Research-Practice Partnerships Explained ─ Financing Impact podcast with Raji Jayaraman

In this episode, FOS co-director Raji Jayaraman and practice partner at GIZ Rwanda Katia Halabi explain and reflect on research-practice partnerships (RPPs).

In episode 12 of the Financing Impact podcast, Katia Halabi and Raji Jayaraman explain and discuss research-practice partnerships (RPPs) and share their experiences.

Key Takeaways:

• A research-practice partnership is a close collaboration between practice partners and researchers with different, albeit complementary, backgrounds and interests. The objective is to generate evidence to tackle societal problems. It includes cooperation to identify the problem, design the research process, collect data, and evaluate the impact.
• The research-practice partnership discussed in this episode involves a randomized control trial (RCT). The pedagogy and learning outcomes of teachers who have undergone digital skills training are compared to those of teachers who have not. This creates rigorous evidence because teachers participating in the training are randomly selected. This way, differences in results between the two groups can be attributed to the training (instead of outside factors such as differences in motivation).
• Ideally, research-practice partnerships go beyond descriptive evidence and inform policymaking. In doing so, RPPs have a role to play in ensuring taxpayers’ money is used effectively to fund interventions that work.