Learning at the Boundaries of Research and Practice: A Framework for Understanding Research–Practice Partnerships

Given the rapid growth of research–practice partnerships (RPPs), we need a framework that helps the field understand how RPPs can facilitate organizational learning in service of local educational improvement and transformation. Drawing on sociocultural and organizational learning theories, we argue that learning can happen for the organizations engaged in RPPs at the boundaries of research and practice. Such learning is evident when there are changes in collective knowledge, policies, and routines of participating organizations, with implications for longer-term outcomes of educational improvement and transformation locally and more broadly. The degree to which organizations can make use of the ideas from the RPP is dependent, in part, on the presence and design of boundary infrastructure and the preexisting organizational capacities and conditions. We conclude with implications for those engaging in RPPs and future research.

DEEP FLOW: an embodied materiality of dance, technology, and bodily experience

In this research article, I argue that Deep Flow is an embodied materiality that may be experienced by exploring performative phenomenologies, entwining two different sets of research practice: phenomenological methodologies and artistic practice. In Deep Flow the practitioner entangles phenomenological methodologies, methods and research practices performatively such as embodied dance practice, the felt senses, drawings, verbal feedback and their analyses in relation to biometric data, from an embodied heart rate monitor. By looking inwardly, the practitioner experiences embodied phenomena and reveals these experiences in artistic practices in relation to the worlding in which they find themselves. These outcomes are considered as being differing materialities, flowing and converging through relational and phenomenological practice, Deep Flow and through this they become embodied by the practitioner, where new forms of embodied materialities emerge. I argue that in my practice, this is an experiential state, Deep Flow, where all human and non-human elements of the dance practice flow and course through the practitioner as an embodied materiality.

Cracks in the Success Narrative: Rethinking Failure in Design Research through a Retrospective Trioethnography

What can design researchers learn from our own and each other's failures? We explore “failure” expansively—turning away from tidy success narratives toward messy unfoldings and reflexive discomfort—through retrospective trioethnography. Our findings reflect on failures we identified in six past design research projects: issues of relational labor of deployment, mismatched designer/participant imaginaries, burden of participation, and invisibility of researcher labor. Our discussion contributes to broader reflections on shifting design research practice: (a) methodological considerations inviting others to engage failures through retrospective trioethnography, (b) letting go as a mode of research care, (c) possibilities for more candid research reporting, and (d) how centering failure may contribute to design justice by providing a technique for attending to harm and healing in design research practices. Throughout, we call for challenging success narratives in design research, and underscore the need for systemic changes in design research practice.

Toward a Pedagogy for Consumer Anthropology: Method, Theory, Marketing

This paper focuses on teaching the application of anthropology in business to marketing students. It begins with the premise that consumer marketers have long used ethnography as a component of their qualitative market research toolkit to inform their knowledge about and empathy for consumers. A question for market research educators who include ethnography in their curricula is if and how to teach the richness of anthropologically based approaches, especially given a decoupling of ethnographic method from anthropological theory in much consumer research practice. This discussion might also resonate with anthropology educators who are interested in the ways anthropology is applied in commercial settings. As a demonstration of a teaching mode rather than a research report, this paper describes how a consumer anthropology market research project is used experientially in the classroom to help marketing students learn and appreciate the application of both anthropological method and theory for brand-building. Included is a summary of an ethnographic project on Duncan Hines cake mix and an in-class student exercise during which three conceptual ‘jumping off’ points from anthropological theory were used to generate marketing initiatives.

Walking as an intervention

How to analyze urban areas in the contemporary modern city upon the plurality of forms of appropriation of public spaces? This paper seeks to contribute to qualitative studies on urban perception through the method of cartography. Thus, this writing does not deal with the search for information or data collection, but with the immersion in the ongoing process present in the territory of the old railway bed in the city of Bauru-SP. The text highlights a research practice little explored in this spatial cutout, which tends to contribute to the impact on urban perception and future interventions in this area, as the decanted sociospatial layers are revolved and an urban imaginary little explored is accessed through the development as a research modality.

Mobile Assisted Language Learning

The increased use of sophisticated mobile devices opens up new possibilities and challenges for language teachers and learners, which has led to an increasing need to consider issues relating to mobile technologies specifically. To date, there is no comprehensive book-length treatment of issues relating to mobile-assisted language learning (MALL). This book fills that gap, providing a resource for present and future language teachers, and for graduate students of applied linguistics and TESOL, to understand how mobile devices can best be used for language teaching. It is founded on existing research, practice and theory, and offers a balanced perspective, based on the author's own experiences with mobile learning - considering the limitations of such an approach, as well as the benefits. Written in a practical and approachable tone, it provides a much-needed guide to MALL, and its fascinating insights promote further debate within the field.

Combatting neo-Colonialism in Health Research: What can Aboriginal Health Research Ethics and Global Health Research Ethics Teach Each Other?

The ethics of research involving Aboriginal populations and low and middle-income country populations each developed out of a long history of exploitative research projects and partnerships. Commonalities and differences between the two fields have not yet been examined. This study undertook two independent literature searches for Aboriginal health research ethics and global health research ethics. Content analysis identified shared and differently emphasised ethical principles and concepts between the two fields. Shared ethical concepts like “benefit” and “capacity development” have been developed to guide collaborations in both Aboriginal health research and global health research. However, Aboriginal health research ethics gives much greater prominence to ethical principles that assist in decolonising research practice such as “self-determination”, “community-control”, and “community ownership”. The paper argues that global health research ethics would benefit from giving greater emphasis to these principles to guide research practice, while justice as approached in global health research ethics may inform Aboriginal health research practice. With increasing attention being drawn to the need to decolonise global health research, the lessons Aboriginal health research ethics can offer may be especially timely.

Most Important IO Articles for Research/Practice in the Last Five (or so) Years

Industrial-Organizational (IO) psychology academics and practitioners (N = 145) from around the world were asked to nominate what they believed to be, in the last five years, the most important published article for research and/or practice. The article provides a framework for crowdsourcing important advances in the field, and can be directed toward specific types of advances.