Transnational Research Collectives as “Constellations of Co-Resistance”: Counterstorytelling, Interweaving Struggles, and Decolonial Love

Settler colonialism and coloniality dominate and dismember the truths, the bodies, and the lands of the colonized. Decolonization and decoloniality involve intergenerational, embodied, and emplaced pathways of resistance, rehumanization, healing, and transformation. In this article, we uplift the healing and transformative power of transnational stories and embodied knowledges that are rooted in four research collectives: the Palestinian Resilience Research Collective (PRRC) in the West Bank; the Mapuche Equipo Colaborativo para la Investigación de la Resiliencia (MECIR) in Chile; the Community Action Team (CAT) in Boston, USA; and the Miya Community Research Collective (MCRC) in Assam, Northeast India. We, the co-authors of this article, are directly connected to these four research collectives. Across our collectives, we work to defend the right to exist, to belong, and to express our full range of humanity as racialized and colonized communities in distinct, yet connected, sites of struggle. Our transnational focus of this article is premised on a fundamental rejection of borders, even as we recognize the material and psychosocial realities of borders. In co-writing this article, we bring decolonial solidarity into life through “constellations of co-resistance,” a concept used by Indigenous scholars such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson to describe complex connective fabrics across decolonial struggles. We share our reflections on three practices of decolonial solidarity that shine through each of our transnational research collectives as three constellations of co-resistance: counterstorytelling, interweaving struggles, and decolonial love.

An Evaluation Framework of a Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center for Health Equity Research

Over the last few decades, there has been an increase in the number of large federally funded transdisciplinary programs and initiatives. Scholars have identified a need to develop frameworks, methodologies, and tools to evaluate the effectiveness of these large collaborative initiatives, providing precise ways to understand and assess the operations, community and academic partner collaboration, scientific and community research dissemination, and cost-effectiveness. Unfortunately, there has been limited research on methodologies and frameworks that can be used to evaluate large initiatives. This study presents a framework for evaluating the Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions (FCHES), a National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)-funded Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center (TCC) for health disparities research. This report presents a summary of the FCHES evaluation framework and evaluation questions as well as findings from the Year-2 evaluation of the Center and lessons learned.

READING AND CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

This study is an analysis of quantitative research conducted in September 2020, based on a 113-respondent sample unit of adult readers in English (100 Slovak and 13 international respondents). Researchers analysed respondents’ abilities to evaluate a text critically; i.e. to identify its assumed author, genre, organization of the text, and the importance of the text for the reader and his or her community. Research outcomes proved that university undergraduates in Slovakia do not possess a good command of critical reading skills for academic reading in four out of five items. International students outscored Slovak students in two items; the research proves the need to intensify preparation of undergraduates in critical thinking in order to fit the needs of a changing society and reading load.

Artificial Neural Network Research in Online Social Networks

Artificial neural networks are a machine learning method ideal for solving classification and prediction problems using Big Data. Online social networks and virtual communities provide a plethora of data. Artificial neural networks have been used to determine the emotional meaning of virtual community posts, determine age and sex of users, classify types of messages, and make recommendations for additional content. This article reviews and examines the utilization of artificial neural networks in online social network and virtual community research. An artificial neural network to predict the maintenance of online social network “friends” is developed to demonstrate the applicability of artificial neural networks for virtual community research.

The Missions of the Regional Pedagogical University: Post-Non-Classical Understanding

Pedagogical universities are in the area of great attention from the society and the state because of their increasing role in forming the human capital of the territories. The purpose of this article is to explain the necessity and possibility of creating a mission and strategy for the development of pedagogical universities in (macro) regions on the basis of a post-non-classical understanding of pedagogical education. Methodology and methods: to construct the mission of the pedagogical university, claiming to play an active role in the ecosystem of education in the region, the post-non-classical methodology was used in understanding pedagogical education as an open, system-synergetic approach (ecosystem as its kind), as well as the typical of the post-non-classical methodology, methods of reconstructing the experience of designing an open pedagogical education in a heterogeneous (academic and teaching) professional community. Research results: three missions of the regional pedagogical university are characterized: education, research and impact on society, from the standpoint of the ecosystem approach and the concept of an entrepreneurial university. A pedagogical university acts as a key element of the ecosystem if it demonstrates an entrepreneurial type of behavior, overcomes resource constraints due to the dominance of the third mission over education and research, subordinating them to the task of creating a cohort of agents of change – vanguard groups of future a working teachers in the territory. Conclusion: the missions of the pedagogical university should be subordinated to the influence on the entire pedagogical corps of the region by increasing the density of connections in educational and professional communities.

Pink consumption areas: research accomplishments and future perspectives

Pink consumption areas are a collection of places that were created and/or stand out for their openness towards the LGBT community. Research of pink consumption first arose in the 1990s and took place in an urban context almost without exception, and was largely geographically limited to Anglo-America and Western Europe. Night clubs have been identified as the starting points of pink consumption, but pink consumer spaces are becoming increasingly diversified with the liberalisation of social relations in the Western world. However, entertainment remains the dominant domain and the most research attention has been focused on this area. Purchasing systems, including consumption management called rainbow washing, has also been well studied, though studies on culture and health related to this area are strongly lacking. Research of pink consumption spaces shares a common methodology with this issue. A central issue is the lack of a public list of LGBT persons, which makes it virtually impossible to have any form of probability sampling. Accordingly, qualitative research based on the interview method, focus group discussions, and geosemiotic analyses are more frequently used than quantitative research.

