Projects

Monroe UC Irvine Community School

On August 15, 2024 the University of California Irvine and the Santa Ana Unified School District established a university-assisted community-school partnership to build and transform Monroe Elementary School into a true collaborative learning community, a model of excellence, centered on improving student outcomes. 

Key elements of this university-assisted school partnership is to create streamlined and well-administered processes for research-practice access and protocols, to create professional development opportunities for district teachers, creating internship opportunities for student teachers, and career pathways for UCI graduates. This university-assisted community-school will also focus on continuously assessing the effectiveness of classroom pedagogy and student and family programming to improve student outcomes

This partnership is the product of a deep history of collaboration and partnership between UCI, Santa Ana Unified School District, community organizations and initiatives, such as the Santa Ana Early Learning Initiative, and importantly, parent, family, and community leaders. 

Over the last year and half, UCI School of Education, SAUSD, and Monroe Elementary School leaders have convened to advance planning efforts to establish this university-assisted community-school. 

To learn more about the university-assisted community school, please reach out Dr. Adam M. Lara at adam.lara@uci.edu.

Alianza MX Prosocial Youth Development

The Alianza MX Prosocial Youth Development project, led by Gustavo Carlo, Lindsey Richland, Paola Guerrero Rosada, and Andres Bustamante at UC Irvine School of Education, is a collaborative initiative dedicated to advancing early childhood and youth development through the power of soccer. In 2025, the program hosted summits in Mexico City and at UC Irvine, bringing together key partners such as the UANL Tigres Foundation, the Ricky Martin Foundation, La Academia Santa Ana, and the Universidad de Granada. These efforts are focused on creating an adaptable, community-based framework designed to empower families and foster pro-social growth.

Student & Community Voice AI Summit

The Student and Community Voice AI Summit, led by June Ahn at UC Irvine School of Education, is a collaborative event designed to center student, parent, and educator perspectives in the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. Hosted by the UC Irvine School of Education, youth engage, inflexion, and Anaheim Union High School District, in partnership with various educational organizations, the summit focuses on the ethical, practical, and inclusive implementation of AI in schools.

NNERPP California Subnetwork Convening

On January 2026, the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP), California Education Partners, and UCI OCEAN hosted the California Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) Sub-Networking Convening. The two-day event brought together over 57 leaders from 23 prominent universities, foundations, and school districts to build a robust infrastructure for evidence-based educational equity across the state.

On Thursday, January 29, 2026, the CA RPP Subnetwork design team members worked toward a consensus on future “change pathways” and advanced joint research focused on multilingual learners, student voice, and mathematics.

On Friday, January 30, 2026, the CA RPP Subnetwork, in addition to local School District Leadership teams (including Santa Ana Unified, Tustin Unified, and Lynwood Unified) explored the “CORE DNA” of their partnerships, identifying how these collaborative structures can help districts achieve their specific student outcome goals.

The event featured a diverse array of stakeholders, including STEM-focused RPPs and district leaders committed to systemic change. Participating organizations included:

• Universities: UC Irvine, Stanford, UC Berkeley, USC, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Merced, San Diego State University,, CSU Fullerton, Loyola Marymount, and Rice University.
• Districts: Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, Santa Ana Unified, Tustin Unified, Lynwood Unified, and Montebello Unified. 
• Organizations & Foundations: The Gates Foundation, Digital Promise, Orange County Department of Education, WestEd, California Education Partners, and the Santa Ana Early Learning Initiative.

Coastline ROP

This project, led by Lena Shi from the University of California, Irvine, aims to identify the factors that drive or hinder student enrollment in Coastline ROP’s career and technical education (CTE) courses. The study will utilize a randomized controlled experiment involving 9th and 10th graders across four school districts to test how different types of information—such as labor market advantages or social influences—affect enrollment decisions. The team seeks to understand how these factors vary across different student demographics, ultimately helping Coastline ROP strengthen its recruitment and educational offerings.

