Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are collaborative research structures which seek to improve children and young people’s educational experiences and outcomes, by synthesising the cumulative knowledge, expertise and experience available from both research and practice (McGeown et al., 2023). RPPs draw on teachers’ professional, pedagogical and contextual knowledge and expertise, and researchers’ academic knowledge and methodological expertise. In recent years, there has been growing interest and use of research-practice partnerships in UK and international education research contexts (McGeown, 2023; Penuel & Hill, 2019; Sjölund et al., 2022), with funding calls and academic papers increasingly describing the need for closer connections between research and practice to increase the positive impact of university-led research on the lives and learning of children and young people.
Indeed, RPPs have been cited as one route to narrow the widely recognised gap between educational research and practice (Sjölund et al., 2022), as they focus not only on ‘research informing practice’ but also ‘practice informing research’, as the education community works collaboratively with researchers to help to shape the research agenda, ensuring it is informed by current priorities in educational practice.
However, despite the increasing popularity and use of RPPs in education, researchers and educators typically have very little experience of working in this way. Improving our understanding of the benefits and methodological considerations associated with RPPs is important to ensure these structures and relationships achieve their potential. Several of the key benefits and methodological considerations are highlighted in table 1.
