The Political and Social Contexts of Research Evidence Use in Partnerships

Introduction

Our public education system over the last few decades has been searching for solutions to challenges relating to technological developments, more diverse learning needs, and growing inequalities inside and outside of schools, all of which have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, investment in educational research has broadened methodological approaches and theoretical lenses and led to more complex study designs, resulting in increased understanding of policies and practices that impact youth. As the research evidence (RE) has grown, so too have calls for increased evidence use so that educator and policymaker decisions are more closely aligned with educational researchers’ findings. ¹ Calls for the use of research evidence (URE) are based upon an underlying assumption that high quality RE could be more productively and thoughtfully used to increase improvement at the student, classroom, teacher, leader, school, district, or policy level, or for the system as a whole. ² Renewed interest in the research community about evidence use follows from increased attempts to disseminate research information with limited success (Finnigan & Daly, 2014).

Design-based approaches that emerged in the 1980s in the field of learning sciences led to a parallel movement to strengthen connections between research and practice through partnerships (Tseng & Coburn, 2019). Research-practice partnerships (RPPs), as discussed here, are one of these types of approaches to collaborative research to address educational inequities (Farrell et al., 2021) and have been supported through major investments by the federal government and private foundations (Arce-Trigatti et al., 2018; Vetter et al., 2022). RPPs are advanced to address educational problems, usually at the K-12 level, through knowledge sharing and joint sensemaking around the broader research base and local data or contextual knowledge. RPPs typically involve a variety of interested parties, including educators, community members, and students, alongside researchers, and are frequently multi-year collaborations. These two broad areas—URE and RPPs—align and intersect with broader knowledge utilization and knowledge mobilization efforts over this same time period.

This article is meant to help the field move forward by summarizing key results relating to URE and especially emerging themes relating to the social and political conditions of URE. The article gives special attention to how RPPs fit into, or could be leveraged to address, these conditions, and provides recommendations on how to move the body of research on URE and RPPs forward. This article identifies gaps and new directions as a way to strengthen scholarship and practice but a few caveats are in order. First, the study of URE in education is still a nascent field and much of the early work has been descriptive and exploratory. Second, the study of RPPs has been described as “slow and not always actionable” as far as what makes RPPs effective or impactful (Wentworth et al., 2021). Nevertheless, emerging results provide important insights regarding the gaps between research and policy and practice, as well as the social and political conditions of URE that RPPs could be uniquely positioned to tackle.

Use of Research Evidence in Decision-Making, Persuasion, or Learning

So what do we know about URE and how do RPPs fit into that knowledge base? Contrary to conventional wisdom, recent studies show that RE is not as inaccessible as had been argued previously. Indeed, educational leaders report valuing research and using research widely (Penuel et al., 2017). As discussed below, who is using research evidence and how they are using it relates to certain mechanisms, conditions, or connections, for example, to brokers or intermediaries or through partnerships.

As the knowledge base began to grow, greater understanding of the myriad of types of evidence and value placed on different types led to increased attention to the use and users of RE by funders and scholars. For example, both interventions and research began to center users’ ability to evaluate quality of evidence and the conditions that supported URE. Scholars documented the growth and influence of non-governmental actors in educational politics and policymaking and these groups became an important component of studies of URE (e.g., McDonnell & Weatherford, 2013; Reckhow, 2016; Scott et al., 2015; Tompkins-Stange, 2016). Furthermore, Tseng (2021) and others argued for greater attention to the democratization of the research agenda, broadening the understanding of the role of the user. In essence, the field began growing in two important ways. First, scholarship on URE began taking into account the larger ecosystem, as well as broadening the understanding of producers and users. Second, the field began to understand URE not solely as translating results into a format that would be used by a practitioner or policymaker, but rather as part of a process of joint learning around a particular area of practice or a process of policy development and implementation. URE, thus, became understood as a intricate web of users (and non-users) and a process of use that led to greater attention to the relationships, settings, and political and policy contexts (Finnigan & Daly, 2014). As recently pointed out by the report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2022), educational decision making is complex, involves multiple actors, occurs in the context of relationships, and involves a dynamic process of knowledge mobilization.

