Kimberly Hirsh

Postdocs are contingent/precarious, yeah?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Blippi asks. “A law doctor & a father,” M says. “Why do you want to be a law doctor?” I ask. “Basically, I want to be like my dad. And I want to be like you, too. That’s why I’m going to be snuggly.”

It was so overcast yesterday that the moonflowers stayed open all day.

Coburn, C. E., & Penuel, W. R. (2016). Research-practice partnerships in education: Outcomes, dynamics, and open questions. Educational Researcher, 45(1), 48.

Coburn and Penuel review evidence of the outcomes and dynamics of research-practice partnerships in a variety of fields and then articulate a research agenda for exploring these outcomes and dynamics in the field of education.

Research-practice partnerships “are long -term collaborations between practitioners and researchers that are organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving schools and school districts” (p. 1). “…research on the impact of RPPs in education is sparse and focused on a narrow range of outcomes” (p. 2).

Extant research focuses on the challenges of RPPs, not on the designs or strategies participants in the partnerships use to address those challenges.

Key characteristics of research-practice partnerships: they are long-term, involving a shared, “open-ended commitment to build and sustain a working collaboration over multiple projects” (p. 3) “they focus on problems of practice: key dilemmas and challenges that practitioners face” (p. 3) they are mutualistic, with researchers and practitioners sharing authority and jointly negotiating the direction of the work “they involve original analysis of data,” in which participants collect and analyze their own data along with analyzing existing administrative data, answering key questions (in the case of education, these are usually questions posed by the school district)

Outcomes

Most research in a variety of fields focuses on the impact of interventions that are themselves outcomes of RPPs, rather than on the impact of the RPPs themselves.

Much research points to positive outcomes from RPP-developed interventions, but a lot of RPPs are not subject to any systematic inquiry and thus it isn’t apparent whether or not the success of the interventions is due to their creation as part of an RPP. “…these studies do not address the value of the partnerships themselves, above and beyond the particular innovations they produce” (p. 7)

Evidence suggests that participation in research-practice partnerships leads to greater access to research, but mixed evidence suggests that it is not clear whether greater access to research necessarily leads to greater use of research in decision-making.

Little systematic research investigates the influence of co-design on intervention uptake, or whether participating in RPPs “builds a deeper understanding of the research process or research findings, an appreciation for the value of research to inform decision-making, or capacity to engage in research-informed practices and policies or use research as part of continuous improvement efforts” (p. 8). There is also scant research about unintended outcomes of RPPs.

Dynamics

Most research on the dynamics of RPPs, “how they actually work and the mechanisms by which they foster educational improvement,” relies on first-person reflections of researchers involved in the work written after-the-fact, rather than systematic inquiry conducted simultaneously with RPPs themselves by outside investigators.

What research there is conducted by outside investigators focuses primarily on the challenges participants in RPPs face, including difficulties in communication and expectations, limitations imposed by the organizational realities of school systems, and the politicized environment present in educational organizations.

This research rarely illuminates strategies RPPs use to address these challenges, and almost never addresses both dynamics and outcomes simultaneously.

Research Agenda

Coburn and Penuel suggest the following elements of a research agenda for studying RPPs in education:

• Outcomes: consequences of RPPs for students, individual & organizational change, use of research, spread & scale of innovation, negative/unintended outcomes, whether RPPS influence the wider field, failed partnerships
• Comparative studies: how varying designs & contexts impact outcomes
• Targeted studies of specific strategies: tools, strategies, and routines for addressing challenges
• Political dimensions of partnerships: whether politics gets in the way of research use, strategies for navigating politicized environments

“With a broader evidence base in both the dynamics and outcomes of RPPs, we can develop a better sense of whether, when, and how RPPs are a viable and effective way for research to support broad and sustainable improvements to educational systems.” (p. 15)

Finished reading: Different Seasons: Four Novellas by Stephen King 📚

This dude is so prolific and so fun to read. I would like to write things that are fun to read.

🔖 Read A CRITIQUE OF DARK ACADEMIA: THE ROMANTICIZATION OF OVERWORK.

