What Matters in a Research to Practice Cycle?

Dr Christine Grima-Farrell was an experienced school teacher and special education coordinator prior to her academic career as a teacher educator. She is the President of the NSW Institute of Educational Research and is the Convenor of the Australian Association of Research in Education Teachers’ Work and Lives special interest group.  Chris was awarded the NSW Premier’s Award for Excellence in Teaching for her work in the area of inclusive education and research on practice initiatives. Her PhD entitled “Identifying factors that bridge the research to practice gap in inclusive education” was awarded the 2013 Beth Southwell Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award and the Charles Sturt University Most Outstanding Thesis award. Chris has been honoured with an Australian Government Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning and also holds other University Excellence in Teaching Awards. She lives her scholarly work asshe strives to raise awareness of ways to merge research and practice initiatives to support the diverse needs of students and enhance their wellbeing and resilience through promoting collaborative partnerships.

• Part One: Stating the case.- Chapter 1 Research to Practice and Inclusion.- Chapter 2 The RTP literature: Mind the gap!.- Chapter 3 The collective case study design: Comparing six research to practice cases.- Part Two: Making the case.- Chapter 4 Meet the teachers.- Chapter 5 The Exploration Phase.- Chapter 6 The Explanation Phase.- Chapter 7 The Expansion Phase.- Part Three: Building a solution.- Chapter 8 Teacher Education: Engaging connections between people, projects and preparation.- Chapter 9 The RTP Model: An interactive Research to Practice framework.- Chapter 10 Aligning our focus with strengths and solutions.