HOW ARE WE TEACHING RPPs? AN EXPLORATION OF UNIVERSITY COURSE SYLLABI

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) aim to create intentional long-term, trusting, and collaborative partnerships that bring together a diverse set of actors to “shift power relations …[and] ensure that all partners have a say in the joint work” (Farrell et al., 2021). This is important work, and as many of us have learned, it is not easy to realize. RPPs challenge traditional norms and structures around research and practice, asking people to do things they are often not trained or rewarded for. So if we wish for the RPP approach to continue to grow and for RPPers to get better at this work, how can the next generation of RPPers learn how to do it? How do we teach RPPs?

That question inspired the formation of NNERPP’s Teaching RPPs Subnetwork, a learning community for those who are currently teaching about RPPs (or would like to do so in the future). Throughout subnetwork conversations, as members shared how they are grappling with this challenge, we discovered that while we are all preparing people for RPP work –mainly through RPP courses offered at universities–, we are doing so in very different ways. We decided to start learning more about this by looking closely at the syllabi from existing RPP courses offered at U.S. universities, shared with us through NNERPP. 

In this article, we share what those syllabi reveal about the goals and learning experiences in the RPP courses that currently exist and how well these line up with what other explorations have found about what those wishing to engage in RPP work need to know. We close with ideas for instructors and for partners who might help shape these courses. We hope this offers inspiration and resources for those who teach, or hope to teach, RPPs.

OUR GUIDING QUESTIONS AND WHERE THEY CAME FROM

The guiding questions for our syllabi analysis build on the following previous efforts examining what it takes to work in RPPs: The Collaborative Education Research Collective’s (2023) report on the knowledge, skills, and dispositions people need for this work, including habits of mind like flexibility, comfort with ambiguity, and valuing diverse expertise; the St. Louis Translational Fellows program at WashU, which prepares postdoctoral fellows for RPP work by placing them in partnerships, supporting them with seminars and mentoring, and eventually having them negotiate a longer-term initiative with partners; and a NNERPP Annual Forum session we led in 2025 to co-construct “A Portrait of an RPP Researcher,” aiming to create a crowdsourced picture of the knowledge, skills, mindsets, and behaviors of an ideal research-side partner in an RPP. Here, participants named key competencies such as communication, people and project management, facilitation, and collaboration – competencies that are echoed in the St. Louis Translational Fellows program. And like the Collective’s report, the Portraits also pointed to a set of dispositions, most commonly named as flexibility, continuous learning, patience, reflection, and emotional intelligence. 

These efforts suggest that much of the preparation for the next generation of RPPs depends on capacities rarely taught in graduate preparation. It is worth noting that this observation applies to both "research-side" and "practice-side" participants, although prior work has tended to be slanted towards a focus on capacities needed for research-side partners. Building on these experiences, when we turned to the syllabi, we wanted to find out: Who are the learners that the courses are intended to serve, i.e., for research-side or practice-side partners or both? Unfortunately, we discovered early on that that question was not easy to answer by looking at syllabi alone. So we concentrated on questions that were possible to find out from syllabi: What are the goals and assignments in RPP courses? To what extent do they involve field experiences? Which topics and readings do RPP courses use? How do courses balance learning “about” RPPs with practicing RPP work? Below, we explain how we tried to answer those questions. Later, in the Implications, we circle back to the Portrait, St. Louis Translational Fellows’ competencies, and the Collective’s framework to consider whether and how available RPP course syllabi map onto what the field says RPP-ers need to know.

WHAT WE LOOKED AT

We analyzed 24 syllabi from courses offered between 2016 and 2026, nearly all since 2023, shared through the Teaching RPPs Subnetwork. The courses are taught at 14 R1 universities, half public and half private, across all major U.S. regions. Seventeen courses are housed in schools or departments of education, and seven in policy or other social science programs. Most are graduate courses: nine doctoral, one master’s, eight open to both, and two open to undergraduates as well. Seventeen courses were taught in person and seven online or hybrid. Nine were part of a larger sequence or were integrated with another course: three were year-long experiences ending in field-based capstones, four were sequences across two universities, and two were paired courses that met jointly for part of the term.

We coded each syllabus for course goals, assignments, weekly topics, and required readings, and sorted what we found into themes. To calibrate, we first each coded a few of the syllabi on our own, then met to reconcile differences. We also used generative AI tools (NotebookLM and Claude) to cross-check our results, followed by human review, and we shared early findings with the Subnetwork twice to shape our thinking.