Wearing tweed and wandering old bookshops is fine. Denying yourself sleep over an essay that isn’t due for days is not.

Say it with me: school should not take priority over your mental health. School should not take priority over your physical health. School should not take priority over your relationships.

If Einstein could take a nap, so can you.

🔖 Read Wear Me This: Dark Academia could be the answer to the very problem it romanticizes.

I would venture that slipping on a tailored button-up and sitting in the library because Aesthetics Wiki told you “studying and reading” are “activities” of Dark Academia could be the impetus for a powerful academic pursuit or useful social connection.

Themes have emerged.

🔖 Read THE SCHOLARSHIP OF SEXY PRIVILEGE: WHY DO I LOVE DARK ACADEMIA BOOKS?

This ownership over dark academia gives me the courage to keep going with real academia; to forge a space again in the gaps and achieve immortality in the sharing of ideas without boundaries. This ‘dark academia’ reminds me not to take things so seriously, to see the rot in the foundations of an institution I can’t stay away from, and build my own school in defiance.

🔖 Read What’s Dark about Dark Academia

I think the real power of dark academia is the way it compresses—and thus preserves—humanistic study at a time when the humanities are under constant threat… Creating and emulating dark academia content offers students a way to fantasize about a world in which higher education isn’t instrumentalized, but rather self-sustaining and inherently valuable.

An aesthetic that evokes the academy is more flexible, more malleable, than the academy itself.

But if dark academia commodifies education, they learned how from the corporate university itself. Their commodification as style has far less insidious ends than the university’s spreadsheets of departmental deliverables.

Today in Pokemon Research Reflects Real Research: an early career researcher didn’t have access to a journal article she wanted to read, she posted about it online, and a senior faculty member sent her the article. ❤️

I’m wearing an oversized Sailor Moon tee and black bike shorts with lace trim, so hello from 1995, I guess.

💬📚 “Do not let your self-doubt turn into self-sabotage.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

💬📚 “As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn’t. It makes us frustrated people.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

💬📚 “The essential element in nurturing our creativity lies in nurturing ourselves.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

💬📚 “…a story’s as much a house or garden as song.” Jane Alison, _Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative _

Currently reading: Different Seasons: Four Novellas by Stephen King 📚

Took the Buzzfeed Inner Aesthetic Stranger Things Character quiz & got Will Byers and Cottagecore: “If you haven’t already, you should absolutely spend a day baking, gardening, or anything else that feels cozy and homey.” Like D&D and Nintendo?

This is a gorgeous book, full of grief and beauty.

Selected quotes:

Water

In water
my sister is no longer
lonely. Her right leg is crooked and smaller
than her left, but she swims straight.
Her whole body is a glimmering fish.

Eating Alone

White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas > fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame
oil and garlic. And my own loneliness.
What more could I, a young man, want.

Visions and Interpretations

Truth is, I’ve not seen my father
since he died, and, no, the dead
do not walk arm in arm with me.

💬📚 “[The senses] pull relevance from randomness, and weave meaning from miscellany.” Ed Yong, An Immense World

💬📚 “A scientist’s explanations about other animals are dictated by the data she collects, which are influenced by the questions she asks, which are steered by her imagination, which is limited by her senses.” Ed Yong, An Immense World

Good to remember about all research.

💬📚 “Perhaps people who experience the world in ways that are considered atypical have an intuitive feeling for the limits of typicality.” Ed Yong, An Immense World

I’ve got an ARC of The Nap Ministry’s book REST IS RESISTANCE ready for me to download from NetGalley, and will probably take it to the beach with me next week. I also asked my local library to purchase it. They ordered FIVE COPIES. 📚

🔖 📺 Celia Rose Gooding, who does an amazing job playing Cadet Nyota Uhura on Strange New Worlds, wrote a beautiful guest column for The Hollywood Reporter on Nichelle Nichols’s legacy. 🖖

Selected quotes:

Eidolons

We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
But really build eidolons.

To the States

…Resist much, obey little

Thou Reader

Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
Therefore for thee the following chants.