While there is a consensus around the importance of digital education nowadays, endeavours looking to introduce computing into curricula often struggle to get in-service teachers to introduce the new pedagogical content and adapt their practices. Implementation of reforms relies on a smooth translation from the intended to the obtained curriculum (van den Akker et al., 2005). This requires effective collaboration between an array of actors, such as coordinators, trainers, teachers. In parallel, there is often a demand for educational research allowing practitioners to systematically evaluate curricular reforms and offer new knowledge on what the reform brings into the classrooms. This goal is of particular importance in the EduNum project (El-Hamamsy et al., 2021), a digital education curricular reform project in the Canton Vaud in Switzerland which looks to introduce computing into formal education for all students starting primary school. The EduNum project includes a number of key actors, such as teachers, researchers, coordinators and teacher trainers in the development of the curriculum and professional development program. In this work, we examine the opportunities and bottlenecks in the EduNum curricular reform research-practice partnership, and in particular we investigate the interactions between teachers and researchers in the context of the project.

Building on the literature on co-construction of knowledge among teachers and researchers, we notice that there is often a perceived gap between practice and research outcomes (Boekkamp and van Hout-Wolters, 2007). This suggests a loss of opportunity for teachers to benefit and learn from research directly, and a loss for researchers to open up their analyses to interpretations that are closer to practice. Research on teaching should contribute to developing teachers’ professional knowledge (Lillejord & Børte, 2016) and to the collaborative construction of knowledge which happens through exposure to different perspectives, including research literature. Such research should also allow teachers to develop their agency beyond passive recipients of educational intervention. van Shaik et al. (2018) have noted that, among other barriers in teachers’ academic knowledge utilisation, there is the lack of communication and collaboration with researchers, which is seen as essential in developing dialogue and trust among these educational partners. On the other side, educational researchers are often constrained by time and limited access to the field when conducting evaluations of education reforms. This obstructs the contextualisation, understanding, and analysis of the complex dynamics of the field. 

While grounding teaching in research evidence is important, current solutions in literature propose developing teachers’ capacities to do research, or in other words establishing  “teacher-researchers” at school levels (Herrenkohl et al., 2010, Stewart, 2006). Given the time and workload pressures that teachers experience in their regular practice, this seems even more problematic in the context of curricular reforms where novel approaches already impact teachers’ usual effectiveness (Brandsford et al., 2007). We argue that one solution to increase teacher acceptance of the new discipline is by co-constructing the curricular reform with all key stakeholders, especially teachers, the end users of the devised curriculum. With this in mind, our research focuses on two research questions:

• RQ1 - How is the EduNum digital education curricular reform co-constructed between practitioners (coordinators and trainers), researchers and teachers?

• RQ2 - What recommendations emerge to improve the co-construction between them?

This research i) contributes to better understanding the collaboration between actors in a context of education reform, ii) exposes the added value of co-construction between teachers, researchers, trainers and coordinators and iii) provides guidelines for researchers conducting translational research who must bridge the gap between communities of practice and science.

To investigate the research questions, we adopt a qualitative research methodology that allows for an open-ended, inductive and exploratory framework (Cresswell & Poth, 2018). This approach also allows us to expose the lived experiences of participants in the context of a complex educational reform. We conducted qualitative semi-structured online interviews with key stakeholders involved in the digital education curricular reform and the development of the teacher in-service professional development (PD) program. The interviewees included: 7 teachers that participated in the PD, 5 trainers with prior teaching experience, working full time on the development of content and delivery of PD, 5 project coordinators with prior teaching and curricular reform experience, working full time to coordinate the development of content, PD and research, with trainers and researchers 3 researchers in charge of the evaluation of the curricular reform, ranging from the assessment of the PD program, to the evaluation of student learning The interviews were conducted by the main researcher in July and August 2021. The interviewees were asked to reflect on their experience in the EduNum project by exploring: Their role in the project The collaborations with other stakeholders, and how they believed these interactions contributed to their work and to the overall project The perceived benefits and drawbacks of these interactions, or lack thereof, and what they believed should be improved Whether co-construction had an influence on the way they work and perceive their roles In a second interview phase, each interviewee was asked to co-construct a graphical synthesis of the key points that emerged from the first interview phase. The synthesis, which was pre-filled by the researcher during the interview and shown to the interviewee at the end, was structured according to the different stakeholders the interviewees interacted with, and included the benefits and facilitating elements, as well as the difficulties and drawbacks. The researcher and interviewee then validated the individual points together, possibly expanding it with new elements the interviewee thought to add to the discussion. We analysed the data collected in the two interview phases using a thematic analysis approach, i.e. by identifying codes and themes that were iteratively examined. Validation of the results was performed by conducting internal validity sessions with the research group, and a participant validation at the end of the study (Cresswell & Poth, 2018).

Collaborating with people of varied expertise, including researchers, is believed to contribute to the quality of the project. Unfortunately, interactions between the different stakeholders do not occur at all stages of the project pipeline. Two parallel processes appear: i) the content and teacher PD creation, involving trainers, coordinators and teachers, ii) the research pipeline, mainly involving researchers and coordinators in the planning phase. Trainers are only included following the analysis phase for feedback from the field, and ensuing content adaptation. While the stakeholders perceive the value of this “novel” research-practice partnership, teachers and trainers still report a research-practice gap. This gap is attributed to the limited interactions between researchers and teachers. The gap with the field is mirrored, albeit to a lesser degree, for coordinators and trainers who must establish their legitimacy early on to build confidence, trust, and a relationship with teachers. All stakeholders agree that recent teaching experience helps establish a horizontal relationship. Therefore, from the researchers’, coordinators’ and trainers’ perspectives, recent teaching or classroom experience contributes to effective co-construction by: i) increasing the stakeholders’ credibility and gaining teachers’ trust, ii) helping establish a horizontal relationship, effective dialogues and interactions, thus contributing to refining the curricular reform and teacher PD. Teachers and trainers perceive the value of co-construction and are open to more interactions with other stakeholders to better tailor the PD and research to the field. Unfortunately they lack time. Time is not the only barrier to co-construction, as insufficient communication of findings and decisions leads to frustrations, notably for trainers and teachers. Establishing a horizontal and transparent partnership, having the time to do so, and improving communication between the different stakeholders would therefore contribute to facilitating and improving the co-construction process, which the stakeholders believed contributed to their work and the quality of the overall project.

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