Navigating Power and Privilege When Building Research-Practice Partnerships as a Graduate Student

• In Event: Advancing Research-Practice Partnerships: Leveraging the Positionality of Graduate Student Researchers

Abstract

Purpose:

Despite advances being made in the diversity of individuals receiving doctoral degrees, the majority of Ph.D. students are still white, U.S. citizens, with parents who completed a bachelor’s degree (National Science Foundation, 2017). This reality poses a unique challenge in research-practice partnerships (RPPs), the success of which is influenced by trust and social dynamics (Farrell, Harrison & Coburn, 2019), which may be hindered when partnering with communities of which one is not a part. Based on the reflections of one graduate student, this study offers considerations for doctoral students from dominant identities building research practice partnerships with non-dominant communities, answering the question: what are strategies graduate students can use to navigate power and privilege when building research practice partnerships with communities they are not a part of?

Theoretical Framework:

Related to research practice-partnerships in their focus on collaboration, community-based research approaches often have an additional focus on empowerment (Minkler, 2004). Specifically, community-based participatory research is an orientation which extends significant focus to power and equity (Minkler, 2004). Practices offered by this approach provide insight for graduate students of dominant communities striving to be reflective of power in their research-practice partnerships.

Methods and Data Sources:

The study is a reflection on the first year from one graduate student (white, U.S. citizen, with college educated parents) building a research practice partnership with a Title 1 middle school in California. The school’s student population is predominantly Latinx (63%), with 62% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The research practice partnership also included a college access and persistence program that supports underserved students, recruiting exclusively from the partnership middle school.

The study drew on fieldnotes, meeting agendas, and reflective memos from the first year of partner work. Fieldnotes were collected during meetings with graduate faculty, school leadership, teachers, and other partnership staff, as well as observations of school or organizational programming (n=67).

Findings:

Multiple opportunities exist for graduate students wishing to be conscious of power and privilege when building research-practice partnerships with communities of which they are not a part. Some such practices include structuring meetings with partners in ways to desettle hierarchies, offering service to the school as a way of building trust, centering community knowledge in the design of research projects, disseminating findings in ways that are collaborative with partners, and engaging in research methods that challenge traditional researcher power dynamics, such as youth-participatory action research. Particular success was found through leveraging these different approaches together, leading to collective accomplishments at the end of the first RPP year.

Significance:

This work contributes to the research-practice partnership literature in that it offers applied implications for graduate students building partnerships with communities of which they are not a part, which can also be utilized by faculty overseeing RPP’s. Research on RPP’s is still emerging and while trust is often noted as a key component of any RPP, literature is limited on how to build trust in such settings, particularly for graduate students (Farrell, Harrison & Coburn, 2019).

Author

• Jennifer R Renick, University of California - Irvine