More instrumental uses of URE, or the type of use that can be traced to a specific programmatic or policy decision, has been a common focus of URE studies. Instrumental use has been found to vary within and across districts even in longer-standing RPPs (Honig et al., 2014). Though not specifically linked to RPPs, more general studies found that RE played a limited role in the decision-making of central office staff (Farley-Ripple, 2012), local school boards (Asen et al., 2013), and principals (Finnigan et al., 2013, 2021) with other types of evidence used more frequently. Prior research suggested that leaders turned to people first and preferred evidence curated by colleagues to inform their decisions (Finnigan et al., 2013; Penuel et al., 2017) and school board members relied on a variety of evidence (e.g., experience or testimony) in deliberations, rarely using RE in these processes (Asen et al., 2013).

A few national studies expanded our knowledge base about instrumental URE. Penuel et al.’s (2017) large-scale descriptive study found that the majority of leaders reported using RE frequently or all of the time in instrumental ways, for example, for specific decisions, including choosing curricula, allocating resources, adopting or eliminating programs, and designing professional development. In fact, RE was reported to have influenced district or school-level decisions like implementing full-day kindergarten or addressing student tardiness, as well as classroom-level decisions around student groupings or progress monitoring, though it was one of several types of evidence brought to bear on these decisions (Blackman et al., 2018). Much of the prior studies on URE involves self reports and, as discussed later, triangulation will be a critical next step in understanding URE in more nuanced ways. In my own work that used social network analysis and accounts of others to identify high research users, we found that which leaders had access to or were using RE in instrumental ways was important, for example, in many case those who reported using RE were peripheral from the rest of the leaders in a district as far as the underlying relationships and social structure (see, e.g., Finnigan et al., 2013, 2021).

Another common type of URE is strategic or symbolic, as RE is used to sway opinions or confirm ideas or strategically to gain buy in or support. At both the district and national level, this allows individuals to support or pursue proposed courses of action (Finnigan & Daly, 2014). RE is frequently used in this way to demonstrate credibility, to symbolize shared ideals or beliefs, or as a proxy for values (Asen et al., 2013). Both Farley-Ripple (2012) and Penuel et al. (2017) found symbolic URE was common in decision-making processes by K-12 leaders. Symbolic URE has been found at all levels of the educational system and using different research methods, but few studies have teased out the quality of the RE being used in these strategic or persuasive ways. As Hollands et al. (2021) note, practitioners and policymakers may not always have a robust understanding of the available RE on a topic. RPPs generally reduce this concern because they are a direct line, presumably, to the body of research on any area (e.g., with a researcher at the end of any chain of connections, see Hopkins et al., 2019 for more) though whether this alters the quality of the evidence or types of strategic or symbolic uses has not been studied directly. Concerns of research being misused often emerge around symbolic or strategic URE, yet the empirical work is limited and more work should be done to understand whether the quality of research that various actors use to strategically shape educational debates and decisions is higher quality, and whether misuse is more rare, for educators in RPPs.

While many of the studies of symbolic URE focus on points in time, McDonnell and Weatherford (2013, 2020) expand our understanding by considering how and where RE intersects with stages of the policy-making process. They demonstrate how policy entrepreneurs use RE for different purposes throughout distinct policy stages (depending on availability and political context), noting several points in the policy cycle when policymakers used RE in symbolic or strategic ways. For example, RE was used during the problem definition stage primarily in defining a set of problems for which they already had a solution (i.e., a symbolic use). During policy design, RE was used to persuade stakeholders about various aspects of the policy. In fact, the general promise of basing Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on research, they argue, was a useful tool for both persuasion and legitimacy. Finally, they found more strategic or symbolic URE during policy enactment, as policymakers communicated with and persuaded specific audiences about the usefulness and importance of CCSS by linking to the RE on which it was based. The results from this work can be instructive to RPPs working with policymakers and decision makers through different stages of the policy cycle.

A key goal of RPPs is “cultivating an appetite for RE” (Farrell et al., 2018, p. 11). RPP practitioners were much more likely than non RPP practitioners (84% compared with 31%) to consider journal articles and research reports useful. RPP practitioners also focused on research targting specific student subgroups (such as special education students or students living in poverty) more than the national sample. Leaders who were part of RPPs in Farrell et al.’s (2018) study reported instrumental URE though they were less likely to report symbolic URE. This may have to do with the sample of leaders, as nearly one-half served in a research-related role and therefore they may not have been as frequently in the front-line role of persuading others about a particular area of research.

