Improving ESE policy through research-practice partnerships: Reflections and analysis from New York City

Abstract

Although interest in ESE policy studies is on the rise, we argue there is a gap in scholarship about the nature and extent of interactions between policymakers and researchers in the ESE field. This paper addresses this gap by discussing one example of such interaction – an ongoing research-practice partnership (RPP) between the New York City Department of Education Office of Sustainability and Teachers College, Columbia University. Using qualitative document analysis, we – a researcher and two policymakers – make two contributions to the literature. First, we analyze the emergence of the partnership and point to the importance of trust, social relationships, and production of local and relevant knowledge. Second, we demonstrate how policymakers use knowledge produced in the RPP to inform specific programmatic decisions (instrumental use) and to clarify assumptions about the system (conceptual use). We also show how engagement with research informs participants’ views towards improving school engagement with ESE. Implications for furthering research-policy relationships in ESE include: supporting comparative and longitudinal research designs, giving more attention to the socio-political context shaping partnerships, investigating other forms of knowledge use in RPPs, and reflecting on the politics and priorities given to conducting research with policymakers that demonstrate contributions to the collective good.

Keywords:

• Education policy
• research-practice partnership
• improvement
• research use
• environmental education
• sustainability education

Acknowledgements

We are especially thankful for the thoughtful feedback we received from Noah Drezner, Nancy Green Saraisky, Erika Kessler, and Carine Verschueren. We thank the Special Issue Co-Editors Marcia Mckenzie and Mark Rickinson and the anonymous reviewers for their detailed and constructive comments that improved this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 An estimated cost for hiring fulltime Sustainability Coordinators in every public school in New York City is close to 100 million USD per year.

2 For example, some principals use preparation periods or school-based options, which allow schools to modify the collective bargaining agreement to meet the needs and philosophy of their school community (UFT, n.d.).

3 A recording of the webinar is available here: https://www.tc.columbia.edu/sustainability/resources/pulled-content-2/how-to-build-a-school-green-team/. At minute fifteen, the presenters share research from the DOE-TC RPP.