We know that when teachers engage in equitable classroom practices, students benefit. But we don't know enough about how to support all teachers to learn these practices.

RPPL's Mission

RPPL is a collective of PL practitioners, researchers, educators, and funders committed to advancing educational equity for every student, including students who are Black, Latine, Indigenous, AAPI, Multilingual Learners, students with disabilities, and students experiencing poverty. Together, we study teacher and educator learning to identify, share, and enact PL that improves teachers’ instructional practices and students’ classroom experiences, well-being, and academic growth.

RPPL's Vision

We envision a world where all students and educators are valued, supported, engaged, and thriving in equitable, rigorous, and joyful learning environments that prepare them to be successful lifelong learners.

Why Professional Learning?

School systems across the country invest billions of dollars each year on teacher learning. These investments are well-warranted—teachers are the single largest within-school factor supporting student learning and socio-emotional development.

But, while we know PL focused on content, coaching, teacher collaboration, and curriculum materials can boost student outcomes, there’s so much we don’t know, such as:

Time: The number of hours of PL focused on a topic or delivered in a particular format that leads to the highest impact on teacher learning.
Content: The specific or pedagogical content knowledge progressions that teachers should work through to dramatically improve their practice and impact student learning.
Sustainability: Which focus areas and formats of PL sustain impact on teacher practice and student learning long after the conclusion of the engagement.
Scale: How to scale PL programs or models while maintaining quality and effectiveness.

With over 3.5 million teachers in the United States, the opportunity is enormous to advance teacher development and transform learning for all students.

Why a Research-Practice Partnership?

Establishing a research-practice partnership anchored by practice organizations, led by researchers, and supported by funders, fueled by a common interest in teacher PL, is a new and powerful idea.

We share a feeling of urgency to improve PL research for the benefit of our organizations’ services as well as for teacher impact and student learning. Collectively, the members of our collaborative have relationships with more than 700 school systems across the nation. These relationships will allow us to create productive learning partnerships, conduct PL research, collect comparative data, and engage in meta-analyses across organizations.

Who We Are

RPPL’s partner organizations share a desire to strengthen program design, results, and efficacy especially for historically marginalized student populations. The cross-organizational relationships and practices we are establishing will create the infrastructure for sustained learning in the teacher PL ecosystem for years to come.