Abstract:

Since the early 2000s, the evidence-based movement has increasingly led education systems to ground policies and professional standards in research, supported by targeted funding, awareness-raising initiatives and capacity-building programmes. Nevertheless, a persistent research-practice gap endures: empirical findings often fail to yield concrete improvements in classroom practice due to misaligned research questions, overly generic results and interventions that are difficult to implement. Indeed, while teachers acknowledge the potential value of research for improving and innovating educational processes, they face daily barriers related to accessibility, perceived relevance and organisational support. This suggests that the key challenge is not merely to produce high-quality research, but to promote structured forms of cooperation between research communities and education professionals, by adopting more profession-sensitive conceptualisations of “research use” that recognise the situated, collective and negotiated nature of the interpretive and adaptive work through which evidence is integrated into pedagogical decision-making. Therefore, research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are proposed as a promising response: long-term, bidirectional collaborations in which researchers and practitioners co-construct agendas, co-design in-situ interventions and work together on their implementation, thereby establishing a continuous feedback loop between research and practice. Specifically, intermediary arrangements and knowledge mobilisation efforts – such as dedicated knowledge-brokering roles and structures – can strengthen trust, deepen understanding of research findings and increase teacher leaders’ confidence in using evidence, with cases of practice functioning as tools for self-reflection, dissemination, and meaningful feedback data for researchers themselves.

Building on this framework, the present contribution illustrates and discusses a research-intervention device designed by the University of Florence as part of the European Teachers’ Academy for Creative & Inclusive Learning project (ACADIMIA) (Erasmus+, 2023-2026), whose objective is to foster school inclusion and the achievement of educational goals, particularly for disadvantaged students, through the adoption of ten innovative and creative teaching methods previously validated in European initiatives. The tool is conceived as a teaching helpdesk to accompany Italian education professionals in implementing one or more of these methods in their classrooms. It consists of voluntary meetings with the research team, structured around a dedicated support form that gathers information on the actors involved, the educational context, the motivation for the request, and potential solutions initially proposed by the teacher and subsequently refined with the researchers, also with a view to identifying the need for any follow-up meetings. Results show observable impacts in eliciting teachers’ metacognitive reflection on everyday practices, highlighting collegial dialogue and mentorship as key enablers of the translation of research findings and professional concerns into concrete classroom activities with inclusive and participatory effects. At the same time, the initiative contributes to the still limited body of robust empirical evidence on the effectiveness of RRPs and helps make evidence-informed practice more sustainable over time.

Keywords:

Research–Practice Partnerships (RPPs), Inclusion, Teaching Innovation.