Scholars have argued that the lion’s share of research use is conceptual, shaping in slow and diffuse ways the way people think about problems and how to solve them (Tseng, 2012; Weiss, 1997). Conceptual URE has further reaching and longer-term consequences than instrumental, tactical/strategic, and other types of use, but our knowledge base in this area is weaker as it is more difficult to measure and track conceptual use (Tseng, 2012). According to Penuel et al. (2017), while opportunities to discuss research is strongly associated with instrumental and symbolic uses, more work is needed to consider how or whether conceptual use is embedded in these other uses of RE.

Recent self-reports suggest high levels of conceptual URE (Penuel et al., 2017). For example, nearly three-quarters of leaders reported they encountered research that expanded their understanding of an issue frequently or all of the time, more than half reported RE provided a common language and set of ideas that frequently or all of the time, and more than one-third reported RE changed the way that they looked at a problem. Measuring and understanding conceptual use more deeply will require innovative study designs and methodological approaches to triangulate these results with other data (i.e., beyond self-reports) and allow for greater depth of understanding of the stages or quality of conceptual URE.

My colleagues and I have argued previously that URE requires both a “readiness” to engage in a learning process around evidence and structures and relationships that facilitate this type of learning (Finnigan & Daly, 2014). The idea of “learning” around evidence was in fact one of the most compelling notions that emerged across several of the chapters in our co-edited book with attention to the dynamic and iterative process that undergirds the development of RE and URE. As we noted then, URE is often conceptualized narrowly as learning around a very specific or tangible thing, like a book or a group of studies or expert opinion, that then results in a change in policy or resource allocation or is used to persuade others. These conceptualizations are aligned with instrumental and symbolic uses, respectively. But the scholarship on URE has shown that conceptual use potentially leads to more transformative thinking. Thought of from a learning orientation, URE is one component of a larger process that involves individual and organizational learning, jointly engaging educators in co-interpretation and co-construction of different types of evidence and resulting in new understandings of curricular, organizational, or policy issues as well as actionable steps for policy or practice. Farrell et al., (2022) provide a useful framework for understanding how this type of learning (i.e., conceptual URE) happens across the professional, cultural, and institutional boundaries of partners in RPPs.

Political Dynamics and Social Contexts

URE occurs in a robust network of interconnected relationships, whether one focuses on the school, district, state, or federal government. Several studies that involved case studies and network analysis found that trust plays a role in URE (e.g., Asen, 2014; Daly & Finnigan, 2012). People make determinations about the RE, and whether they will use it, based upon the person or organization providing the evidence. In other words, whether the evidence is brought by a trustworthy or untrustworthy source will influence a person’s response to that evidence, that is, whether it resonates or they are skeptical of it. As such, we must be mindful of not only the fact that individuals have social relationships, but the quality of the relationship between those individuals is consequential for URE. The contributions in my co-edited volume (see Finnigan & Daly, 2014) suggested that institutional support around evidence use was critical. In addition, our work indicated that those who served in supporting roles to others, for example, by facilitating access to evidence, interpretation, and action steps, should not necessarily be the same people who supervise these individuals particularly given a high level of distrust across our educational systems (Daly et al., 2014).

Some studies have pointed to the attitude or skills of individuals that increase URE. For example, Penuel et al. (2017) found modest associations between positive attitudes toward research and URE. However, since practitioners and policymakers are rarely operating in isolation, the broader context and culture are important to understanding URE. In other words, URE requires an infrastructure to embed the RE into a system or set of processes (Honig et al., 2017). The Center for Research Use in Education (2018) found that teachers reported that the structures that most commonly facilitated the connection of research and practice were professional learning communities (or groups of teachers who meet regularly to discuss their practice), instructional leadership teams (or groups of teachers who meet with the principal to collaborate to improve learning), and instructional coaches (or mentors who support teachers in developing and strengthening their teaching skills). These structures are often used to create shared, formal learning opportunities for educators to tackle classroom or school-level challenges, drawing research into that process.