Caveats. Syllabi only show what instructors planned and prioritized, at the level of detail they chose to include, not how courses unfolded or what students learned. Also, our sample includes only courses shared through the NNERPP network by instructors who see their courses as RPP-related. Finally, to make meaningful comparison possible, we focused this analysis on syllabi from credit-bearing courses at U.S. universities and set aside syllabi from outside the U.S. We do not assume we have captured all the courses that exist on RPPs, but we offer this as a snapshot of the current landscape and a starting point for ongoing conversation.

FINDINGS

At first glance, the 24 syllabi looked quite different in their goals, topics, readings, and assignments. But in comparing them, we did find patterns. The most important pattern was a split between courses that primarily prepare students to understand RPPs as a topic of study and courses aimed to prepare students to engage in the work of RPPs. 

(I) WHAT GOALS COURSES HAVE

When examining course goals, we found the main difference to be a focus on understanding RPPs (theory-oriented) versus learning how to “do” RPPs (practice-oriented):

Learning about RPPs vs. learning to be an RPPer. Course goals fell into three groups. Eight syllabi had theory-oriented course goals focused primarily on learning about RPPs, nine had practice-oriented goals focused primarily on the practicalities of doing RPP work, and six combined both. One research methods course named neither theory- nor practice-oriented goals related to RPPs. 

Theory-oriented courses emphasized engagement with scholarship. These courses focused on understanding RPPs and related collaborative approaches, examining the research-practice relationship and research use, and exploring the impact and effectiveness of RPPs. All eight theory-oriented courses introduced RPPs as a concept, six courses focused on foundational knowledge (of what RPPs are, where they came from, and how they differ), and five called for engaging critically with the research literature. 

Practice-oriented courses emphasized the technical know-how of partnership research. These included seven courses with goals focused on designing and conducting research and improvement-oriented inquiry, four with goals focused on partnership governance and data management (such as MOUs, data use agreements, IRB approval, and the uses and limits of administrative data), and three focused on translating research, research ethics, dissemination, and preparing for a professional future. By comparison, none of the theory-oriented courses named goals about partnership governance, data agreements, dissemination, or professional futures. This suggests that the conceptual and operational sides of RPP work may often be taught in separate courses. 

Combined courses had the broadest goals. These syllabi were most likely to include goals related to not only navigating partnership dynamics (such as navigating challenges in partnership research and navigating power and status) but also related to engaging in field experiences and critical engagement with research (four of six each). Half named the exploration or development of practical tools and materials, and four named communication or dissemination, including co-authoring reports and briefs. 

Shared goals, different verbs. Some goal language cut across orientations. For example, goals related to partnership dynamics appeared in 13 syllabi, equity in RPPs appeared in 10 syllabi, and communication in 9 syllabi. But shared goals did not necessarily mean shared intentions. When we examined goals more closely to compare objectives side by side, we noticed that the verbs differed. Theory-oriented objectives tended to ask students to understand, explore, examine, investigate, and review. Practice-oriented objectives tended to ask students to apply, find, create, produce, present, draft, train, and to learn “how to” do something. Combined courses asked students to analyze tensions and then act on them. Action-oriented wording appeared in only one of four theory-oriented syllabi with course goals related to partnership dynamics, compared with four of five combined syllabi and all of the practice-oriented ones with such goals. In short, theory-oriented courses tended to treat RPPs as a subject, while practice-oriented courses tended to treat them as work to be done. 

Course sequences and integrations may be one way to bridge this divide. Two courses at the same university—one that was more theory-oriented and one that was more practice-oriented—were designed as paired courses that met jointly for part of the term, intending to bring theory and practice perspectives together. We coded them separately, so they are not counted as combined courses.

(II) WHAT STUDENTS ARE ASKED TO DO

Assignments also split between theory and practice. 

Theory-oriented assignments focused on demonstrating knowledge about RPPs and related research. These types of assignments were widespread, with nineteen courses including at least one and seven courses including three or more. The most common assignments of this type included reading responses (10 syllabi), presentations on readings or research (9), RPP case studies (7), traditional research or term papers (6), and research proposals for traditional empirical studies (6).  

