Exploring the Impossibility of Public Scholarship in the Contested Nature of Public and Good

• In Event: For What Public and Whose Good? Critical Reflections on Research Practices for Advancing "Public Good"

Abstract

In this paper, I reflect on methodological and ethical tensions that arise from representing place and participants in my research with immigrant families in a rural Midwestern community. Principles of public engagement frame my work as a publicly engaged scholar because of the appeal I find in the messiness of “working in the world with all of its dimensions and directions” (Paulson, 2011, p.191).

Publicly engaged scholarship often means the goal of “doing good”. More specifically, Kellogg Commission (2000, 2001) defines this work as attending to the public good. Publicly engaged scholars take up knotty societal issues and, through partnerships and collaborative activities with various “publics”, they collaborate with community residents to address these challenges (Fitzgerald, et al, 2012). Plato (1963) believed that what is good for the public is, by nature, good for individuals. Researching in the name of one’s public seems an inherently worthy mission for all educational researchers because of the good that may accrue. “Human beings derive great satisfaction from acting on principle, making commitments to others, and taking part in cooperative endeavors (Mansbridge, 2014, p. 3). However, key observers of the research landscape reminds of ethical obligations that include avoiding assumptions, challenging ill-defined notions, and attending to the dangers of seemingly good ideas taken to the extreme (Fine, 1994; Mansbridge, 2014; Nespor, 2000). Finally, they remind us of our privileged, self-interested status (private goods) as researchers. Taken together, these complex ethical obligations and competing emphases may seem contradictory and yet, with healthy dialogue and critical reflection, educational researchers can address emerging critical tensions. These debates must involve interrogating decisions we make in the name of the people and places we research and in the context of meanings we assign to places and people. Ultimately, we must come to terms with what we mean by public good.

I interrogate my researcher decisions in the context of a long-term campus-community partnership with a rural Midwestern majority-minority community where I direct an adult literacy program for immigrant adults seeking to study for the US Naturalization test and extend their fluency with English. Guided by IRB requirements, I carefully create representations of place and participants that mask identities and experiences. Nespor suggests that these practices merge assumptions that create useful theoretical examples that can be generalized (p. 546) and protect identities. While I adhere to institutional ethical obligations, what is lost in these representational practices is a deeper understanding of real people and places that act to bring clarity to who is the public and illuminating the good. Nespor suggests that our disciplines “resist closure of unfinished outcomes of power and struggle” (553) and limit the possibilities of legitimate engagement and building relationships as stipulated by tenants of publicly engaged scholarship. As a way forward, I propose that we as scholars (1) engage and unpack research methods serve places and participants and ourselves how places and participants while we explore public scholars’ needs for sophisticated forms of cooperation and collaboration to enrich the public spirit (Mansbridge, p. 5).

Author

• Carolyn A. Colvin, University of Iowa