Science Shops and the U.S. Research University: A Path for Community-Engaged Scholarship and Disruption of the Power Dynamics of Knowledge Production

Author(s):  
Karen Andrade ◽  
Lara Cushing ◽  
Ashton Wesner
Author(s):  
Isobel M. Findlay ◽  
Marie Lovrod ◽  
Elizabeth Quinlan ◽  
Ulrich Teucher ◽  
Alexander K. Sayok ◽  
...  

Drawing on a shared recognition that community is defined, understood, constructed, and reconstructed through contextually inflected relationships, collaborating authors use diverse interdisciplinary case studies to argue that rigorous community-engaged scholarship advances capacities for critical pursuit of cognitive and social justice. Whether through participant-centred projects undertaken with youth in government care networks, cross-cultural explorations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous science and culture as resources for food security, or facilitated dramatizations of community relations impacted by neo-liberal ideologies, contributors affirm welcoming co-learning environments that engage multiple forms of knowledge expression and mobilization. The respectful spaces held in these community-researcher collaborations enable new advances beyond hegemonic knowledge development institutionalized through colonialist histories. This essay theorizes prospects for building transformative community through scholarship, citing practical examples of the principles and practices that foster or frustrate sustainable communities. It explores the institutional arrangements and power dynamics between and among actors, asking who gets included and excluded, and what boundaries are created and crossed around complex, contradictory, and contested notions of “community.”  


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (S1) ◽  
pp. 68-85
Author(s):  
Louise Michelle Vital ◽  
Christina W. Yao

Doctoral education is often lauded as a site of academic socialization and research training for nascent scholars. However, discussions of socialization seldom problematize the dangers of intellectual imperialism and methodological nationalism inherent in doctoral researcher socialization. As such, the traditional socialization practices for doctoral students in the United States (U.S.) must be interrogated and expanded to move towards equitable practices for research, especially for students conducting international research. Using social and spatial positioning as our conceptual framing, we problematize and question current approaches and practices to doctoral researcher training in the U.S. We use the academic hood, which is granted upon successful completion of doctoral studies, as a metaphor to reconsider how to reflect upon and navigate power dynamics and knowledge production within the U.S. academy.


Author(s):  
Sara Dorow ◽  
Nicole Smith-Acu

Engaged scholarship is increasingly concerned with how community engagement might be institutionalized in the contemporary university. At the same time, it must be attentive to diverse academic approaches to knowledge and to the forms of engagement associated with them. Attention to this plurality is especially important in the humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS). Based on a multi-method study conducted in the Faculty of Arts at a large western Canadian research university, this paper maps the demographic positions (gender, rank, and discipline) and scholarly dispositions (stances adopted toward the production of knowledge and the role of the academic) of HASS faculty and contract instructors onto the range of ways they perceive and practice engagement. Against this backdrop, we present a qualitative case study of two pairs of faculty that fleshes out the complexities and possibilities of divergent dispositions and the forms and experiences of engagement with which they are associated. We assert that understanding differentiated starting points to knowledge production among HASS academics is an important pathway to the fuller recognition and flexible institutionalization of engagement in research universities.  


Author(s):  
Laurie Ross ◽  
Katie Byrne ◽  
Jennifer Safford

Community-engaged scholars grapple with power asymmetries in community-university partnerships, generally working from the assumption that deliberate practices are required to moderate the researchers’ power vis-a-vis that of the community. In this article, we suggest that this dyadic framing masks the complexity of power dynamics within communities, of which the university is just one part, and examine how power is negotiated in the boundary zones of a partnership. We use Third Generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a conceptual framework to analyse the structural and cultural dimensions of the boundary zone in which research, learning and action in our partnership occurred (Engeström 1996). A brief story sheds light on our boundary work which uses research and data to span, broker and shake institutional boundaries for the purpose of youth violence prevention and intervention. Our analysis illuminates the potential and limitations of our power to foster transformational change. It also allows us to show that underestimating power differentials and the diversity of values and cultures within an organisation and between a university and a community partner, and certainly across multiple institutions in the case of a cross-sector partnership, can slow down and even thwart work to address societal problems.


