The National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) at UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) recently joined more than 55 other organizations, research centers, and nonprofits as an affiliate of the Research Partnership for Professional Learning (RPPL).

Teachers are the single largest school-based driver of student achievement, says RPPL, and they need better support. In answer to this, RPPL has established a research-practice partnership to generate new knowledge on how teacher professional learning (PL) can transform teacher practice and student success.

Located at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, RPPL brings together PL organizations and researchers who study teacher learning to identify the features of PL that improve students’ classroom experiences, well-being, and academic growth, with a specific focus on students from historically marginalized groups.

"We are thrilled to be joining this collaborative of professional learning organizations, researchers, school systems, and foundations that are working to advance educational equity for our nation’s students by strengthening and building the usable evidence on teacher learning," shared FPG's Caryn Ward, director of NIRN.

As an affiliate, NIRN will have access to RPPL's research findings as well as the shared measures, tools, and resources they're creating to help conduct PL research. NIRN will be able to share all of this with its team and networks and will, in turn, share with RPPL what they are discovering that is relevant to RPPL's learning agenda.

"We are thrilled to be joining this collaborative of professional learning organizations, researchers, school systems, and foundations that are working to advance educational equity for our nation’s students by strengthening and building the usable evidence on teacher learning," shared FPG's Caryn Ward, director of NIRN.

To learn more about NIRN, be sure to visit their website: https://nirn.fpg.unc.edu/national-implementation-research-network