Education Week

We often hear about the need to "build capacity" of practitioners to use research. This usually gets translated as improving practitioners' skills in using research to make decisions or imparting knowledge on how to engage in continuous improvement efforts.

It is tempting to think about research-practice partnerships as solely serving this purpose. In this view, researchers work with practitioners to identify a relevant problem of practice. The researchers conduct a study of that problem, and practitioners use evidence from the research to inform next steps. The hope is that when the work is done, individual practitioners' capacity to use research will have improved, and educators will independently use research in their future work. The idea is that, eventually, research partners will no longer need to play a role...