Co-constructing research questions with informal practitioners through a networked improvement community

In this project, we partnered with six informal learning organizations across the United States to explore how adults can better support children when things don’t go as planned. Rather than starting with predetermined research questions, we worked together to develop questions that reflected each organization’s goals, capacities, and ways of working. This paper shares what that collaborative process looked like, with a closer look at one partner, Rediscover Center, to illustrate the challenges and opportunities of doing this work together. Our goal is to offer a real-world example of how research–practice partnerships can be built around the needs of practitioners, supporting meaningful learning experiences for children and the adults who learn alongside them.