ABOUT
This RPP Effectiveness and Health Tool Kit is designed to help RPPs understand and support the health of their partnership and work toward their effectiveness goals. The tools can be used to help partnerships reflect on their joint goals, consider possible next actions, and drive improvement within their partnerships in ways that will fuel educational change and the transformation of systems more broadly.
The tools are closely tied to an updated RPP Effectiveness Framework, “Indicators of Research-Practice Partnership Health and Effectiveness: Updating the Five Dimensions Framework” by Erin Henrick, Caitlin C. Farrell, Corinne Singleton, Alison Fox Resnick, William R. Penuel, Paula Arce-Trigatti, Danny Schmidt, Stacey Sexton, Kristina Stamatis, and Sarah Wellberg. This updated framework revises the original 2017 framework developed by Henrick and colleagues. While the five dimensions of RPP effectiveness remain the same, the conceptualization of them is revised to reflect the evolving field and an explicit emphasis on the role of equity and power dynamics within RPPs. The toolkit is organized along these five dimensions.
The toolkit and framework are the result of a collaboration between the National Center for Research in Policy & Practice (NCRPP) and NNERPP and have been informed by and co-designed with the broader RPP community.
TOOLS TO SUPPORT RPP LEARNING AND COLLABORATION
WHAT
A set of tools to support RPPs to “see,” learn about, and grow towards collaborative health in a particular RPP context. Tools are organized along the five Dimensions put forth by Henrick and colleagues in 2017 and updated and revised in 2023.
WHY
The work of collaboratively bringing together practice and research is new to a lot of us, constantly evolving, and requires ongoing, intentional work. We need tools to support us to see how we are doing as a collaboration, with respect to Dimensions that are common to many RPPs.
FOR WHOM
All RPPs have the potential to deepen and strengthen their collaborative work. We’ve designed the tools with three audiences in mind:
- Individual RPPs
- Individual RPPs working with an external evaluator
- Facilitators of groups or networks of multiple RPPs
HOW TO USE
We developed tools of various types to align with each of the five Dimensions and Indicators of RPP Effectiveness. The Dimensions represent five core areas of RPP Effectiveness and Health. Each Dimension is then further elaborated into key Indicators related to that area.
Our suite of tools includes the following tool types:
- Discussion Activities: 20-30 minute structured discussions specific to particular Indicators
- Mini-Routines: 5 minute routines specific to particular Indicators that you can build into your work
- Survey Scales: 4-10 item survey scales aligned to the Indicators
- Reflection Prompts: Prompts aligned to the Indicators that can be used for interviews, discussions, or surveys
Each tool comes with Use Guidance to support you to adapt and use the tool for your context.
Below you can explore the tools by Dimension or by tool type, or learn more about the goals and design of the full suite of tools.
GOALS AND ASSUMPTIONS OF THE TOOLS
As with all tools, the goals and assumptions that guided our design are crucial to consider as you explore how you might use them with your own RPP.
GOALS OF THE TOOLS
We designed these tools with the following goals:
- Develop a more robust understanding of the Dimensions of RPP effectiveness and collaborative health
- Understand what the Dimensions look like (and could look like) for unique RPPs
- Equitably capture and interpret multiple perspectives
- Foster reflection, development of shared understanding, and ongoing growth of collaborative partnerships across all RPP effectiveness dimensions
- Adapt and combine tools for unique contexts, partnerships, and goals
- Support responsive design of ongoing use of tools and facilitation of learning and collaboration activities
ASSUMPTIONS OF THE TOOLS
We designed these tools with the following assumptions:
- RPP collaboration requires ways of working and learning together that are often fundamentally different for all involved – we must engage together to learn (and unlearn) in ongoing ways.
- RPPs are necessarily unique as they engage different partners in different contexts towards different goals. In their uniqueness, different RPPs will prioritize some Dimensions over the others.
- RPPs will need to use a different combination of tools, adapted for a specific context, over time.
- These tools are not inherently useful for all RPPs. In fact, some have the potential to be harmful to partnership dynamics if used at particular time points in a partnership’s development or within specific relational and power dynamics.
- These tools should not be used to make high-stakes funding decisions and are not intended to provide a comparative mechanism between RPPs to establish a “best” or “worst” partnership.
EXPLORE TOOLS BY DIMENSION
Use the links below to explore each of the Dimensions of RPP Effectiveness and the tools you might use to support your RPP to dig deeper and learn together about the Dimension.
Dimension 2:
Engage in inclusive research or inquiry to address local needs
Dimension 3:
Support practice or community organization in making progress on its goals
Dimension 4:
Engage with the broader field to improve educational practices, systems, and inquiry
EXPLORE TOOLS BY TYPE
Use the links below to explore the range of tools included in the full suite. What combination of tools seems potentially useful for you and your partnership?
Tool Type
Great if you want to…
Minimum Time Needed
further make sense of the Dimensions and Indicators and build a sense of how they are brought to life
15-20 minutes reading
reflect together about one or more indicators
20-30 minutes
dig deeper as an RPP into a particular indicator
20-30 minutes
try a short conversation that can be built into existing meetings or work processes
5 minutes
elicit further insight into some of the indicators using scales of 4-10 survey items
variable
elicit further insight into the indicators through short prompts that can be used to design interviews, discussions, or surveys.
variable
NOT SURE WHERE TO START?
The best starting point will likely be different for everyone. Here are some resources we’ve developed to help you think about how your RPP might dive in.
Resource
Great if you want to…
think about which Dimension(s) and/or Indicator(s) might be most useful for your RPP to start with – includes link to our screener survey
get a better sense of how the full suite of tools is organized and explore tools across the Dimensions (hint: this could be a good thing to bookmark!)
think about how you might use a combination of the tools and other sources of evidence from your RPPs work to gain insight into how your RPP is bringing given Dimension(s) and/or Indicator(s) to life
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TOOLS
The RPP Effectiveness and Health Tool Kit is a collaboration between the National Center for Research in Policy & Practice (NCRPP) and NNERPP
