Research Practice Partnership Workshop at ICLS, June 2014

A pre-conference workshop at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, June 23-24th, 2014, will bring together a community of STEM researchers, district and school leaders, formal and informal educators, and community coalitions engaged in building and sustaining research-practice partnerships to improve STEM education.

This workshop is being funded by the National Science Foundation, is part of the R+P Collaboratory, and is the first convening of a network of research-practice partnerships to discuss challenges, strategies, and evidence they are gathering about their partnerships. At the workshop, we will provide opportunities for participants to identify and share challenges, strategies, and evidence related to their functioning as partnerships with one another. Partners will also engage in rapid prototype development of tools and routines that they can use to support their ongoing work. Also, we will identify a limited set of research questions that we can help them investigate with respect to their partnership’s functioning.

The goal of bringing leaders of mature partnerships together is building a network of such partners is to increase the capacity of the field for continuous improvement in STEM education. The workshop will:

• Build knowledge and skill of a network of doctoral and early career researchers who can form and maintain long-term partnerships with districts, informal education organizations, and community coalitions focused on STEM improvement
• Create a network of mature research-practice partnerships focused on next generation mathematics and science learning and equity that produces resources and knowledge to benefit new partnerships
• Develop knowledge about effective partnership strategies and about how best to support a network of scholars focused on partnership work and a network of research-practice partnerships.

We know that STEM improvement at scale requires new opportunities and infrastructures for fostering ongoing exchange between research and practice. We have high hopes for some great field building during this workshop, which will lead to development of a set of resources and guidelines grounded in research and practice that will be housed on the LearnDBIR website and on the R+P Collaboratory website.