With education research, true expertise doesn’t reside solely with researchers — it thrives in partnership. Collaborating with those closest to the work allows us to gain a deeper, more accurate understanding of what’s really happening in schools. Our partners bring indispensable knowledge of their contexts, cultures, strengths, and challenges, making their insights not just valuable but essential. By respecting and trusting their expertise, we move beyond traditional research models to build studies that reflect reality, answer meaningful questions, and drive real impact. At The Learning Accelerator (TLA), we embrace this collaborative approach, which is why we partnered with our Exponential Learning Initiative’s evidence sites at every level of data collection, including conducting workshops to co-design strategies for leveraging the right data to answer our shared questions.
Respecting and Trusting the Expertise of Your Partners
Traditional research models often assume that expertise lies solely with researchers — but we find this perspective flawed. The individuals and organizations we partner with possess deep, contextual knowledge of their operational realities and the data collection strategies that will be most effective. When we approach research as a true partnership with a foundation of deep mutual respect, we can:
- Develop research that tells an accurate story, ensuring findings are truly reflective of the lived experiences of students and educators within their contexts.
- Address the right questions by leveraging the expertise of practitioners who understand what matters most on the ground.
- Build studies that are rigorous, relevant, and actionable.
Our partners’ knowledge is foundational — not secondary. Their insights enhance research integrity, making them essential contributors to every stage of the process. Further, our goal is to provide a robust evidence base to catalyze change in the sector. Without intentional partnership, it would be easy for our work to miss the mark. By benefiting from collective wisdom, we can design and share research that matters to practitioners, provides needed glimpses into the reality of schools for policymakers, and ultimately serves as a tool to support rapid learning across the field.
Designing Data Collection in Partnership
For our Exponential Learning Initiative, we are leading a mixed-methods study with five high-quality virtual and hybrid learning models. Recognizing the expertise of our partners, we collaboratively designed research questions that examine how learning acceleration happens, for whom, and under what conditions — while also addressing site-specific needs.
As with any study using data from schools, the right measures can be a moving target, and it is critical to deeply understand which ones will tell the right data story while being the most feasible to collect. To ensure we designed realistic and relevant data collection protocols, we:
- Met with site leaders to review research questions and assess the data we had initially proposed to answer them.
- Discussed what the data looks like, where it resides, and whether it would still be effective in achieving our goals.
- Co-designed realistic, customized data systems tailored to each site’s unique structure and resources.
This collaborative approach ensured that the data collection process was not only attainable but also meaningful, supporting our shared commitment to understanding and improving student learning outcomes. As a result of this process, sites felt empowered to use and format data in different ways and had new tools to help them answer research questions they may generate outside of the context of this study. As an added benefit, data collection was also streamlined, reducing delays in transferring data sets.
Building Mutual Capacity
As researchers, our responsibility extends beyond analysis — we must add value to our partners by sharing insights, supporting data use, and fostering new ways of thinking. Likewise, our partners bring a wealth of knowledge that we can learn from, expanding our capacities to do research that is relevant and useful to the field.
Our collaborative process focused not only on completing what was needed for the study, but supporting their learning of new strategies for leveraging data to answer their questions, identifying ways of using and formatting data to support usability and applicability, and providing tools to support their continuous improvement efforts. We, in turn, learned which measures were most relevant to their work, how their unique contexts shaped data interpretation, which questions really matter to them, and the real-world nuances of implementation. By working together, we strengthen each other’s capacities and ability to lean into meaningful inquiry. The lessons we learn from our partners inform our future research methodologies, ensuring that our work remains grounded, impactful, and aligned with the realities of educational practice. Partnership isn’t just a buzzword at TLA — it’s core to our practice. By embracing collaboration, we create research that is more accurate, actionable, and valuable for those it aims to serve.