Practice-oriented assignments asked students to build know-how through direct experience with partnerships and engaged research. Sixteen courses included at least one, and six courses included three or more such assignments. Common assignments were presentations on partnership-based field experiences to audiences that included partners or clients (9), and reflections on students’ partnership experiences or positionality (8). Some practice-oriented courses went further: Five courses had students co-construct a research proposal with external partners, and five had students propose a plan for launching a partnership, though only one required them to pitch it to real partners. About half of the courses with theory-oriented goals also leaned toward theory in their assignments, and vice versa.

Field-based work was the most common practice-oriented assignment, showing up in 12 courses to varying depths. Nine courses placed students in immersive internship- or apprenticeship-style placements where they attended meetings of, participated in, and contributed to existing community-engaged research or RPP teams. Assignments within these placements ranged from observation—such as attending partnership meetings or taking a “field trip” to see partnership work—to partnership products, such as completing research tasks or creating partnership presentations or infographics. Another three courses involved shorter-term field-based assignments, including consulting with outside agencies or stakeholders for particular learning purposes. Notably, seven of the nine courses identified as practice-oriented in their goals were ones that placed students in an immersive field experience in a partnership.

(III) WHICH TOPICS COURSES COVER AND WHAT STUDENTS READ

Across the syllabi, topics clustered into 24 categories, and four occurred most frequently: foundations, research and its uses, power and equity, and doing partnership work. 

Foundations. The most common topic overall was an introduction to RPPs, which appeared in 16 of the 24 syllabi. This topic usually involved an overview of the concept of the RPP, its history, and RPP principles. This topic was connected to a set of foundational texts, including Coburn et al. (2013), Tseng et al. (2017), Coburn and Penuel (2016), and Farrell et al. (2021). Nine syllabi covered types of RPPs, such as research alliances, design-based partnerships, and networked improvement communities, often paired with readings that provided an overview of RPP types (such as Coburn et al., 2013). This was often followed by a deeper dive into the primary research traditions associated with those types, such as design-based implementation research (Penuel et al., 2011; Fishman et al., 2013) and improvement science (Bryk et al., 2015; Russell et al., 2017).

Research and its uses. Many courses focused on research itself. Topics in this category included methods and research design (15), the nature of social science research (13), evidence use (13), and dissemination (13). Readings often questioned conventional assumptions about rigor, for example by proposing relevance to practice as a criterion for rigor (Gutiérrez & Penuel, 2014), or by asking what it takes to do educational science in real-world settings (Snow, 2015). Frameworks for collaborative educational research were also offered (Penuel et al., 2020).

Power and equity. Twelve syllabi addressed power dynamics within partnerships, in the production of research, or in relation to race. Six each covered equity in RPPs and research ethics. These readings were among the most critical in the sample, from Denner and colleagues' (2019) account of negotiating trust, power, and culture in a partnership to Diamond’s (2021) reflection on racial equity in RPPs and Chicago Beyond’s (2019) guidebook on reclaiming community ethics in research.

Doing partnership work. About half the courses covered initiating partnerships (10), negotiating a research focus (10), negotiating roles and responsibilities (8), and engaging communities and families (8). Fewer covered evaluating RPP effectiveness (7), sustaining partnerships, trust, common RPP challenges, and “how-to” tools and skills (6 each). Readings here mixed empirical studies with practical guidance written for the field. The studies include Thompson and colleagues’ (2017) on the questions RPPs pursue, Farrell, Harrison, and Coburn (2019) on role negotiation, and Arce-Trigatti and colleagues (2023) on whether RPPs are responsive to partners’ needs when negotiating a research focus. The practical guidance included webinars from the Research + Practice Collaboratory, William T. Grant Foundation guides (e.g., Structuring a Partnership; Henrick et al.’s 2017 framework for RPP effectiveness and its 2023 update), a handbook for brokers (Wentworth et al., 2021), and NNERPP Extra articles on dissemination in RPPs (Arce-Trigatti & colleagues, 2022), facilitating racial justice and healing in RPPs (Larosa, 2022), and attending to equity when evaluating RPPs (Henrick et al., 2019).

Less common topics. These included engaging policymakers (5), theories of action (5) such as logic models and small theories, funding RPPs (4), and organizations and institutions that RPPs work with, such as districts and education agencies (4). We found few or no RPP-specific readings for these topics.

