ABSTRACT
This chapter considers new models for research–practice partnerships (RPPs) and examines the construction of codified representations of practice and their use in practice. It focuses on the role of representations of teaching practice as tools for achieving goals targeted mutually by researchers and practitioners. The chapter posits several fundamental dimensions for analyzing the co-constructive work of developing and using representations of teaching practice to help both practitioners and researchers better coordinate their efforts. The Bridging professional development and lesson study examples illustrate the importance of representations of practice to ground and sustain the iterative co-development of instructional forms. The chapter shows how representations of teaching practice, already a subject of study and design in other contexts, could enrich and further the work of RPPs. The chapter points to the prospects for working on pressing educational challenges by bringing into closer alignment research on representations in teacher learning and the development of RPPs.
