Collaborative research approaches between universities and schools: the case of New Basic Education (NBE) in China

ABSTRACT

This article about collaborative research approaches between professors at Chinese universities and teachers in public schools examines theory–practice relationships and the cooperative interactions that need to be developed between those producing theory and those living practice. The work is based on a 24-year New Basic Education (NBE) collaborative research partnership that has produced knowledge about “two-way transformation” informing future actions. This paper focuses mainly on the theory-to-practice portion of the transformation. This research study’s significance has to do with five partnership conditions: (1) theorists must change their assumptions about practice; (2) partners must have deep understandings of each other and reach mutually beneficial consensus; (3) partners must have sustained and frequent communications after reaching consensus; (4) comprehensive applications of various research methods and continuous reflection and reconstruction of methodologies are necessary, and (5) “transformation intermediaries” are also exceedingly important. Narratives of experiences illustrate how these five underlying conditions were achieved.

KEYWORDS:

• University-school partnerships
• collaboration
• theory-practice relationship
• transformation
• New Basic Education (NBE)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the the Peak Discipline Construction Project at the School of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

Notes on contributors

Zhengtao Li

Zhengtao Li is a professor at the Department of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. His research interests include educational philosophy, educational anthropology, basic education reform and teacher education.