Recent research on organizational routines (Coburn et al., 2020) provides insights into how structures facilitate URE. The study uncovered how multiple, interrelated routines, such as structured time for jointly discussing different types of evidence, were important to understanding URE in school districts. This longitudinal qualitative study identified latent use as important to understanding URE. Latent use was when district leaders in one routine embedded research in artifacts that guided the work of leaders in other routines. In addition to structures, other conditions that support URE are a strong culture of research use (Penuel et al., 2017) and a climate of trust, learning, and risk taking (Daly & Finnigan, 2012; Finnigan & Daly, 2014). Finnigan et al. (2013) found that URE was limited by pressures to determine improvement strategies based upon monetary resources that were available (or not), and Hollands et al. (2021) note that the pressures associated with the requirement to use certain types of RE in federal policy may actually limit more constructive uses, like the types of joint reflection and learning processes discussed previously, and ultimately improvement.

RPPs are set up in a way that is conducive to some of the social dynamics as far as being longer-term collaborations that potentially allow for the kinds of relationships necessary to build trust and organizational routines. Yet, as Farrell et al. (2019) note, few studies have examined the ongoing and dynamic nature of relationships in RPPs, focusing instead on the initial conditions for developing partnerships. In their multi-year case study they found that partners had to renegotiate roles across the life span of the partnership, which led to reduced time on substantive areas of focus. This ongoing renegotiation was the result of confusion around the parameters of the partnership and in fact the aspect of the work that was more directly linked to linking research and practice was “hidden.” The renegotiation was also the result of leadership turnover. As Finnigan et al. (2021) found, leadership turnover can impact URE because of the trusting relationships that provide conduits for connecting around research. Preliminary results by Farrell et al. (2019) suggest that the stability of RPPs as far as long-standing relationships may alleviate some of the impact of leadership turnover when trust is developed in these partnerships. However, in contrast to assumptions that RPPs would center research in practices and norms, RPP district leaders were less likely than the national sample to report a research-oriented culture (Farrell et al., 2018). Further investigation is important because this finding calls into question one of the key underpinnings of RPPs (Henrick et al., 2017), though a caution is in order given the small sample, self reports, and non-experimental design.

A gap in the research base relates to URE by the researchers themselves in RPPs. In RPPs, at least in theory, the researchers should be using the RE from the partnership to inform their research designs, the types of questions they ask, etc. As Wentworth et al. (2017) note, one theoretical output of RPPs is a change in the work of the researchers based upon greater understandings through their joint research. Researchers in the Farrell et al. (2018) study self reported that they had developed skills to work in partnership and better conduct research that reflected the needs of practice. In interviews they described developing greater flexibility, allowing more input into design, and shifting communication approaches. This shows some promise of RPPs in terms of joint learning, that is, learning of researchers in the RPP. In addition, Nicole Patton Terry in a podcast a few years ago (see Hogan, 2020) notes that the fact that RPPs have sustained engagement around evidence (at least theoretically) is an important feature that allows for a shift in orientation of researcher from the one bringing new knowledge to “listener.” While RPPs are conveyed as spaces where researchers would be developing new skills to support the partnership (e.g., see Wentworth et al., 2021 for discussion of how researchers might develop skills to become better at boundary spanning, communication, and conflict resolution) or altering their practices as researchers or research designs, studies that directly examine how researchers have changed specific aspects of their work or made different decisions as a result of participation in a RPP are rare. One exception is Denner et al., (2019), who studied the role of culture and power in a RPP and identified ways that the researchers “pivoted” as they developed a shared understanding of equity with their partners, better aligned their study to practitioner needs, and developed mutual trust. In a similar vein, there is a dearth of empirical work on researcher training programs as far as which skills are needed to allow researchers to successfully partner in RPPs, for example, communication skills or greater knowledge about practice/policy environments, and how those are best learned. This research gap calls into question the power dynamics of RPPs, including whether researchers see themselves as equal learners and whether the partnerships are designed in equitable and anti-racist ways that equally value the knowledge and skills of all partners (see Wilson, 2021). As Vetter et al., (2022) point out, for RPPs to advance equity and social justice they must intentionally center equity and justice in planning and design, attend to historical power relationships and acknowledge power differences, and specifically investigate and address inequities in problems of practice. This type of centering is quite uncommon—in fact, they found that only about 10% of the publications they reviewed described RPPs that were equity focused—suggesting an important area of focus for those engaged in developing and studying RPPs.