Decolonial Dreamers and Dead Elephants

The 11 articles in this special themed issue examine the complexity of issues of power between individual researchers, between researchers and community organisations or higher education institutions, and between community organisations and institutions in relation to community-engaged research and scholarship. The articles uplift the pain and joy in community-engaged research, the harm and the benefits, the contradictions and tensions, and the true gifts and understanding gained in research with communities for the purpose of co-creating transformational change. We weave our own knowledge and experiences together with these individual articles as we seek ways to reimagine the future of community research and engagement. Specifically, we connect the near obliteration of African elephants and loss of Indigneous ways of knowing in Africa with the diverse communities, contexts and issues of power in community-engaged scholarship represented in this special volume. We, like the authors, hold a dream for the future of engaged scholarship that is more equitable, inclusive and morally just. We believe this dream is not only possible but achievable, as evidenced by the work of the authors in this volume. We present an African indigenous knowledge system, Ubuntu, whose principles, values and tenets simultaneously promote the conservation of the community as a whole and the harmonious existence of the individual within the community. We posit that the adaptation and adoption of this knowledge system within the scholarship and practice of community-university partnerships and community research relationships may enable the development of a mutuality and reciprocity that levels power hierarchies within the personal, organisational and societal arenas of community-university partnerships. We demonstrate that many of the cases described by contributors to this special volume resonate with this knowledge system, which itself has survived colonisation and its concomitant epistemicide. Together, the authors help paint a pathway for those who want to become decolonial dreamers (la paperson 2017) daring to reimagine the nature of power in research as we collectively find ways to dream bigger in order to uncover new and exciting possibilities for this work we call community-engaged scholarship.

PRODUKSI PAKAIAN BERDASARKAN LEMBAR BIAYA & TARGET HARGA RITEL

Through a 3-year community service scheme (6 periods), 4 periods have been conducted. There are 3 stakeholders in this program: study program, community research partner, and brand partner. Along the process, community service partner has understood and be able to collaborate using digital method to produce clothing collections for brand partner. But although the stitching quality is well, cost prices are mostly found too high, not suitable for brand partner’s retail prices. Through this community service period, the aims are: 1) to train cost sheet making for each sku made; 2) to provide knowledge of target retail price and its calculations; 3) to provide knowledge on many components of clothing costs, including margin fees on multiple fashion platforms in Indonesia. This period is the last step of training and focus more on production and business mindsets before letting community service partner to go independent in the last period.

“It is not that I didn’t already know these places, but I never thought of them like this.” Methodological approaches to community research in early childhood education in Denmark

The aim of this article is to discuss how participatory methods might contribute to research concerning the development of inclusive, socially just and community-oriented pedagogical practices within the field of early childhood education, as well as contributing to shared knowledge production about relations between kindergartens1 and local communities. The article starts from a critique of dominant political and institutional approaches in Denmark to patterns of cooperation between kindergartens, parents, and local communities, which often in practice lead to top-down and compensatory approaches to cooperation, in which parents are expected to adapt to the agendas of the institutions. We argue that there is a need to develop alternatives to these approaches. This article explores how kindergartens might respond to the needs and views of parents and local communities, rather than the other way around. We explore this by asking what (local) communities for children and parents are and might be, and how kindergartens as significant shapers of children’s lives and experiences might create links between children’s lives inside and outside of the kindergarten. We discuss how communities, pedagogues and children might cooperate in pedagogical research processes and how such research processes affect (understandings of) children’s lives, communities, and kindergartens. Furthermore, we look at how these cooperations and insights might contribute to the development of more inclusive, community-oriented pedagogical practices. Our findings show that shared explorations of the many relations between kindergartens and communities have the potential to build more respectful and reciprocal dialogues and innovative pedagogical practices. Yet at the same time they show that this is an unfinished, imperfect endeavor that requires continuous attention to the complex and changing nature of communities, and to the closures and exclusions entailed by any community practice. Also, the findings point to an understanding of communities as performative phenomena that develop and grow through the very process of involvement and shared engagement. We argue that participatory, community-oriented pedagogical research methods should reflect these dynamics. The article describes and discusses research methods, showing how participatory research methods can deepen our understanding of the complex roles of early childhood education for children and communities, while also inspiring inclusive and community-oriented pedagogical practices.

National Data Sharing Policy in the Era of Open Science: A Systematic Literature Review

Research data sharing activities provide many benefits to the research ecosystem. However, in the Indonesian context, there is a lack of policy in regulating research data sharing mechanisms which makes researchers reluctant to undertake the practice of data sharing. Research funders and research institutions play a critical role in developing data-sharing policies. Research related to the policy of research data sharing is important in order to design policies to encourage the practice of research data sharing. A systematic literature review was conducted to see how data-sharing policies were formulated and implemented in various research institutions. The data were taken from Scopus and Dimension indexers using controlled vocabulary. The roles of research institutions and funders as well as policy instruments were analyzed to see patterns that occur between the parties. We examine 23 articles containing data sharing policies. it was found that the funders have the greatest role in determining the design of the data sharing policy. Funders view that research data is an asset in research funded by public funding so that the benefits must be returned to the community. Research institutes play a role as a provider of research infrastructure that contributes to data creation. Meanwhile, researchers as research actors need to provide input in developing data sharing mechanisms and regulating data sensitivity aspects and legal aspects in research data sharing.