Research-Practice Partnerships: Collaborative research for educational change

Sponsor: Spencer Foundation
Solicitation Title: Research-Practice Partnerships: Collaborative research for educational change
Funding Amount: up to $400,000
Sponsor Deadline: Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Solicitation Link: https://www.spencer.org/grant_types/research-practice-partnerships

Overview

The Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) Grants Program is intended to support education research projects that engage in collaborative and participatory partnerships with project budgets up to $400,000 and durations of up to three years. We accept Intent to Apply forms once a year in this program. 

We view partnerships as an important approach to knowledge generation and the improvement of education, broadly construed. Rigorous partnership work is intentionally organized to engage diverse forms of expertise and perspectives, across practitioners as well as scholars and disciplines, in knowledge generation around pressing problems of practice. Further, RPPs can facilitate the long-term accumulation of knowledge in new ways as researchers and practitioners work together to ask practitioner-relevant questions on key topics in specific settings over time. Many key problems of practice are historically saturated and require multiple perspectives and long-term engagement if sustainable and systemic change is to occur. Over the long term, we anticipate that research conducted by RPPs will result in new insights into the processes, practices, and policies that improve education for learners, educators, families, communities, and institutions where learning and teaching happen (e.g., schools, universities, museums, other workplaces). 

This grant program is open to partnerships between researchers and a broad array of practitioners. We define practitioners as school districts, county offices of education, state educational organizations, policy-makers, universities, community-based organizations, out-of-school-time providers, informal educators, and other social sectors that significantly impact learners’ lives. As such, we are open to applications from design-based research teams, networked improvement communities, placedbased research alliances, and other partnership arrangements. 

We expect the partners in the RPPs we fund to have engaged in fruitful long-term collaborations. How this history is evidenced can vary. For example, teams might have a track record of success as demonstrated by in-process or completed research studies, solutions-in-progress, established trusting relationships, or data-sharing agreements, amongst other possibilities. This grant program is specifically intended to build the capacity of partnerships to make educational change. Effective governance is a key aspect of successful partnerships, and as such all proposals should specify their governance structures and how the work is jointly developed across all partners. Additionally, we expect that partnerships will foreground issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion and articulate these dimensions in the proposal.   

 

Activities that May be Funded 

Research is fundamental to every research-practice partnership, and we expect research activities to be the central element of every proposal. In addition to detailing a plan for research, successful applicants may also prioritize plans for communicating and disseminating key findings that have the potential to foster positive educational changes.

The following categories are meant to be illustrative, but not exclusive, of activities in addition to the research that could be funded under this program. We expect proposed activities will be highly related to partnership type and context but will also, at their core, have the potential to make a contribution to improved educational policy and practice beyond the specific context in which scholars and practitioners are working. 

  • Research Activities: Each proposal should describe new research that would be launched or existing research activities that would be expanded with the grant. 
  • Research Infrastructure: Funds may be used for building and sustaining infrastructure needs for the research activities of the partnership. These infrastructure needs may apply to the full range of methodological approaches. 
  • Outreach, Communications, and Relationship Building: that strengthen the working relationship between partners and other stakeholders are also a possible component of the projects. Successful researchpractice partnerships devote a great deal of attention to building and maintaining trust across stakeholder groups and within their partnership. 
  • Capacity Development: Many research-practice partnerships seek to assist the practice partner in developing capacity to use research evidence and data in their daily decision-making.

Solicitation Limitations:
  • Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Research-Practice Partnership Grant are expected to have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field, or demonstrated professional experience appropriate for this program. 
  • Research-Practice Partnership budget totals are limited to $400,000 including up to 15% indirect cost charges . 
  • PIs and Co-PIs may only hold one active research grant from the Spencer Foundation at a time. 
  • Duration proposed may not be longer than 3 years.
  • PIs and Co-PIs may not submit more than one research proposal to the Spencer Foundation at a time. This restriction applies to the Small Grants Program, Large Grants Program, and Research-Practice Partnership Program. If the PI or any of the Co-PIs currently have a research proposal under consideration in any of these programs, they are required to wait until a final decision has been made on the pending proposal before they can submit a new proposal.
Other Information:
  • Applications Open: September 9, 2023
  • Intent to Apply: October 17, 2023
  • Full Proposal Deadline: November 15, 2023


Last Updated:
RODA ID: 2136