Innovative Teacher Workshops

The workshop will help facilitate the development of research-practice partnerships (RPPs). Research-practice partnerships represent a different approach for making progress on problems in STEM education that are important and relevant to practitioners and/or communities by conducting research collaboratively. Typically, the existing research about these problems is not sufficient for guiding practitioners work in solving the problems. The research undertaken by both practitioners and researchers should help inform the future work of both groups: it will provide important feedback on how to improve STEM education within the partnership and develop new knowledge about those problems for STEM education research.

Research-practice partnerships conduct research together in ways that improve the practice of STEM education and the research on STEM education. Partnerships can work together to co-design and research new practices, products, or programs (e.g., curriculum, organizational routines); work in networks to continuously improve educational outcomes or programs, or conduct descriptive or causal research to better understand effective STEM education. Working collaboratively in these partnerships means that researchers and practitioners collectively identify and frame important problems of practice, co-develop research questions about those problems, examine data together, and collaboratively make sense of the findings. Ideally, these partnerships collect data that provides timely formative feedback to inform practice, support program adjustments and re-design, and contribute to the direction of educational research and its body of knowledge in the long term.

Research-practice partnerships aim to be mutually-beneficial relationships that benefit STEM education and research. Some of the benefits to STEM education practice and policy are to connect practitioners to existing research knowledge and researchers, and to provide an avenue for future research to be responsive to their needs and perspectives. Some of the benefits to research are to connect researchers to existing practical knowledge and practitioners, and to produce research that has broader impacts on the practice of educations. Broadly, some consider research-practice partnerships to be a more equitable and ethical way of conducting researcher because it helps place the voice, goals, and interests of educators and researchers on a more equal level. Additionally, many consider the outcomes of research-practice partnerships to be more sustainable because the products of this work (informed by the design of the research) have been developed by people with detailed understandings of the complex and dynamic nature of particular educational systems. Ideally, a final long-term benefit of research-practice partnerships is the development of a broader intellectual community and professional networks that include the different partners.

The partnership workshop’s primary goal is to help connect practitioners and researchers that have similar interests or problems they would like to solve, and provide these emerging partnerships with resources about how to effectively continue their work after the workshop. Attendees will have time to learn about the work that others are doing, have flexibility in forming groups around common interests, and start developing shared goals for future work. The workshop will primarily be interactive to help facilitate the attendees in getting to know one another.

The Research + Practice Collaboratory has case studies of different research-practice partnerships on their website.

The application will help us understand why you are interested in partnership work and what potential problems of practice in STEM education you might be interested in developing a partnership around. We will use the applications to make sure there are enough people with similar potential interests in the workshop, although there will be flexibility to choose or create partnerships as you learn more about everyone’s work in the session. Finally, the application helps us make sure that we have a good balance of people attending from practitioner, researcher, and other communities.

Existing partnerships are welcome to attend the workshop as long as the partnership is related to STEM education. The workshop will provide opportunities for your partnership to connect with additional educators and/or researchers with similar interests, plan the future work of the partnership, and learn about resources for supporting partnership work. Each member of your partnership planning to attend the workshop will need to submit an application, and make sure to indicate or describe the name of your partnership so that we know you are applying as an existing partnership.

Anyone involved in STEM education located in the Middle Tennessee region is eligible to apply to attend the partnership workshop. We encourage applications from science, math, and STEM teachers or teacher leaders, school and district administrators, and community organizations involved in STEM education. There are also some spaces allocated for PhD students in STEM education specifically. If you are located outside of the Middle Tennessee region, you may still apply, but we are unable to provide travel reimbursement and priority will be given to applicants from the Middle Tennessee Region.

All attendees from Middle Tennessee will have their mileage to and from the workshop reimbursed. A light breakfast and lunch will also be provided. For any teachers who attend, we are also able to reimburse for the cost of a substitute teacher for their classroom.