Playful Learning Landscapes

The “Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL)” project, co-led by SAELI parents and UC Irvine School of Education researchers, consists of a series of co-designed installations in public spaces to encourage engagement in STEM learning in the City of Santa Ana. Through learning from SAELI families’ stories and experiences in participatory design sessions, and integrating their cultural funds of knowledge with the latest insights from developmental science and early education, the project has developed seven PLL installations across the city. These installations included a giant abacus at a bus stop, educational signage inside the Northgate Gonzalez Grocery Market, a life-sized board game for STEM learning, and a giant STEM version of the classic game Loteria.

Fraction Ball

Fraction Ball, led by Andres Bustamante, is an innovative and accessible math game co-designed with SAUSD teachers and students and UC Irvine researchers to promote fraction learning while playing basketball. This project began with a small participatory design study in 2018 and has now been scaled and proven effective through five large randomized controlled trials with thousands of students across 27 SAUSD elementary schools. Findings have shown strong positive impacts on students’ fraction knowledge and math identity (Begolli et al., 2024; Bustamante et al., 2022; Guo et al., 2024). 

Family Math Leadership Team

The Buena Park School District, Orange County Department of Education, and UCI School of Education Research-Practice Partnership is a collaborative effort to reduce inequalities in Latinx elementary school students’ opportunities to learn mathematics. We work closely with school leaders and teachers from two elementary schools to co-design teacher professional development opportunities that are adaptive to the school and district context. In addition, we partner with family members to co-design mathematical supports for children’s learning and elevate families’ voices in improvement efforts.

Publication: Santagata, R., Kimmerling, C., Fuentes Acevedo, P., & Liu, J. (2024). Conducting Research on Teacher Professional Development in Partnership with Educators: Promises, Tensions and Opportunities. Journal of Curriculum Studies.

First 5 Orange County

In this partnership with First 5 Orange County, UCI SoE researchers evaluated the implementation, success, and barriers of the Orange County In-Home Licensed Child Care Program.

Download and read the final report.

AREPA: Anti-Racist Education Partners for Action

We are a network of Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) groups in Southern California across UCI and UCLA. We are a collective that is focused on partnering with educators and examining how to utilize the latest research about anti-racism to make positive changes in local schools.

GEAR UP @ Center for Educational Partnerships

The GEAR UP team provides ongoing support for students, families, and educators in the Compton Unified School District community. Our primary objectives are to help students graduate from high school, increase enrollment in post-secondary programs, and increase a college-going culture in Compton.

Samueli Academy RPP

Since 2016, Samueli and UCI have engaged in an RPP. By creating data infrastructure and conducting several longitudinal studies, research in this partnership informs Samueli’s efforts to support the STEM success of marginalized youth through high school and college.

School-Wide Improvement in Mathematics (SWIM) RPP

Since 2019, NMUSD, OCDE, and UCI have partnered to improve mathematics learning opportunities for elementary school students through teacher professional development and principal instructional leadership support.

OC Networked Improvement Community

This work began in 2020 with funding from the Spencer Foundation. Amid a global pandemic, practitioners across Orange County joined forces with the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to form a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to support housing insecure and foster youth.

SFUSD-OCEAN

This work began in 2020 with funding from the William T. Grant Foundation. In late 2021/early 2022, the research team In partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), research teams at UCI,  UC Davis, and University of Wisconsin, Madison are conducting a mixed-methods study that will enhance our understanding of the district’s equity priority and its potential for reducing inequality in educational attainment.

El Sol Academy RPP

Our research-practice partnership with El Sol Academy explores and builds upon essential practices to provide equitable access to effective bilingual instruction for all learners.

Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano RPP

Since 2018, Breakthrough SJC and UCI have partnered on a wide variety of projects including evaluation of Breakthrough’s middle school summer program, youth participatory action research, and student experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

TLC Charter School RPP

Since 2019, TLC and UCI have partnered to conduct research around inclusion, special education, and technology integration