Brokers and Intermediaries

One of the most important findings of the body of research in this area is that URE by policymakers and practitioners is facilitated by individuals or intermediary organizations and networks that serve as “research brokers.” In essence, researchers connect with policymakers and practitioners indirectly through other individuals and organizations. For example, my research (Daly et al., 2014; Finnigan et al., 2021) found that key individuals in school districts served as brokers. Unfortunately, high levels of churn in these same leadership roles meant that the ties relating to RE were constantly disrupted. In addition, Neal et al., (2015) found that school staff often played brokering roles, e.g, gate-keeping roles, but that these were not always useful in connecting what they called the educator-researcher communication chain. This study aligns with other work that found that staff at county-level school districts played important brokering roles (Neal et al., 2015) and that district staff filled gaps between producers and users of evidence (Finnigan & Daly, 2014) and served as gatekeepers between research users in different parts of the system (Finnigan et al., 2021). In these cases, the brokers serve in intermediary positions but they are internal to the organization versus external entities. Brokers play a critical role in the flow of ideas and practices because they filter information, in this case about RE.

The push for greater URE, combined with an often disjointed relationship between the research producers and users, allowed new groups to emerge or position themselves as the “interpreters” of evidence (DeBray et al., 2014; Scott & Jabbar, 2014). Brokers operate within a type of market, as policymakers and practitioners require information to make decisions and intermediaries respond to this demand (DeBray et al., 2014). Intermediaries have taken on important roles in the packaging of research and the management of perceptions to “sell” policymakers or practitioners on a set of findings, as well as to validate whether evidence is credible. While filling a larger “need” of the system to bridge researcher to user, many organizations spent considerable resources moving their own agendas forward, frequently unchecked (Scott & Jabbar, 2014). Intermediary organizations were found to be active in promoting, participating in, or opposing incentivist educational policies like charter schools, vouchers, “parent trigger” laws, and merit-pay systems for teachers (Scott et al., 2015). These intermediary groups played the role of local distributors of federal funds in some cases, thereby aligning resources with their agendas and the RE they elevated or shared with decision makers (DeBray et al., 2014; Scott & Jabbar, 2014). One type of intermediary organization, professional associations, emerged as a key source of research for school and district leaders (Penuel et al., 2017). For example, in a state-level science policymaker network, individuals in the Council of State Science Supervisors, a key professional association, served as brokers by enabling association members’ access to diverse sources of research and facilitating between-state research exchanges (Hopkins et al., 2018).

The role of intermediary organizations can be understood not just by the type of organization they are but also by their purpose of serving in this role, for example, disseminating information or advocating for members on behalf of their materials or ideological interests (McDonnell & Weatherford, 2020). Advocacy organizations can be especially influential in URE through their impact on media (Malin & Lubienski, 2013, 2015). In addition, the influential role of philanthropy as a broker of RE—and the ideological and political agenda of these entities—warrants further attention (e.g., Reckhow, 2016; Tompkins-Stange, 2016). The fact that policymakers often access RE and other types of evidence through networks of like-minded organizations (Goldie et al., 2014), suggests these networks remain an important component to understanding the politics of URE, and, as described later, network studies can help to unpack the underlying structures of those connections and the types of RE that moves throughout them. Whether and how these external intermediary groups or internal positions or structures connect (or not) with RPPs is not clear and how these external brokers overlap or play distinct roles from the brokering role of RPPs themselves (see Wentworth et al., 2021) requires further attention.

Racial Dynamics and Lenses

While the scholarship around RE and URE has been a growing area of focus as a way to inform and influence instructional approaches and organizational and policy decisions, it is important to acknowledge that research has not always been used for good, and the field of RE/URE has overlooked key communities, lenses, and perspectives. As Kirkland (2019) argues, URE is not a neutral act and RE has been misused in ways that reinforce racial injustice and systemic racism and is both embedded in—and is itself—a system of power. He contends that throughout history RE has been used to enforce White supremacy and anti-Black Racism through narratives of deficit and deviance as he shares in the following passage:

The (mis)use of research evidence, from test scores to skull sizes to “validated” assumptions about what constitutes beauty, has been used to construct the ideology of race—to set in motion the racial hierarchy that both elevates and centers Whiteness while simultaneously reducing and criminalizing Blackness. The (mis)use of research evidence has seen Black bodies reduced as the object of White oppressive fetish (e.g., the Black body as empirically sexualized and contrived as abnormal, a monstrosity, etc.), preoccupation with social control (e.g., the Black body as target of sterilization), and experimentation (e.g., the Black body as experiment for White medicine) (p.1).

