Toward a Scholarship of Public Engagement Aimed at Educational Change

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Can Educational Research Influence Educational Change? AERA, New Audiences, and New Modalities for Influencing Change

Abstract

Objective:
The objective of this paper is to explore new audiences for academic scholarship and new ways of relating to these audiences toward meaningful and sustainable educational change.

Statement of Problem:
There are new players in the policy arena, including those that are driving current policy and those attempting to resist it. Academic researchers may not have as much influence as they would like with the new drivers of policy (e.g., conservative think tanks, ideologically driven venture philanthropists and hedge fund managers, business associations, and edubusinesses and their lobbyists), but new networks of policy resisters are seeking alliances and forms of knowledge that we can provide, preferably in collaboration with these groups (e.g., community organizers, advocacy organizations, teachers unions, bloggers, journalists, parent groups).
If our aim is to convince policymakers, education advocates and grassroots organizers of the relevance of our research for educational change, we may need to more actively engage with a broader public outside of the academy. "In this sense,” Humes and Bryce (2001) note, “scholarship has to move out of the study into the public arena where evidence, knowledge and values constitute contested terrain. The scholar-researcher has to be prepared to get his or her hands dirty" (p. 330).
Scholars will need to develop meaningful relationships with a range of audiences, depending on the topic, the stakeholders, the unit(s) of analysis, and chosen qualitative methodology (e.g., ethnography, practitioner research, participatory action research). As Sallee and Flood (2012) explain, the relevance of research “is thoroughly intertwined with relationships that are built and channels of communication that are opened. Researchers can enhance the relevance of their research by inviting community input and identifying practical solutions to problems." (2012, p. 141).

Modes of Inquiry
In this largely conceptual paper, we will provide exemplars of a scholarship of engagement aimed at educational change. Primarily, we will discuss a current project in which the authors are involved in a participatory research project with a teacher-led advocacy group researching the declining numbers of Black and Latino teachers in New York City.

Significance and Implications
Currently in the balance is whether educational change will continue to be driven by new policy networks with a market-based and managerial ideology or whether a coalition of organized teachers, parents, students, and communities will not only push back, but propose, not a return to the past, but proactive solutions to educational dilemmas grounded in the needs of local communities. As with the case discussed above in which a teacher-led advocacy group reached out to academic researchers, academics will have to rethink how they view grassroots advocates and how they might provide knowledge and skills such groups need.

Humes, W., & Bryce, T. (2001). Scholarship, research and the evidential basis of policy development in education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 49(3), pp. 329-352.

Sallee, M.W., & Flood, J.T. (2012). Using qualitative research to bridge research, policy and practice. Theory into Practice, 51(2), pp. 137-144.

Authors

• Michael J. Dumas, University of California - Berkeley

• Gary L. Anderson, New York University