Regional-Scale Cross-Sector University-Community Equity-Oriented Research Collaborations: Lessons From the Field

• In Event: Building Foundations for Strategic University-Community Research Collaborations for Equity: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Objectives
This paper examines underlying values and processes of collaboration within two regional-scale, long-term, multi-issue projects, one rural/small city, and the other urban. Each focused on developing young adult leaders prepared to use research-based strategies to enact more just and democratic solutions to embedded problems of social, economic, political, and educational injustice. The study identified the role of relationships, communication and decision-making, and knowledge to intersect with issues of trust, funding, and strategic timing to shape the early stages of partnership formation.
Theoretical Framework
Research on innovative forms of collaboration has emerged under multiple descriptions: university-community partnerships (Nelson, London, & Strobel, 2015), collective impact theory (Kania & Kramer, 2011/2013; Turner, Merchant, Kania & Martin, 2012), collaborative governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008), and stakeholder collaboration (Savage et al., 2010). This study fills gaps in this literature through an investigation of the early stages of two community-driven, culturally-historically rooted, and cross-sector collaborations. The partnership structures enabled community partners’ needs, interests, sociocultural practices, and knowledge to guide the collaborative process, representing a distinct departure from the organizing logic of collaboration presented in the current literature.
Methods and Data Sources
This study used NVIVO to enable grounded theory and open-coding approaches to identify themes appearing in the projects’ extensive meeting notes and formal minutes, in each case covering multiple years. An initial set of descriptive and conceptual codes were used to sort the data, which was then reanalyzed and recoded by the authors based on a jointly constructed set of themes. Analytic memos at the intersection of relevant codes identified key patterns shaping the processes at work in the collaborations.
Results
We identified three foundational aspects of community-driven, collaborative research: relationships, communication & decision-making, and knowledge. These interacted with themes of trust, funding, and strategic timing to shape the interactions in the partnerships. Relationships captured the need for participants to inhabit new subject positions that contrasted with traditional hierarchical researcher and research subject roles. Norms and practices of reciprocity cultivated the long-term, trusting, and committed connections required to sustain the partnerships within contexts of unequal power and privilege and of financial uncertainty. Communication and decision-making proved critical to sustaining relationships, organizing participants’ roles, and cultivating a sense of shared purpose. Because the collaborations valued plural forms of knowing rooted in the cultural-historical experiences of community partners, community ownership was assured and sustained participation. The allocation of space and time for Indigenous healing practices and the inclusion of subjugated knowledges challenged traditional academic boundaries designating legitimated knowledges as well as traditional frameworks for funding.
Significance
These findings present only a partial perspective on collaborative research processes, and do not represent prescriptive elements or benchmarks, but rather they establish a set of critical themes and questions that help advance more equitable, community driven partnerships across a variety of sectors.

Authors

• Ethan Chang, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Rebecca A. London, UC Santa Cruz

• Ronald David Glass, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Emily Borg, University of California - Santa Cruz