Few studies of URE have adopted critical theories to frame research questions, methods, and interpretation of findings (Gitomer & Crouse, 2019). Using these theoretical frameworks could make evidence more useful to the communities it is trying to impact, help to disrupt power or interrupt policies that harm marginalized groups, and alter the way we think about and measure research production, interpretation, and use (Doucet, 2019). A similar call was made more specifically about RPPs when Calabrese Barton and Bevan (2016) argued for RPPs to “create explicit mechanisms for participants to directly confront the historical and systemic sources of racism and inequality that underlie the educational challenges they have been formed to address” (para. 2). More recently, Kirkland (2019) argued that RE is both “impoverished and incomplete” when it does not explicitly address how it constructs and is constructed by race. Critical URE work might build on the literature showing how intermediaries facilitate relationships between some research producers and some research users and not others. Understanding how systemic racism and racialized power in RPPs influence or impact URE is crucial to advancing RPPs. ³

Drawing on critical theory leads to important research questions that, to date, have not been addressed and utilizes critical methodological approaches, such as critical policy analysis (Young & Diem, 2018) and Quantcrit (Garcia et al., 2017), that could bring new understandings to this body of scholarship. At this point there are many gaps to fill. For example, studies of URE and RPPs could target questions regarding whether the composition of the research team, lenses and methods used by researchers, or democratization of the research agenda influences URE (especially whether it increases the quality of URE) by practitioners or policymakers. As Doucet (2021) noted, “When BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities are involved in defining the problem space and generating actionable solutions, issues of racial and other forms of equity can be centered, rather than treated as a variable or contextual characteristic” (p. 9). Using these lenses and methods, in other words, could expand not just the research that is produced but also our understanding of when, how, and why it is used (or not) by practitioners and policymakers. These prior calls suggest that URE might be related to individual’s own racial/ethnic backgrounds, or might be related to engagement with and understanding of different communities that are marginalized not only in policy and in practice but in the research itself as far as how issues are framed, questions are developed, and data are interpreted. Given the racialization of research identities, along with the oppressive power structures in educational systems, in partnerships, and in broader society, Tanksley and Estrada (2022) argue that RPPs must intentionally center issues of race and racism within the RPP, including open discussion about the relationship between systemic racism and the problem of practice that is the focus of the RPP, understanding and addressing how intersecting forms of oppression impact school systems and partnerships, and grounding conversations about equity in lenses and experiences of people of color. As Vakil et al., (2016) point out, the racial and political dynamics are constantly in negotiation in this type of participatory or partnership work, shaping the development of trust, influencing the design of research, and affecting how power is exerted in the partnership. They also argue that race and racism, or more explicitly the racial dynamics of partnerships, must be made visible at all stages of the partnership but especially when negotiating the end of the project and when determining what gets written or produced by whom and for which audiences.

Implications for RPPs

Given the current knowledge around the political and social context of URE, those engaged in RPPs must pay explicit attention to the structures, power relations, and stated outcomes of the partnership, as well as the racial dynamics or systemic racism embedded in these. While many RPPs are based upon good intentions as far as creating joint, equitable work toward educational equity, as Diamond (2021) notes, “Collaborations among school districts and universities can produce just as much harm as good” (p. 1). He further argues that RPPs must foreground power and racial justice in ways that challenge oppression and confront institutional histories and racialized organizational processes. This is a profound area that has not gained sufficient attention in the development and advancement of RPPs. While Diamond’s full reflection would be worthwhile for anyone engaged in or considering developing a RPP to center in their discussions and design, I share this excerpt to emphasize his overarching point:

Universities and school districts have often perpetuated racial injustice. This reality must be reckoned with if those engaged in RPPs hope to contribute to enhanced racial justice. Universities have histories tied to White supremacy and settler colonialism that form the backdrop on which RPPs are built. Higher education institutions in the United States have histories involving land theft, racial oppression, and ethnic cleansing (expulsion and murder). For example, following an 1832 treaty, White racial actors (with support from the federal government) forcibly removed members of the Ho-Chunk Nation from their land (“Teejop”) on which the University of Wisconsin, my campus office, and the city of Madison now sit (Peek, 2019).

