Seeking to learn more what effective inter-agency collaboration looks like in practice, the American Youth Policy Forum, the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships, and Results for America recently assembled a contingent of state education agency staff, researchers, and intermediaries to embed with the Massachusetts Department of Secondary and Elementary Education for a day-long “learning journey.” This post chronicles lessons gleaned from that day, including best practices, recommendations, and process details drawn from real-life experiences.

This paper makes the case for systematically evaluating the impact of boundary-spanning activities, which can facilitate knowledge exchange and connect science and policy.

Many research-practice partnerships (RPP) begin when two initially unaffiliated partner organizations decide to pursue collaborative work. Having formed a partnership between our respective offices within a federal agency, our experience is a bit different.

A growing movement around the world is uniting researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in collaborative efforts to develop and use research to tackle the most pressing social and environmental problems of our day. What’s different about these efforts is that the research studies are a product of the collaborations, not the other way around.

When well executed, research-practice partnerships can be powerful mechanisms for producing relevant and useful knowledge and facilitating its integration into policy and practice to improve youth outcomes. But without taking intentional steps to avoid common hurdles, it’s likely that many partnerships will fail to fulfill this potential. In this paper, three state education agency leaders experienced in navigating the challenging world of research-practice partnerships, offer examples of potential obstacles facing RPPs and provide practical strategies for overcoming them.