Building Research Collaboratives Among Schools and Universities: Lessons From the Field

Abstract

-In a previous issue of Mind, Brain, and Education , Hinton and Fischer (2008) argue that educational research needs to be grounded in the lived realities of school life. They advocate for research schools as a venue for accomplishing this. The Center for the Study of Boys ' and Girls ' Lives represents an alternative model -a research collaborative among independent schools and university-based scholars. This article describes the Center ' s experience with democratic, participatory action research. It discusses major roadblocks encountered doing such work, including diffi culties selecting research topics collaboratively, epistemological differences in methods and design, the scarcity of time, and resistance to results when they challenge gender stereotypes or the status quo or involve student researchers. The article concludes with strategies for overcoming these roadblocks, including clearer, upfront negotiations with schools and a compact that specifi es roles and responsibilities for both school and Center personnel. THE NEED FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCHIn their article in the most recent issue of Mind, Brain, and Education , Hinton and Fischer (2008) argue cogently for the need to ground scholarly research in practice and practice in scholarly research. Without such rootedness, they claim, researchers often misconstrue schools ' pedagogical goals and fail to appreciate the nuances of practice, whereas educators often misunderstand scientifi c fi ndings and are subject to the latest pseudoscientifi c claims of popular literature; what Hinton and Fischer term " brain scams. " The solution they call for is research schools, in which scientists and teachers work together to overcome the differences in language and methods, in understandings about the nature of evidence, and even in epistemologies that have kept them apart at grave cost to both. In such schools, they envision scientists educating teachers to conduct research and educators helping scientists to discern what kinds of inquiries can result in fi ndings relevant to their educational practice. Hinton and Fischer see scientists gaining deeper understanding of the cultures of schools, which would enable them to shape more appropriate and effective investigations, and they see them linking schools together in order to create richly textured databases that help both them and educators assess what results are unique to the ecology of particular schools and what are generalizable across them.The very reasons that make school -university collaborations necessary also suggest potential roadblocks to establishing and sustaining them. The Center for the Study of Boys ' and Girls ' Lives (CSBGL) was founded as a research collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania ' s Graduate School of Education and what has now become nine independent, private schools ( www.csbgl.org ). Its member schools 1 each contribute to its fi nancial maintenance. Together with Center staff, schools defi ne the research areas they are interested in and are supported b...

“UNIFIED”: Bridging the Researcher–Practitioner Divide in Mind, Brain, and Education

“…This means that theoretical research from one field can inform and shape empirical research in other disciplines (Willingham & Lloyd, ), such as education and psychology's constructivism finding new validation in neuroscience's neuroconstructivism (Mareschal et al, ; Szűcs & Goswami, ). It is clear that pedagogy can also inform theories in psychology and neuroscience (LaRusso et al, ) and test the applicability of neuroscience and psychology theories in the real world (Kuriloff et al, ; Stafford‐Brizard et al, ), just as psychology can help explain how and why some practices foster learning and development, while others do not (Ansari & Coch, ; Christodoulou & Gaab, ). For example, Sigman et al () described how an understanding of the neuroscience of visual learning could have predicted the superiority of a letter‐by‐letter “phonics” system over the whole word approach to the teaching of reading, saving the field a decades‐long debate (e.g., Castles et al, ).…”

“…Grounding of research questions and hypotheses in real-world observations/need can increase impact of findings (Booth et al, 2015) Increased ethical considerations, compared to university-based research (Felzmann, 2009) Exposure to latest thinking/techniques (Jyrhämä et al, 2008), and latest research from other disciplines Increased logistical considerations (Felzmann, 2009;Plummer et al, 2014) Psychology and neuroscience can inform classroom pedagogy (Pickering & Howard-Jones, 2007;Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2001;Roediger, 2013;Stern, 2005;Thomas, Kovas, Meaburn, & Tolmie, 2015) Increased difficulty controlling extraneous variables, compared to lab-based research (Plummer et al, 2014) Pedagogy can inform psych/neurotheories (LaRusso et al, 2016) and test the applicability of theories in the real world (Kuriloff, Reichert, Stoudt, & Ravitch, 2009;Stafford-Brizard et al, 2017) Increased time commitments can be required for all parties to collaborate more closely (Simmonds, 2014) Psychological theories can be informed by neuroscience (Ochsner & Lieberman, 2001) Additional training for teachers and researchers can be required, sometimes requiring both time and funding (Ansari & Coch, 2006;Atkinson, 2017;Blake & Gardner, 2007;Simmonds, 2014) Psychological and neuroscientific findings can support educational theories and debates (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018;Kim & Sung, 2013;Sigman, Peña, Goldin, & Ribeiro, 2014) Teachers can feel less confident to contribute to project formation (Simmonds, 2014) as they are often unable to access the original research papers from each discipline (Stafford-Brizard et al, 2017) Can provide a framework to empirically test teachers' ideas/pedagogical methods more objectively (Churches & McAleavy, 2015) Can develop desirable "teacher-researcher-practitioner model" for educators (Glennon, Hinton, Callahan, & Fischer, 2013) Opportunities Threats…”

Mediating the Message of Action Research

“…The "Catch 22" of Time As in other CAR studies (Goodnough, 2008;Kuriloff et al, 2009;Watkins, 2006), the teacher researchers identified time as the number one challenge. While they had been given release time to plan and disseminate, there simply was not enough of it.…”

School‐Based Research

“…In these institutions, researchers work alongside doctors to incorporate recent advances in medical research into practice and track results. There is a growing movement in the field of education to create analogous institutions in education called research schools (Chen, ; Fischer, ; Hinton, ; Hinton & Fischer, , ; Kuriloff, Richert, Stoudt, & Ravitch, ). Research schools are living laboratories where researchers collaborate with practitioners to carry out research, train educators, and disseminate findings.…”