The fraught relationships between universities and local communities are not just relics of the past. While universities often bring economic resources to communities, some also bring gentrification, increased housing inequality, and large police forces, all of which are detrimental to the minoritized and working-class communities that surround them (Baldwin, 2021). (Diamond, 2021)

RPPs focused on K-12 educational systems must attend to the larger economic, political, and social context, including the role of higher education institutions within that context, in a way that is centered on racial justice, as opposed to being color blind or color neutral.

Those engaged in RPPs must consider not just the principles of the partnership but ensure that RE is central to all aspects of their learning, decisions, and design. Improving URE in not just one particular RPP but in terms of how we think of RPPs as an educational intervention requires close attention to the development, implementation, and evaluation of these partnerships as a whole. To date, interventions that are built into or derived from RPPs are more prevalent on the user side (e.g., building knowledge, skills, capacity around research particularly for teachers or leaders in the K-12 school system), than the researcher side (e.g., university training of researchers in pre- or post-doctoral programs). Furthermore, while the field has grown around the conditions that support and hinder URE, more work is required to understand the leverage points for creating these conditions through RPPs. Consideration of strategies like intentional efforts to promote research access and use through a broker or intermediary, for example, professional associations (Penuel et al., 2017), compared with development of new RPPs or maintenance of ongoing RPPs must be further considered as far as whether certain types of local educational agencies benefit from one or the other of these strategies because of the resources or infrastructures they already have in place. For example, many urban school districts have research offices that might more easily allow staff to connect with researchers compared with suburban or rural districts. While there are some interventions to foster research use and strengthen conditions for URE, it is not clear that these approaches—and especially RPPs—adequately build off of the expanded research base, particularly as far as interventions based upon relational and learning approaches to URE and the racial and political dynamics discussed above.

Implications for Research on RPPs

A recent monograph by Gitomer and Crouse (2019) provides useful guidance as far as where the field needs to go regarding URE, generally. They point to specific areas relating to bringing critical perpectives to the work, addressing quality, and strengthening the methods and reporting of results and scholars in this area would benefit from reviewing their suggestions closely. Here I focus more specifically on implications for research on the political and social contexts of research use and the role of RPPs in URE.

First, research is needed that directly examines the power dynamics in RPPs and, relatedly, how these impact the learning and decision making not just of practitioners and policymakers but also of researchers. As Farrell et al. (2021) note, RPPs are “intentionally organized to engage diverse perspectives and to shift power relations among researchers, educators, families, and communities” (p. 2), but studies have not yet demonstrated whether and under what conditions these power dynamics have, in fact, changed. Also, while the assumption is that these dynamics shift, additional studies could examine whether better outcomes result from RPPs with more equitable power dynamics and whether these outcomes are more directly related to the research or practice side of the partnership. For example, does the nature of the partnership lead to greater conceptual understanding and decisions of the researchers versus the practitioners? Likely RPPs are on a continuum along the dimensions of RPPs that Farrell et al., (2021) articulate as far as the long-term nature, the work toward equitable transformation, engagement with research, intentionally bringing together a diversity of expertise, and employing strategies to shift power relations, and while we have specific best case examples of RPPs that can be used as models, greater attention needs to be paid to the variability along these dimensions and how to identify and improve RPPs that are not aligned with these principles.

Second, URE in RPPs is part of a political and social context that involves learning, persuasion, and action or decision making. The quality of URE within that context as well as the prominent but less understood conceptual use requires attention and would benefit from several related approaches. Additional measurement work is needed around the quality of URE and individual and organizational or policy learning and development as a result of URE. This measurement work could include development of tools that would either evaluate the quality of the RE used in particular contexts or dig deeper into how and when practitioners and policymakers identify high-quality sources. Future research should also trace individual or organizational learning around a particular area of research in RPPs, which requires longitudinal designs. Additional qualitative or mixed methods studies would also help to move this area forward. Attention to broader outcomes as far as how RE impacts policy and practice, considering not just how research informs specific decisions by educational leaders but how research informs the design of a program evaluation or development of their school or district’s strategic efforts. It is also important to begin to develop new measures in alignment with theoretical frameworks around learning and political processes to strengthen our understanding of URE. Network studies could provide additional ways to measure the ties around high quality RE, high quality URE, and differences in URE relating to broader conditions or contexts. Advancements in measurement and study design will facilitate greater understanding of how, and under what conditions or in what contexts, URE works to support improvement in RPPs so that these can be replicated or scaled up to improve RPP effectiveness.

