Conference Agenda

This contribution examines the different levels of collaboration between the fields of research and practice. By exploring a researcher-teacher collaboration in Luxembourg and collaborative structures from project in Portugal, we outline different features and conditions for collaboration. Considering that both case studies take role in established partnerships, a multi-faceted analysis will unveil multiple structures of collaborations. The studies presented here examine how partnerships can foster professional development, organizational learning, and pedagogical improvement across various contexts, contemplating both pre-service and in-service teacher education within science teacher professional learning.

The case of Luxembourg explores a teacher-researcher collaboration that focused on co-developing, co-teaching and co-researching a professional development offering about the dialogue between science and language. The researcher and the teacher take part of a school-university partnership, the SciTeach Center – University of Luxembourg, which is a collaborative structure that provides professional learning opportunities for other primary science teachers in Luxembourg. Through this study, the starting point is that the SciTeach Center is acknowledged as a collaborative space where teachers and researchers come together and engage in dialogue; previous research has looked how team collaboration is fostered by a reflect-dialogue-act structure. Therefore, drawing from data that permits to look from the individual to the organizational level, this contribution aims to present what elements have enabled the teacher-researcher collaboration, by exploring a multi-layered structure of collaboration considering the processes of boundary spanning, third space, cogenerative dialogue, distributed leadership, community of practice, professional learning and ethics of care.

For the case of Portugal, this contribution explores collaborative structures that promote professional growth, examining partnerships between researchers and educators, looking into the intersection of research and teaching. This plays a crucial role in shaping effective educational practices and fostering teacher continuous professional development. We analyze how these structures support inquiry-based teaching, reflective practice, and pedagogical innovation. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of multiple projects that involve research-practice collaboration in teacher education (e.g., AutoSTEM, Science2Edu). Other following initiatives, such as Prometon (which focuses on metacognition and Theory of Mind) and GEO-Academy (which develops digital and green competencies), demonstrate the impact of structured collaboration on teacher agency and instructional innovation.

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) have become increasingly prominent in educational research as sustained forms of collaboration intended to strengthen the relevance of research and support educational improvement through joint work between researchers and practitioners (Coburn et al., 2013). RPPs are commonly understood as arrangements that enable the co-construction of knowledge that is both theoretically grounded and locally relevant, while fostering ongoing engagement between research and practice communities (Penuel et al., 2015). While prior research has articulated key design principles of RPPs, including mutuality, long-term engagement, and joint knowledge production, there remains limited research on how RPPs can be evaluated in ways that capture their developmental, relational, and organizational contributions (Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Sarmiento-Marquez et al., 2023). Much existing research focuses on observable changes in practice or on the uptake of externally generated knowledge, rather than examining how participation in RPPs reshapes professional learning, and school cultures over time (Welsh, 2021).

This paper contributes to current discussions on RPP by examining an RPP as a developmental context for teacher professional learning and school-level development. The research question is: In what ways does participation in a research-practice partnership contribute to teachers’ professional development and to the development of schools as learning organizations? This question responds to recent calls to explore RPPs not only in terms of outcomes, but also in relation to learning opportunities, professional agency, and developmental processes afforded through sustained collaboration (Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Sarmiento-Marquez et al., 2023). Accordingly, the paper evaluates the partnership itself as an infrastructure that enables inquiry and organizational learning through ongoing engagement in RPP (Farrell et al., 2021).

The paper is grounded in three interrelated bodies of scholarship. First, the paper draws on literature on RPPs, which conceptualize RPPs as long-term, reciprocal arrangements oriented toward joint work, mutual learning, and capacity building rather than knowledge transfer (Coburn et al., 2013; Coburn & Penuel, 2016). From this perspective, partnerships are understood as infrastructures that shape professional learning conditions over time, and their value lies not only in measurable outcomes but also in the processes and conditions they create for learning.

Second, the paper is informed by research on teacher professional learning and organizational learning in schools, which emphasizes that meaningful professional learning is situated in practice, socially mediated, and strengthened through sustained collaboration and inquiry (Borko, 2004; Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Opfer & Pedder, 2011). This work highlights the importance of professional learning opportunities that are closely connected to teachers’ everyday work and that position teachers as active participants in their own learning. These features align closely with RPP design principles, suggesting that RPPs may function as particularly powerful contexts for teacher learning and collective capacity building within schools.

Third, the paper draws on scholarship on teacher research and practitioner inquiry, which positions teachers’ systematic engagement in research as a form of professional learning that supports reflective practice, professional judgment, and the development of professional identity (Zeichner, 2003; Cheng & Li, 2020). This literature conceptualizes teachers as knowledge producers whose engagement in inquiry contributes not only to individual professional growth but also to collective learning and knowledge development within school communities.

Together, these perspectives frame the partnership as a context in which professional development emerges through participation in research, collaboration, and inquiry, and in which school development can also be supported through these structures. Rather than assessing the effectiveness of a specific pedagogical intervention, the study evaluates the partnership itself as a developmental infrastructure that supports teacher professional learning and school-level development. In doing so, the paper contributes to Network 15 by offering a theoretically grounded approach to evaluating research-practice partnerships as professional learning contexts.

Teachers co‑designing with researchers offers a promising avenue for developing pedagogical content and integrating emerging technologies into everyday teaching. However, its effectiveness depends on understanding how research partnerships operate at the levels of agency, expertise, expectations, and perceived value. Although co‑design is often described as collaborative, research–practice partnership (RPP) literature shows that many initiatives remain researcher‑driven—researchers define the problems, set the timelines, and prioritise data‑collection needs. This raises questions about how teachers evaluate such partnerships, where they draw boundaries around their participation, and how they distinguish meaningful collaboration from additional burdens.

This study examines teachers’ expectations and hesitations to work with researchers, focusing on what teachers hope to gain from collaboration and what aspects of classroom reality they feel researchers must understand when it comes to integrating digital innovations into teaching.

RQ: What makes collaboration feel worthwhile or burdensome when researchers work with teachers to improve content creation and technology integration?

This question foregrounds teachers’ criteria for meaningful participation and highlights the boundaries they draw between useful support and undue demands on their time and attention.

Three theoretical perspectives guide this study. RPP theory explains why misalignment often exists, as partnerships tend to privilege researcher agendas despite participatory claims. It sensitises the analysis to issues of problem framing, agency, mutualism, and value production. Practice Architectures provides concepts for analysing how discourses, routines, material arrangements, and power relations shape what teachers find possible, acceptable, or overwhelming within partnership work. Boundary theory highlights how teachers and researchers negotiate expectations, expertise, and roles in co‑design activities, and how misunderstandings or productive crossings emerge.

Together, these frameworks help explain why teachers may embrace certain collaborative practices while resisting others. This combination is particularly relevant in Finland, where teachers enjoy high professional autonomy, are trusted to design their own pedagogy, and expect practical relevance and intellectual respect from external partners. These conditions heighten teachers’ sensitivity to whether partnerships honour their expertise or introduce abstract, impractical, or researcher-driven demands that do not resonate with classroom realities. Finland serves as a high-autonomy European case from which broader insights can be drawn for other European education systems seeking to design equitable and teacher-valued RPPs.