Teacher Sensemaking in an Early Education Research–Practice Partnership

Background/Context: High quality early education, preschool through third grade, has received significant attention as a vehicle for addressing academic disparities. Research–practice partnerships (RPPs) offer a promising strategy for improving early education and closing the gap between research and practice; however, RPPs in the early learning context are understudied, and there is little information about how teachers experience them. Purpose/Research Questions: Grounded in a framework of sensemaking theory and research on teachers’ beliefs and RPPs, this paper addresses the following questions: (1) How did an early education RPP attempt to build a meaningful and trusting partnership and amplify teacher voices? (2) How did teachers make sense of new knowledge within the context of the RPP and their practical wisdom? (3) To what degree were teachers reaffirming existing beliefs vs. questioning or adjusting current beliefs through their participation in the RPP? Research Design: This paper relies on qualitative data gathered as part of an interdisciplinary education neuroscience longitudinal RPP project between university researchers and educators in a California school district. The data analyzed for this paper included field notes and artifacts from RPP meetings and transcripts of teacher interviews. Conclusions/Recommendations: The RPP intentionally created opportunities for teachers to amplify their perspectives and interpretations. Within RPP meeting spaces, teachers reflected on their beliefs and practices in light of research conducted in their schools and, more generally, sometimes adjusting and other times reaffirming their views. The extent to which teachers incorporated new knowledge into their cognitive schemas varied based on the topic and how and where the information was presented. These findings yield important implications for research–practice partnerships and system change in early childhood education.