It will be great to talk more about how you build partnerships and document the impact of those collaborations. COVID 19 has certainly highlighted the need to build partnerships and collaborations remotely. I wonder how can we as a field illustrate the steps needed to take to building connections online. I would love to meet virtually and discuss this. I can be reached at pchick@mmsa.org

Absolutely, Perrin! I'll email in the next couple of weeks to set something up. I hope you are doing well. It's great to "see" you online. 

Hi James! As of right now we have not applied for funding to do this work with other districts. However we are interested in doing that, based on what we learn from this project. Luckily, we are all learning a lot!

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for this question. It resonates with wonderings we have had over time as partners. I will share some thoughts based on the Research and Evaluation team roles.

For example, as part of the Research and Evaluation team, our role is to (a) answer research questions through long term systematic analyses and (b) share timely input with partners' through short cycles of analysis, about:

- the partnership

- the design/implementation of the Professional Learning and its impact.

However, as we participate in Professional Learning design meetings, we do not only share input based on short cycles of analysis. For example, we might also contribute to the design based on our own experience in designing learning activities'.

Taking up roles that aren't originally part of what each team is supposed to do, can be a very positive and enriching experience. However, if a researcher participates in the design more actively, it needs to be agreed upon before each meeting because having an extra "cook in the kitchen" requires organization (to balance the importance of all voices), time (to give time for everyone to be heard), and effective communication (to co-construct a common culture between partner teams). If there is little time or a collaboration structure does not allow it, each partner has learned that it is better to endorse their original role, otherwise it will likely not be effective.

Are you part of a partnership yourself? If so, how have you negotiated roles when you engage in partners' activities?

Coralie 

Hi Sarah,

I just watched your STRIDES video. Since I am familiar with the WISE project, I enjoyed learning about this current work. I can see from the video that your partnership work is evolving as the team responds to COVID-19. That is very much the case for our project, too, as all three teams – the Lawrence Hall PL team, The Stanford/Lawrence Hall Research & Evaluation team, and the SCUSD district team – work together to revise the summer programming for teacher leaders.

Coralie described the major roles of the R&E team. I think that the lines between our roles have become somewhat more blurred in this current effort. As one example, the leads for each team are now meeting weekly so that the district team can update us on their evolving virtual teaching and professional learning activities and plans. In those conversations and we all are sharing ideas about how to adapt the PL and research activities to best support those efforts, drawing on experiences and expertise that lie outside our formal roles in the partnership. 

Hilda

Hi Sarah,

Coralie described well what Stanford's R&E team contributes to the project.  They, along with Lawrence Hall's researchers, provide critical and timely feedback which helps inform our decisions about the professional learning design as well as project design. Not only are we using data to inform decisions, but we are also gaining their added perspective to many aspects of the project. 

There have been some secondary benefits to working with Stanford. For example, Jonathan Osborne's work on argumentation in middle school science, along with the learnings from IPT, has helped SCUSD's efforts in bridging our K-12 Science Articulation work. A few of our IPT Merit Teachers are members of our district Articulation Committee. Our Merit Teachers, who are teachers in grades 3-5, are having conversations with middle and high school teachers about argumentation and student talk. Middle and high school teachers are finding that the talk piece can help them bridge gaps in understanding as students work on building their Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning.  

Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) brings their many years of PL design experience to the project.   Being the district's elementary science TOSA (Teacher on Special Assignment), it has been very rewarding to work with LHS on the co-designing our Summer Institutes and Follow-Up sessions.  Our IPT teachers benefit from the coaching and modeling the LHS team provides.  Our district also happens to have FOSS as our adopted curriculum. Some of the LHS team are writers for FOSS.  Their knowledge and expertise on FOSS lessons, but more importantly on ELD and ELA connections and supports, aligns so well with our district's focus.  

Thanks for watching our video and for your post and question.  Please let me know if you have other questions!

Krista

Coralie, thanks for your answer! I imagine it is difficult to define roles and distribute responsibilities while simultaneously letting the partnership evolve dynamically. Working with teachers in STRIDES or general with WISE, I often see my role as contributing research and tech expertise, the teachers role as contributing "real life information" and of course middle school science teaching experience as well as expertise re their students. I see instructional design, planning interventions, noticing ideas in student work and contributions as a shared role. Beyond that, I am really just curious how complex partnerships can work because I see purpose in (my) educational research if it is informed and shaped by ideas from "practice".

Hilda, thanks for adding details! I can imagine that during these times, collaboration is even more needed. I think districts and teachers are all challenged making decisions and communicating those. I am sure having established collaboration across partners before can only help responding quickly to current needs.

Krista, thanks for adding even more detail! I really think it is great how different expertises are joint together and how every partner is learning about and with what other partners know!

