Politics at the Boundary: Exploring Politics in Education Research-Practice Partnerships

The challenges of transforming our educational systems to fulfill enduring needs for equity, justice, and responsiveness will take a multitude of partners. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) arrange collaboration and engagement with research to bring about shared commitments and resources to tackle these challenges. Just as sociocultural and political dynamics can shape educational politics generally, without close and intentional attention to the politics of starting, operating, and sustaining RPPs, those political dynamics can potentially derail a partnership. In this article, we consider the emerging research on the politics in and around RPPs pursuing educational transformation and propose a framework to reflect these dynamics. To introduce this special issue, we also deconstruct RPP politics into four major phases of RPP work, and describe the articles addressing each phase. This compilation of articles contributes a wealth of expertise and evidence illuminating how politics can shape both RPPs and their goals of equity and transformation.