Combining Researchers' and Practitioners' Intelligences for STEM Improvement: A Study of the Local Labs of the Research and Practice Collaboratory. Executive Summary. Research+Practice Partnerships

This is the executive summary of the report, "Combining Researchers' and Practitioners' Intelligences for STEM Improvement: A Study of the Local Labs of the Research and Practice Collaboratory." The Research and Practice Collaboratory (RPC) supported projects in three states--California, Maine, and Washington--that had the function of serving as "Local Labs" for the RPC. While these labs worked independently on specific, local STEM improvement problems, RPC leaders held themselves to shared conjectures (cite) about their work and its outcomes, convened multi-lab inquiry groups to probe cross-cutting issues, and met regularly to envision and plan RPC strategies and products. Each Local Lab was formed explicitly as a research-practice partnership (RPP), with dual purposes: (1) Address local problems of practice and producing usable, evidence-based knowledge for STEM improvement; and (2) Serve as existence-proofs of research-practice partnerships that thrive in a variety of institutional configurations. The Local Labs individually and the RPC as a whole also aimed to produce knowledge products--e.g., tools, slide decks, webinars, articles, and so on--that would contribute to the field, both to support STEM improvement and also to promote and support research-practice partnerships as an effective way to make research more valuable to the improvement of practice. This paper documents the formation of the Local Labs for the RPC and produced a detailed case study of each site. The case studies aim to portray distinctive features of the design and work of the Labs as research-practice partnerships, as well as the multiple benefits of the partnerships. It also looks across the cases to distill key findings and reflections. [For the full report, see ED598125.]