Middle school teacher Michael Yell and education professor Geoffrey Scheurman discuss a decades-long partnership of ongoing professional development opportunities that involve teachers, university faculty, and teacher candidates working together to create personalized, meaningful, and sustained initiatives that enhance the growth and skills of all…

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are long-term collaborations between researchers and practitioners aimed at educational improvement and transformation through engagement with research. Yet RPPs can be challenging to implement, and even long running RPPs experience bumps in their work together. Caitlin Farrell, Laura Wentworth, and Michelle…

Principal leadership is a crucial element in high-performing schools. Research reveals that principals are second only to teachers in impacting student achievement at school. Accordingly, how school leaders are prepared has received increasing attention in recent years. Drawing from the findings of recent reports highlighting exemplary programs…

Researchers Martha Abele Mac Iver, Joyce Epstein, and Steven Sheldon summarize the outcomes of their four-year partnership with an urban district aimed at improving the ways schools engage families during the critical transition to high school. They describe how schools put into practice the strategies learned in ongoing professional development,…

The University of Rochester and East High School in Rochester, New York, entered into a partnership in 2015, hoping to transform the school to prevent shut down by the state. Both partners were wary because of the district's failed attempts at reform and the history of similar partnerships elsewhere. A new state-level reform option allowed the…

Although researchers have done effective work at describing the inequities that plague schools, they have been less successful at making headway in addressing them, largely because their work remains disconnected from the schools that have to try to use the research. Through research-practice partnerships, researchers are able to stay in touch…

Social workers in schools provide benefits not just for struggling students, but for the entire school community. But, the authors argue, school social workers are often relegated to monitoring IEPs and doing basic casework. By using skills and values that have long been fundamental to social work practice, school social workers can advocate for,…

The isolation that has historically plagued the teaching profession has particularly harmful effects on novice teachers who need the guidance, wisdom, and encouragement of other educators. In recent years, however, social media tools have helped many teachers connect with colleagues and build robust professional learning networks (PLNs) beyond…

In the past decade, research-practice partnerships (RPPs) have grown in number and reputation. Stephanie Brown and Annie Allen describe the varied ways partnerships facilitate more sustained and productive relationships between researchers and practitioners. They share key findings from a comparative case study of three different types of RPPs…

For years, researchers have been working in school districts conducting studies that produce findings. Because educational research and the practice of education are centered in very different institutions with different expectations, incentives, and cultures, the connections have been tenuous at best. Meanwhile, there is increasing demand for…

The Mitchell Scarlett Teaching and Learning Collaborative (MSTLC) is a vigorous, six-year-old partnership between two Title I schools--Mitchell Elementary School and Scarlett Middle School in Ann Arbor, Mich.--and the teacher education program at the University of Michigan. MSTLC was formed between educators who had related but quite different…

Educators are realizing that individuals working in isolation can't adequately address the teaching and learning problems that face us today. Collective action networks are needed. Sharing networks use collective energy to support individual action and agency, whereas execution networks typically address complex problems that require sustained…

District leaders often feel that working with researchers is not mutually beneficial. Researchers do not provide enough practical guidance, and they are often unable to present their findings in time to inform district decision making. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are a potential new strategy for addressing these challenges. RPPs are…

A vision statement and call to action from Deans for Impact--a group of deans committing themselves to a set of principles intended to elevate the performance of educator preparation programs and the status of teachers. Their objectives include: Develop a consensus around a professional knowledge base for teachers; create a tighter connection…

The University of South Florida has designed and initiated a two-year teacher residency program that intends to meld classroom preservice teacher instruction with work in classrooms with children from low-income and urban backgrounds. The Urban Teacher Residency Partnership Program is a joint effort between the University of South Florida and…