Exploring the Intersections of Various Forms of Research Partnerships

• In Event: A Focus on Equity: Participant-Centered Research Alliances

Abstract

Purpose: We define Community Research Collaboratives as joint efforts among community-based organizations (e.g. advocacy groups, organizing groups, service providers, and civic engagement groups) to utilize systematic methods and analyses to address education justice. This paper investigates Community Research Collaboratives (CRCs) as a sub-field of public scholarship through a comparison of discrete features of CRCs and Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs).

Perspective:
The idea of participatory research is not new, there is rich scholarship on participatory approaches to research across various academic fields (Wallerstein & Duran, 2017). However, in recent years there is a growing body of work that goes beyond community participation in university based research, moving toward placing community members at the center of determining the purpose and process of research (Ishmaru & Bang, 2016, Warren et al., 2018). Efforts to integrate such methodologies into justice focused systemic change are particularly relevant to the idea of research partnerships in education. As examples of these emergent forms of research grow in number, there is an opportunity to better understand and support the work of such efforts.

Methods & Data Sources:
Our contribution to the broader efforts to define this field include a literature review of recent studies that enact collaborative community work, a scan of work in-progress including interviews with 24 people working in community organizations, education systems and research institutions across 8 CRCs . Here we present a synthesis from across the field, site profiles of specific CRCs and briefly discuss how CRCs overlap with other fields of public scholarship- especially research practice partnerships.

Results:
The results of this inquiry in to the expanding field of CRCs demonstrated some of the similarities and differences between CRCs and RPPs in their conception and the ways in which such projects define purposes, roles, and engage in analysis. In particular, CRCs foreground systemic transformation towards more just visions of the future. Rather than focusing on equitable outcomes within current systems, CRCs invite diverse perspectives from people in widely varied roles to imagine how engaging in processes of inquiry may illuminate new possibilities beyond current paradigms of learning, education, and schooling.

Significance:
Community research collaboratives exist in a space that is parallel, and sometimes overlapping with research practice partnerships. Both research approaches are important forms of public scholarship that expand the possibilities for knowledge production outside of the constraints of traditional university-centric research designs. The differences between CRCs and RPPs are worth exploring to support the continued growth of a multiplicity of research partnerships, while dismissing assumptions that all partnership work can be contained within one or two definitions. This paper embraces the variation in partnerships that results from the need to closely attend to context, while looking for factors that hold the greatest potential for understanding the commonalities of CRCs and how they might be supported practically in institutions and through funding.

Authors

• Adam J. York, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Siomara Valladares, CU Boulder

• Michelle Renée Valladares, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Matt Garcia, University of Colorado - Boulder