Shifting Policy, Shaping Practice: When Researchers and Advocates Work Together‪.‬

In the United States and many other Western countries, governments and policy leaders are keen to harness the potential of preschool education to ameliorate the effects of disadvantage and ensure that all children enter school ready to learn. This emphasis on the early years has been catalyzed by the research base on quality child care and the longitudinal effects of model preschool programs (e.g., Barnett, 1998; Campbell, Pungello, Miller-Johnson, Burchinal, & Ramey, 2001; Reynolds, Temple, Robertson, & Mann, 2001; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1997) that demonstrate the beneficial connection between a high-quality preschool education and children's ongoing developmental and academic success. However, while it is heartening that research has been able to shape policy in this way, most of the research tends to be out of synch with what policymakers need to know when initiating new efforts. This lack of synchronicity occurs partly because research is an intensive process, and thus researchers are not always able to make, or be skilled at making, their findings accessible to those who could use this information the most. As a consequence, we probably have more research on why policies fail than research that is timely and usable by a wide range of audiences. This article reports on our experiences as researchers finding out that working with an advocacy organization helped to address the lag between analyzing and drawing conclusions from research and ensuring that relevant findings had an impact. For many in the world of advocacy or those in the world of research, the partnership that is the center of this story is somewhat unconventional. According to Zervigon-Hakes (1998), researchers and advocacy groups tend to reside in two distinct cultures, each framed by its own norms, values, and practices, that often clash, rather than resonate, with one another. Advocates work in the present; their aim is to help improve programs and initiatives that are of current public interest. "Key findings" often take precedence over the need for reams of data or knowledge of the intricacies of research design. Alternatively, researchers look at the details, and tend to focus not only on the "how" and "why" of their findings, but also on their limitations. In being descriptive rather than prescriptive, researchers know what their findings do and do not say about an issue, and thus are often wary of their data being used out of context, or as a marker to specify action in relation to a particular issue. Given these differences, it is not surprising that researchers and advocates tend to view each other warily from a distance. In our case, however, we found that some of these differences could be turned into assets because of the particular context in which we were working. We report our story here with the aim of providing insights for those interested in making research transformative rather than simply informative.