Third, bringing critical lenses and methods to URE could include several strands of work. First, using a critical lens to conduct a meta analysis of the last decade of URE research might expose or interrogate conceptual findings, uncover questions about power dynamics, or reveal patterns around deficit views or interpretations that could spur new studies of URE. Second, studies of URE, particularly use by certain groups or use of certain bodies of research could involve intersectional lenses used in other fields, as discussed by Doucet (2019), for example, disability studies (DisCrit), gender and sexuality studies (QueerCrit), or particular racial or ethnic groups (AsianCrit, BlackCrit, LatCrit, and TribalCrit). Critical policy analysis could expand the conceptual frameworks of URE in the policy process, leading to asking different kinds of questions. Critical policy analysis is a form of policy studies that exposes inconsistencies in what policies say and do and examines power relationships and in all aspects of the policy process (Young & Diem, 2018). Critical lenses are often associated with qualitative work but a subfield called “QuantCrit” has a long history of challenging the neutrality or objectivity of numbers and categories (Garcia et al., 2017). QuantCrit lenses and methods could be especially useful in analyzing how URE is measured, considering new ways to quantify types of use, conditions for use, quality of use, etc., and understanding how (or whether) URE disrupts inequities in policy and practice especially in RPPs. Critical network analysis would be a particularly useful tool to understand the political dynamics of use of different types of research evidence by different actors over time (see Finnigan & Jabbar, in press). Critical lenses are warranted in studies of the role of intermediary organizations or individuals who are serving as brokers in interpreting evidence.

Fourth, the studies of URE and RPPs would benefit from broader theories and logic models around the interventions to improve URE and RPPs. For example, interventions that focus on the user side of URE (i.e., practitioners and policymakers) must be broadened in light of the evidence to focus not just on instrumental uses but also conceptual uses and the political and social conditions discussed here. Research on how best to promote different types of research for different leaders and to address different kinds of problems of practice is long overdue (Penuel et al., 2017). Furthermore, as Tseng (2012) noted a decade ago, as a field we must better understand how the political and policy processes work separately and together to influence what RE is used and how. Studies of coalition groups, networks, professional associations, and other intermediary groups continue to be a ripe area of study, especially in relation to RPPs. Additional attention to how URE fits within complex and iterative policy cycles is needed (Fedorowicz & Aron, 2021). Studies of the politics of URE should focus on the power dynamics of the various actors in the ecosystem, including social media platforms and news media. In addition, youth activists have been using RE in important ways over the last few decades as they fight for or against particular educational issues, for example, students fighting for integrated schools (see IntegrateNYC). Whether these understudied groups are operating in alignment with or outside of RPPs focused on the same or closely related issues in the same or closely related contexts deserves greater attention. Attention to whether URE by youth is different from or similar to the URE by other stakeholders within (or outside of) RPPs could provide important insights to the field and link to other theoretical and empirical areas, for example, social movements. As Farrell et al., (2019) note the field is ripe for additional theoretically driven work around trust, role negotiation, status, and power particularly comparative studies of RPPs of different designs (e.g., networked communities vs. research alliances) and longitudinal designs that account for turnover among practitioners, policymakers, and researchers.

RPPs are an important and widespread strategy in the U.S. to address educational inequities but whether some types of RPPs are more effective in developing the social and political conditions that result in use of high quality research and appropriate application to different issues and contexts remains unclear. The next generation of RPP design and implementation, as well as RPP scholarship, must consider the political and social contexts of URE to ensure that this approach is in fact using RE to improve educational outcomes and opportunities in our K-12 educational system in equitable and just ways. Additional attention to the ways that RPPs are uniquely positioned toward joint learning and how this impacts URE not just in broad strokes but in deep and nuanced ways can help to uncover the structures, supports, and practices of RPPs toward this end and allow for scaling up or replication. Employing critical lenses on the power dynamics of RPPs as far as who has access to evidence, who engages in partnerships, and what research is centered in the work of RPPs (and whether this varies by the focus of the work, expertise, of the researchers, etc.) will move the field forward in important ways by drawing attention to racism and racialized power among other things. Greater attention to the researcher side of RPPs and interventions to improve researchers’ understanding of the growing body of research on URE and the social and political conditions discussed here is another important next step in working toward joint learning and reducing barriers to URE at all levels of the educational system.