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Using the Black Emancipatory Action Research framework, the paper describes how prefiguring shaped relational and political implementation, yielding opportunities, challenges, tensions, and benefits, including youth-centered critical care, community engagement, and disruption of Whiteness norms.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & 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is the Justice Now 1 alliance intended to do?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"It is an anti-racist research-practice partnership aimed at dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline in Detroit, with Black youth positioned at the center of the effort.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How do the authors define “prefiguring” in their research-practice partnership?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"Prefiguring means planning research beyond technical design issues to anticipate relational and political dynamics in implementation, then responding through praxis grounded in partners’ values, commitments, and goals.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"Which framework guided the partnership’s anti-racist approach?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"The authors align their work with Akom’s (2011) Black Emancipatory Action Research (BEAR) framework, emphasizing Afrocentric lenses and research as a tool for Black liberation and 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\nArticle reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nPrefiguring Research-Practice Partnerships to Pursue Racial Justice in  \nEducation  \nCamille M. Wilson  \nUniversity of Michigan  \nCarolyn Hetrick  \nIndependent Researcher  \nRichard J. Smith  \nWayne State University  \nJasahn Larsosa  \nIndependent Researcher  \nProcesses of integrating explicit anti-racist goals in research-practice partnerships is under-examined in scholarship, yet intentional anti-racist research-practice partnership (RPP) design and implementation can leverage liberatory and collaborative action research approaches that address the root of racial inequities and advance corrective measures to justly service youth and their families. In this paper, authors analyze qualitative data from the first year of their RPP to describe how they approached their design and launching process as a form of prefiguring for racial justice. They pinpoint how their efforts yielded opportunities, challenges, tensions, and benefits. Their process aligned with Akom’s (2011) Black Emancipatory Action Research (BEAR) framework, which is conceptualized with Afrocentric lenses, honors Black communities, and constructs research as a tool for Black liberation and self-determination. Authors detail findings related to inviting authentic community engagement with justice-driven partners, nurturing youth-centered critical care, disrupting Whiteness norms, andrevisiting and negotiating RPP expectations.  \nKeywords: Critical Theory, Race, Research Utilization, Urban Education, Disparities, Qualitative Research, Action Research, Research-Practice Partnership  \nObjectives  \nIn January 2020, we launched a research-practice partnership (RPP) devoted to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) in Detroit, believing that the interests and insights of those most impacted by the educational inequities and institutionalized anti-Blackness of the STPP—namely Black youth—should be centered. The STPP refers to a network of ideologies, policies, practices, and relationships that contributes to school age children encountering the prison industrial complex, and eventually experiencing some form of incarceration (Meiners, 1991) . This network interconnects the legal system and PreK-12 schooling in racially unjust ways. For Black youth, who are disproportionately impacted by the STPP, this often means being subjected to  \nanti-Black school discipline, expulsion, and behavior regulation policies that are criminalizing and can be a precursor to imprisonment trajectories (Alexander, 2010; McGrew, 2016; Meiners, 2011; Sojoyner, 2013; U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014) .  \nWe knew that effectively facilitating an anti-racist RPP would require us to “prefigure” our RPP design and process with thorough intentionality. Indeed, prefiguring involves planning research in ways that move beyond technical issues of design to anticipate the relational and political dynamics of research implementation and role definition, and respond to those dynamics through a praxis centered in research partners’ values, commitments, and goals (Campanella et al., 2022) . We committed to systematically documenting and studying our prefigurative work to increase the chances of  \nCreative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons  \nAttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use,  \nreproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com","cbCaik5LAZxZncy2","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaik5LAZxZncy2","pdf",603577,17,"English","# Objectives\n## Launching an anti-racist RPP in Detroit\n# Background and Context Relevant to the Justice Now Alliance\n## Overarching goal and anti-Blackness countering","[{\"question\":\"What is the Justice Now 1 alliance intended to do?\",\"answer\":\"It is an anti-racist research-practice partnership aimed at dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline in Detroit, with Black youth positioned at the center of the effort.\"},{\"question\":\"How do the authors define “prefiguring” in their research-practice partnership?\",\"answer\":\"Prefiguring means planning research beyond technical design issues to anticipate relational and political dynamics in implementation, then responding through praxis grounded in partners’ values, commitments, and goals.\"},{\"question\":\"Which framework guided the partnership’s anti-racist approach?\",\"answer\":\"The authors align their work with Akom’s (2011) Black Emancipatory Action Research (BEAR) framework, emphasizing Afrocentric lenses and research as a tool for Black liberation and self-determination.\"}]","AERA Open - Prefiguring Research-Practice Partnerships to Pursue Racial Justice in Education | PDF",1792069314,43]