Paper Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Learning How to Enact Equitable Relationships: Lessons From a Community-Based Research Training Program for Students

Sat, April 9, 4:05 to 5:35pm, Convention Center, Floor: Level One, Room 102 B

Abstract

Objectives
What is the repertoire of practices developed and enacted by university researchers who work in equity-oriented RPPs? We contend that there is a set of practices, such as relationship-building and equitable forms of decision-making, which tend to be left out of the formal social science research curriculum but that are essential to equity-oriented RPPs. This poster focuses on lessons learned from Year 1 of a new fellowship program at CU-Boulder that offers graduate students from multiple disciplines the chance to develop expertise as community-based researchers. We share guiding curriculum principles, emergent tensions, and a map that makes visible the repertoire of practices needed in equitable RPPs.

Theoretical Perspective
Community-based research (CBR) emphasizes the rigorous pursuit of knowledge in the context of mutually beneficial university-community partnerships (Strand et al. 2003). CBR projects aspire to combine the resources and expertise located in outside of the university, sometimes called community or cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), with academic expertise, to address public or community-defined problems (Israel et al., 1998). CBR adopts an explicit set of values related to equity, social justice, and democratic decision-making. Unlike RPPs that focus on collaborations with practitioners, such as teachers, CBR tends to privilege place-based partnerships with youth and/or adults directly affected by the issue to be studied. For university based researchers, CBR calls for a set of practices, such as listening, awareness of power and privilege, and democratic decision-making, which are not part of the typical graduate training curriculum (NCAI, 2012).

Methods and Data Sources
Claims are based on detailed discussion notes, student-generated artifacts, and students’ reflective written work from the first year of a graduate fellowship in Community-Based Research. Six fellows participated who represented four academic subjects: Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Education, and Geography. Fellows participated in a summer seminar, monthly brown bags, and a doctoral seminar on community based research. Data analysis was guided by the following questions:
What is the repertoire of practices that CBR Fellows identified and developed over the course of their fellowship year?
What tensions or contradictions emerged for fellows?

Results
Multiple features of relationship-building: The Fellows surfaced elements of the research process that tended to cluster around relationship-building, including: identifying self-interest, building and sustaining trust, addressing power and privilege, sustaining trust, and making collaborative decisions.

Relevance to whom? Fellows were initially more sophisticated about how to ensure their projects met local needs defined in partnership with a community group. Students reported more difficulty articulating how to the research might be relevant to scholarly audiences in their discipline. This challenge became a focus of the Fellows’ work together.

Implications
It may be tempting to attribute relational or participatory skills to natural gifts of a person, but this entity-based view undermines the notion that people can become better at doing ethical partnership work. If partnership research is to become a more widely accepted practice, we need explicit efforts to map the relevant domains and support learning by emerging scholars.

Authors