I've looked at the project's website for publications but probably didn't navigate to the correct location. If you have any readings, I'd love for you to point me to them!

Sarah, Most of our analyses to date have been conducted in order to provide ongoing feedback to the PL team. We are in the process of conducting retroactive analyses now and plan to have papers ready to share some time this summer. Please reach out to us again in a couple of months.

Hilda

Hi, DeLene. Thanks for watching our video!

I'm sure some of my partners/colleagues may have different things to share. I would say our biggest challenges have been really focusing in on a three-way partnership as equal contributors to the goals and direction of the project. For example, the school district has participated in many projects in the past that are more set with the external partner's goals and objectives. In this project, the intention is for all partners to be responsive to each other's needs, especially the needs and constraints of the school district. This means that although we started with a pre-designed model for professional learning, it really was intended to be flexible as long as we adhere to some core principles that we know make professional learning experiences effective. This is both an opportunity and a challenge because the project can be responsive to the district's needs, AND this means the district needs to be involved in a different way than it has been in past projects by clearly outlining how this project fits into the larger goals of the district and shifting roles for teacher leaders. In order for the project to be successful, we need to have steady district updates and work collaboratively with the district as full members of our design team. We've been doing this! The district are also essential contributors to the design of our research questions, so that we ensure we are collecting data that is useful to them. So, I would say that our challenges have all been exciting opportunities that we have had to work to capitalize on. I'll be interested to see how others respond. 

I like the positive spin you put on your challenges! 

Thank you for your responses.  It is wonderful to see how changes are made within the project.  It's a true STEM project as you adapt your plans to better meet the needs of your project. I enjoyed hearing about the challenges and how you dealt with them.  Thank you. 

DeLene, another challenge that the R&E team faces is the balancing of data collection and analyses to inform ongoing design and re-design efforts with data collection and analyses needed for systematic retrospective analyses of the project’s impact. We also have to consider if and when to modify our overall research questions as the project responds to both anticipated and unanticipated challenges.

Hilda

Hi Stacey,

California went into Shelter in Place in mid-March.  Santa Clara Unified moved very quickly to a distance learning model.  Chromebooks were distributed ASAP and Wifi hotspots were placed where needed.  TOSAs like myself (Teacher on Special Assignment) put together model lessons and began delivering technology, app, and content (and other) PD for all teachers every Friday soon after.

Elementary teachers in our district are still trying to find their groove, even after having done almost two months of distance learning. They meet at minimum 15 min each day with their classes and have PD and collaboration/planning meetings each Friday.  Many of our teachers are also doing small group instruction as well as one-on-one meetings via Google Meet.  I have been participating regularly in two of our IPT teacher's virtual classrooms, and see how hard they are working and what student engagement looks like. 

Our IPT teachers (along with so many other teachers) have had so much on their plates. Because of the added stress involved with jumping into distance learning and building the plane as we fly, the IPT Leadership Team and PL Team agreed that we would "slow down" and just let our teachers do what they need to do to take care of their families and students. For example, instead of our previously planned April 7th PL day, we had an hour-long virtual Happy Hour with breakout rooms so that everyone could just talk.   I've sent an update about our modified Summer Leadership Institute and future plans as we know them and have asked for their thoughts.  Most have said they are looking forward to the work this summer, and are glad that we are making a modified schedule for the virtual PD environment.  We will update the group again soon with a more formalized plan in the near future.  In the meantime, I check in with individuals and am ready looking forward to the next virtual Happy Hour!

Despite the drastic changes to our ways of living, learning, and teaching, I'm hearing and seeing our IPT work - even in an online classroom culture.   An example - One of our teachers shared that she tried a sensemaking discussion with volunteers (4th graders). Ten students volunteered. She said it went well and she can see how she can make this happen with more students in her class - and that she wanted to share with others. 

Thanks for your questions, and please let me know if you have others!

Cheers, 

Krista

I really enjoyed your video as well and was also very interested in learning more about what those "aha" moments where. What were some of the strategies that you found most helpful in ensuring the partnership was able to work jointly to pivot as needed?

Hi Libby and Ximena,

Thank you for your kind words and your great questions.

I will share the story of how we overcame a challenge, in which I will highlight types of structures that were helpful in ensuring the partnership was able to work jointly to pivot as needed and an “aha” moment.

At the start of the project, all partners attempted to redesign the Professional Learning (PL) collectively. They attempted to work together for all the stages of the design: from defining the learning outcomes to developing the PL activities and resources. It seemed to be an ideal way to collaborate in the sense that partners with different experiences would contribute their expertise to adapt the PL to the district's needs, together. In practice, the co-design proved to take way too much time and energy.

