The role of research-practice partnerships in iworking to foster educational justice in school systems

 The realities of a global pandemic coupled with economic, climate, and racial crises have exacerbated existing racial injustices in schools and society. Dominant models of educational improvement prioritize technical-rational approaches that often result in administrative racism in school systems, with little attention to the complexities of race, power, and privilege in addressing long-standing racial injustices. 

The need to address settler colonialism, anti-Black, and other intersectional racisms are far from new, but in this paper the authors argue that the confluence of these pandemics demands new roles for research-practice partnerships (RPPs) in education that aspire to transform systems beyond their current construction. 

The authors draw on the intersections between racial equity and RPP scholarship to propose key pivots for RPPs in working to foster educational justice in school systems. They use their racial equity-focused RPP to illustrate efforts to (a) center justice in multidimensional change; (b) develop equity-centered data systems; and (c) enlist racially minoritized youth, family, and community expertise.