Taken together, the topics and texts give somewhat more attention to research and its relationship to practice than to the day-to-day work of partnering.

IMPLICATIONS

Our main takeaway is that no single course can “do it all” – this is not surprising, given the complexity of RPPs, but it has implications for how we might want to think about teaching RPPs. Each type of RPP course has its place: Theory-oriented seminars are valuable for raising awareness and building foundational knowledge about RPPs and why they matter; yet, when it comes to preparing future RPP-ers, it is important to consider how students are provided with unique opportunities to experience, practice, and reflect on real-life RPP work. This occurred in practice-oriented courses, where students were asked to design and conduct partnership research, implement improvement-oriented inquiry processes, and develop materials for partners, often through an apprenticeship with an active RPP. But these practice-oriented learning opportunities were on the whole less common than theory-focused learning.

Importantly, courses designed as part of a sequence tended to move from theory toward practice, which suggests that part of the challenge is that there may simply be too much to learn to fit into one stand-alone course. This leads us to an important insight: the most powerful designs may be realized when instructors are not limited to single course experiences but able to conceive of learning experiences intentionally sequenced and stretched over multiple courses or entire programs.

HOW THE COURSES COMPARE WITH EMERGING VIEWS OF WHAT RPP-ers NEED

To see how the syllabi compare to prior work from the field about the skills and orientations RPP-ers need, we return to the Portrait of an RPP Researcher, St. Louis Translational Fellows’ competencies, and the Collaborative Education Research Collective’s report. 

The strongest alignment was in research design, power, and context. The courses aligned with the Portrait’s and St. Louis Fellows’ emphasis on research production and translation that is relevant for and inclusive with practitioners. Methods and research design, dissemination, evidence use, and the nature of social science research were among the most common topics that introduced new ways of thinking about research production and translation. The courses also reflect the Collaborative Education Research Collective’s concern with power and context, as about half the syllabi addressed power dynamics, partnership dynamics, and equity. Courses with immersive placements and opportunities to present to partners or co-construct proposals with partners appear to offer the most promising opportunities for students to practice this work and not only read about it.

The weakest alignment was around dispositions. Both the Portrait and the Collective emphasized dispositions, such as flexibility, humility, and comfort with ambiguity. However, these dispositions rarely appeared as stated goals in the courses. The closest we found were objectives about developing a reflexive practice or considering one’s positionality. It is possible that instructors may be cultivating these dispositions without explicitly writing them into their objectives. However, because we used syllabi as our evidence, where these capacities are not named, it is hard to know whether or how instructors designed for them or to what extent students had opportunities to develop them.

Relationships received mixed attention. Some courses addressed the relational aspects of RPP work, which prior frameworks emphasize. Eight syllabi addressed negotiating roles and responsibilities in an RPP, often by pairing empirical work on how researchers and practitioners negotiate roles and identities (Farrell et al., 2019b) with practical guidance written for the field, such as the brokering in RPPs handbook (Wentworth et al., 2021). The nine courses with immersive placements may offer the most direct opportunity for practicing the work of building relationships, as these required students to participate in partnership meetings, interact with partners on partnership “field trips,” or create products for partners. Relational skills were also taught through structured peer feedback, pitching a partnership to real partners, and topics and goals related to navigating power and status. Yet, three topics that are important for the relational aspects of RPP work—trust, sustaining partnerships, and common RPP challenges— appeared as weekly topics in only six syllabi. This is a notable gap, since Henrick and colleagues (2017) name building trust and cultivating partnership relationships as the first dimension of RPP effectiveness, and the RPP leaders they interviewed described relationships grounded in trust as an essential foundation for productive collaboration. 

Operations received less attention. The operational side of the work received less attention, and when it appeared, it was often in practice-oriented courses. Portrait participants described everyday tasks of RPP researchers, including facilitating meetings, reporting to funders, securing funding, and project management – which are mirrored in key competencies guiding the St. Louis Translational Fellows program. However, funding appeared in only four syllabi, project management appeared as a learning objective in only one syllabus, and facilitation did not show up as a topic or learning objective. The infrastructure content we did find focused mainly on governance and data, such as MOUs, data use agreements, and IRB approval.

