One brokerage to help them all. A design-based research and network to facilitate teachers' use of research on teaching critical thinking

Facilitating teachers’ use of research is widely seen as a strategy to enhance teaching quality. Given the global emphasis on developing students’ critical thinking, research can serve as a valuable resource for teachers. This study combined design-based research and research-practice partnerships to co-create a research-informed document and to establish a professional network, both aimed at supporting teaching critical thinking. Using mixed methods, we analyzed how these initiatives supported teachers’ use of research. Additionally, we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of brokerage processes to examine how it facilitated collaboration between researchers and teachers. Findings indicate that the research-informed document was well aligned with teachers’ needs and supported their conceptual use of research. While the document also showed potential for instrumental use, this was constrained by a lack of concrete, contextualized examples. The analysis of brokerage provided critical insights into how the broker adapted to participants’ evolving needs, helped connect teachers and researchers, and created opportunities for research use for participants of the design-based research and network. These findings highlight the value of combining design-based research and research-practice partnerships to produce teaching critical thinking documents connected to a network, and how brokerage is central to achieving such endeavor.