Author(s):  
Bryant Walker Smith

This chapter highlights key ethical issues in the use of artificial intelligence in transport by using automated driving as an example. These issues include the tension between technological solutions and policy solutions; the consequences of safety expectations; the complex choice between human authority and computer authority; and power dynamics among individuals, governments, and companies. In 2017 and 2018, the U.S. Congress considered automated driving legislation that was generally supported by many of the larger automated-driving developers. However, this automated-driving legislation failed to pass because of a lack of trust in technologies and institutions. Trustworthiness is much more of an ethical question. Automated vehicles will not be driven by individuals or even by computers; they will be driven by companies acting through their human and machine agents. An essential issue for this field—and for artificial intelligence generally—is how the companies that develop and deploy these technologies should earn people’s trust.


Author(s):  
Lorena M. Estrada-Martínez ◽  
Antonio Raciti ◽  
Kenneth M. Reardon ◽  
Angela G. Reyes ◽  
Barbara A. Israel

AbstractPedagogical approaches in community-engaged education have been the object of interest for those aiming at improving community health and well-being and reducing social and economic inequities. Using the epistemological framework provided by the scholarship of engagement, this article examines three nationally recognized and successful examples of community-university partnerships in the fields of community planning and public health: the East St. Louis Action Research Project, the South Memphis Revitalization Action Project, and the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center. We review and compare how these partnerships emerged, developed, and engaged students, community partners, and academic researchers with their local communities in ways that achieved positive social change. We conclude by highlighting common elements across the partnerships that provide valuable insights in promoting more progressive forms of community-engaged scholarship, as well as a list of examples of what radical forms of community-engaged education may look like.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tala Michelle Karkar Esperat

PurposeThe purpose of the study was to provide an example of instructional coaching for inservice teachers within the context of community-engaged scholarship (CEP), involving professional learning communities (PLCs). This study seeks to encourage policymakers to allocate budgets for instructional coaches, as well as resources for schools.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory case study design was used to examine the factors that contributed to the partnership and how the PLC sessions impacted the inservice teachers' practices. Data sources included interviews, focus groups, written reflections, observations of grade-level teachers' meetings and administrative meetings.FindingsThe study uncovered important factors that impacted the community-engaged partnership (CEP) positively, such as partners having a unified agenda, a common focus on the school's needs and an understanding of the culture of the school. Principals are the gatekeepers in such partnerships.Research limitations/implicationsThis study yielded the description of a model of instructional coaching within a CEP that other universities around the world could replicate. The limitations of this study include the length of the study and the time frame in which the PLC content was planned. The study was conducted over 1 year to limited funding. The instructional coach developed the PLC content during the ongoing academic year and that impacted the teachers' initial perceptions and their commitment to the PLCs.Originality/valueThis study offers a new coaching model for CEPs that focuses on closing the gap between theory and practice by integrating PLCs, content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and face-to-face visual support.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 148 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Andrews ◽  
Susan Leonard

Universities engage students in traditional service-learning projects that often yield “good feelings”, even a savior mentality, but typically leave the root causes of social justice issues unexamined and untouched. In contrast to traditional service-learning, critical service-learning bridges this gap with an explicit focus on justice and equity, situating scholars’ work with the community rather than for it. A public university in the southeast offered a doctoral course that focused on critical service-learning in the context of a professional development school partnership. Designed as an ethnographic multi-case study, each graduate student in the on-site course represents a case. Data collection included interviews, observations, written reflections, and artefacts. The analysis revealed that developing critical service-learning projects with educators—rather than for them—supported participants’ critical consciousness. Findings and discussion highlight that facilitating community-engaged scholarship through critical service-learning impacts graduate students and middle-grades educators’ research interests, work, and future directions.


Author(s):  
Michael Cuthill

The concept of engaged scholarship, as a 'new' and participatory approach to knowledge production, has received much attention over the past decade. However, the term is clouded in ambiguity. This paper presents some introductory discussion around concepts of engaged scholarship, and then focuses in detail on a methodological case study of participatory action research as an example of engaged scholarship in practice. Discussion revolves around reflections on practice, drawing largely from recent reports on participatory democracy and the role of unversities in society.


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