described in the previous slide and why you chose the RPP model as the best way to achieve this work. If your RPP already has a mission statement and/or objectives established, this would be the place to share those. See some example mission statements from NNERPP members below:

• Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC): “HERC aims to improve the connection between education research and decision making for the purpose of equalizing outcomes by race, ethnicity, economic status, and other factors associated with inequitable educational opportunities.”
• Los Angeles Education Research Institute (LAERI): “LAERI’s mission is to improve Los Angeles students’ educational experiences and outcomes by bringing researchers and practitioners together to collaborate on important educational challenges.”
• Philadelphia Education Research Consortium (PERC): “The mission of the Philadelphia Education Research Consortium – or PERC – is to provide timely, actionable, rigorous, and non-partisan research on the most pressing issues facing Philadelphia public education. To do this, we seek to engage the region’s colleges and universities, nonprofits, and the Philadelphia public education sector, including both district and charter schools, in respectful, mutually beneficial research-practice partnerships. By providing Philadelphia’s leaders and citizenry with high-quality information about progress, challenges, and effective strategies in education, PERC aims to increase education opportunities and achievement for all Philadelphia students.”

If your partnership is still emerging and the specific mission and objectives are still being developed, perhaps you can share the story that inspired the creation of the partnership. Any other information about why you chose an RPP model versus other ways of doing research and why/how different partners came to be a part of the RPP can also help your new team members understand what drives your partnership team to do the work. What is it about the specific goals of your partnership or about your community that makes the partnership model the best choice? How have you been able to make a difference so far? When talking about the difference your partnership has been able to make, you might also share how your partnership defines and/or measures success or effectiveness, if these are things your RPP has thought about or established.

Bonus | Additional RPP Resources

If you have the time, one more recommendation that might be helpful to new partners, especially if they are unfamiliar with RPPs is the following short reading list (and where to find more literature):

• Research‐Practice Partnerships: Building Two‐Way Streets of Engagement
• Fostering Educational Improvement with Research-Practice Partnerships
• A University and District Partnership Closes the Research-to-Classroom Gap
• Lessons From a School District-University Research Partnership: The Houston Education Research Consortium.
• Research–Practice Partnerships in Education: Outcomes, Dynamics, and Open Questions

For a larger collection of learning resources on RPPs, we invite you to explore the NNERPP RPP Knowledge Clearinghouse, where we share the most relevant and up-to-date resources from across the web curated specifically to facilitate one’s learning of education RPPs. We also recommend exploring the William T. Grant Foundation RPP microsite and the Research+Practice Collaboratory website for additional resources.

Final Thoughts

While engaging in RPPs is complex work that cannot easily be packaged into neat step-by-step instructions, it is important to think about how we might help new partners integrate seamlessly into the work. Organizing your onboarding slide deck to highlight some of the basic elements we’ve suggested here may be a good place to start. And, of course, there is always more to learn, to study, and to improve about RPPs, so we imagine everyone’s three slides will look different now and as we collectively learn more. We hope the slideshow outlined here serves merely as a starting point, with deeper thinking and training as an RPP team to follow.

REFERENCES

Arce-Trigatti, P., Chukhray, I., & López Turley, R. (2018). Research-Practice Partnerships in Education. In B. Schneider (Ed.), Handbook of the Sociology in Education in the 21st Century (pp. 561-580). Springer. 

Farrell, C., Penuel, W.R., Coburn, C., Daniel, J., and Steup, L. (forthcoming). Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: The State of the Field. William T. Grant Foundation and Spencer Foundation: New York.

Suggested citation: NNERPP (2021). Onboarding New Partnership Members? Here are Three Slides to Include. NNERPP Extra, 3(2), 15-18.