The PL Principal Investigators (PIs) had regular opportunities to share with partner PIs in leadership team meetings. After the PL, they shared how challenging this co-design experience was for the PL team and the potential reasons for these difficulties: all collaborators were not consistently present for each design meeting which delayed the process of co-constructing a common understanding of what was done and where the design was headed; there were too many voices around the table and in an effort to have them all heard and negotiate a decision, the design was considerably delayed. 

Organizing regular leadership team meetings is a communication structure that allows for the timely sharing and addressing of such concerns. The frequency and length of such meetings varies throughout the project depending on how many decisions we anticipate to have to make jointly at a given moment: at times, the meetings are weekly but at other times they occur every two weeks. To ensure participation we realized that, it is essential to agree to block the days and time long ahead and to keep them organized with a well-prepared agenda. We also tried to make sure that all voices are heard and that there are running notes to record the progress of ideas, as well as a summary of the agreements that were reached.

The "aha" part of this story is that we realized that we needed to develop strategies to organize collaboration: decide on which decision making grain size partners' should provide input (e.g. co-design learning outcomes with a broader group of partners, but make small grain decisions such as activity design in small groups and get input on drafts when needed); organize sharing input through structured activities (gallery walk, think-pair-shares, etc.).

Part of what we expect to achieve by the end of this project is to improve, organize, and share practical tools (leadership meeting agenda preparation templates, whole project meetings design templates, etc.) that allowed us to make the partnership effective. Each of these practical tools was a solution crafted to address specific needs of our partnership. While we expect that they can be used as a starting point for “novice” complex partnerships, they will very likely be modified to meet their own needs.

I hope that these examples answer your questions. I would be happy to share if you would like to know more details. Such a Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) was new territory for me when I joined the project. I find RPPs to be a most mutualistic and sustainable way of doing research and I am excited to be involved in more RPPs in my future research as well!

Hi Todd,

Thank you for your kind comment.

Our approach currently aligns with Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR). However, as the partnership is still evolving, the choice of relevant frameworks will continue until later in our project, through retroactive analyses.

At this stage, I can share some examples of data that we collect.

• quasi weekly check ins with the school district team to make sure that partners’ receive timely information about shifts related to the problem of practice we are trying to address (building district capacity to develop teachers in supporting students’ science learning using argumentation): semi-structured individual interviews, updates in leadership team meetings.
• records of agreements and rationales to understand how partners commit to iterative and collaborative design of PL activities, Research activities, and District activities. Such collaborative activities develop theory, knowledge, and practice in building district capacity to develop teachers in supporting students’ science learning using argumentation; records are collected: from leadership team meetings, from Professional Learning design meetings, and from Research and Evaluation meetings.
• annual group interviews of each partner to collect their perceptions on the effectiveness of the partnership.

Even though we are not yet ready to share about systematic analyses of the partnership, I hope that these examples are of some help to understand the type of data we collect to understand how the RPP is fostered. :-)

Hi Coralie . . . this is really helpful. Thanks for sharing how you are systematically collecting  data about your evolving RPP work and how you have framed it around DBIR. If there are any publications or conference papers your group has written about this, I'd welcome you to share. Thanks again for sharing about your inspiring work.

I am glad it helps. We look forward to sharing publications as well, keep in touch! 

Hi DeLene,

We began by having the district share it's needs and priorities in an All-Partners' Kickoff Meeting.   Over time, we negotiated what would be feasible for all partners, and we held meetings and tracked negotiating points and agreements.   Depending on the grain size of the district need, the brainstorming and planning for how the partnership could meet those needs was done by either the IPT Leadership Team, the PL Team, a Working Group, or a combination of all.   Since the infancy of the partnership, the district has gone through many changes - including a new superintendent.   The partnership has worked to be very nimble to the sometimes shifting needs and priorities of the district.  Coralie checks in with me once a week and tracks updates to what is happening in my institution. We have weekly or biweekly Leadership meetings, where SCUSD's director of curriculum and instruction, gives updates on district happenings.   We communicate OFTEN, and our communication structures have only improved as we continue to learn from one another and how to meet each others' needs. 

Thank you so much.  This is wonderful insight.  It is so powerful to have a partnership where there is open communication and needs of both sides are met.  Bravo on your approach and partnership!  

Thank you so much Andrew. I really appreciated watching your video. I wish you well in forming successful partnerships to further your interesting work.

Thank you for your warm and encouraging message, Jennifer. I enjoyed watching the video from your project, in particular the originality of the idea of a co-created project with a focus on research! 

Hello Michael,

Thanks you so much for your comment and questions!

You will find more information about our approaches in this paper (Osborne et al., 2019). The paper situates our group's conceptualization of argumentation and describes the PD theoretical foundations.

In addition to that, here is the latest (draft) version of the Science Discourse Instrument that we have been using to measure teacher and student argumentation practice.

All the best,

Coralie