Apprenticeship offers potential. Some field-based assignments came closer to attending to dispositions, relational practices, and operational tasks than our coding captured. For example, one apprenticeship assignment placed small groups of students in an active partnership for several hours each week and described patience and flexibility as expectations for working in real partnerships, noting that plans would shift and that students’ conduct mattered to the partnership’s continuation. The same assignment framed teamwork as a competency for partnership work, asked students to develop tools that support partnership infrastructure, such as partnership agreements and feedback surveys, and had them present products to partners and stakeholders and gather feedback on their relevance and likely use. Thus, there may be more attention to dispositions, relationships or operational aspects of RPPs in the courses than what can be gleaned from an analysis based on syllabi alone, especially when considering that not all syllabi provide intricate details about course assignments or particular learning activities. 

The target learner is unclear, but may lean research-side. As noted earlier, we also wanted to know whom the courses were intended to support – current or future research-side participants, practice-side participants, or both? However, syllabi alone could not answer this. Still, the prevalence of goals, topics, and readings on social science research, research design, and methods suggests that most courses might be aimed at research-side partners or practice-side partners working in research-oriented roles, such as those working in district research offices. Some showed possible attention to practitioners, for example, a few of the 13 syllabi with the topic of evidence use focused on using administrative data for school improvement. But if practice-side partners were a primary learner, we would expect for their challenges to appear more prominently in course goals, topics, or readings, such as organizing learning teams, connecting research to professional learning, leading evidence-informed systems change, or navigating tensions between accountability and research for improvement. Understanding which learners and partners courses are designed to support is an important question for future work.

IDEAS FOR PEOPLE WHO TEACH RPPs

For those who teach RPPs, our analysis suggests a few places to be intentional:

• Decide what the course is for. Stand-alone courses with mixed theory and practice goals can broaden the student experience but may treat both sets of goals thinly. A course sequence offers the potential for learning experiences to be designed that go deep with each and move from one to the other.
• Treat verbs in course goals as design choices. “Understand” and “examine” ask for something different than “create” and “present.” Objectives like “practice responding to partner feedback without defensiveness” or “plan, facilitate, and debrief a first meeting” can make dispositions something a course is designed to address and assess.
• Pair readings with practice. A reading on trust, roles, or common challenges could come with role-play, a simulated negotiation, or structured peer feedback, so students practice what they read about.
• Make field placements intentional. Placements build more of what RPP-ers need when they come with explicit learning goals, partner input, and time to debrief. The Portrait’s dispositions or the Collective’s questions could serve as prompts for those conversations.
• Include partners in the course design. Partners can serve as co-designers of courses as well as guest teachers or reviewers of student work, which models the collaboration and reciprocity that RPPs aspire to.

CONCLUSION AND NEXT STEPS

Across the country, universities are working to prepare the next generation of RPP-ers, and the syllabi we read show creativity in how they do it. Some courses build shared knowledge about RPPs, some put students into immersive partnership work, and a few do both. We are excited about these efforts to support future RPP-ers.

The current analysis is only the beginning of a collaborative journey for NNERPP to dive into the learning experiences that benefit those wishing to engage in RPPs.

A syllabus can only tell us so much. In the next phase, we want to learn:

• What teaching and learning actually look like inside these courses
• Who the learners are and what they take away from the courses
• Who the teachers are and the ways in which they are involved in RPPs
• How field placements work in practice, including what partners and students experience
• How dispositions are being cultivated 
• How particular courses fit into overall program designs 

In other words, we want to move beyond instructors’ course design decisions to understand the experience of the people the courses serve.

We are also looking forward to a next phase of work with the Subnetwork to begin co-constructing shared syllabi and guidelines for how RPPs can best be taught. Future work will also involve investigating other modes of teaching RPPs beyond the university setting.

If you want to be part of this next phase, please join us in the Teaching RPPs Subnetwork! And if you teach RPPs, we would love to hear from you, whether you’d like to share a syllabus, compare notes, or tell us what’s working. You can reach us at elizabeth.a.zumpe-1@ou.edu or ruggirello@wustl.edu.

Elizabeth Zumpe is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at The University of Oklahoma, and Rachel Ruggirello is Associate Director of the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University in St. Louis.

Suggested citation: Zumpe, E. & Ruggirello, R. (2026). How Are We Teaching RPPs? An Exploration of University Course Syllabi. NNERPP Extra 8(4), 2-14. https://doi.org/10.25613/KKXR-TV15