Living in the Contradictions: Theorizing Community and Student-Engaged Research Through an Ethics of Relationality

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Research for Transformation: Power and Possibilities of Community Engaged and Collaborative Research

Abstract

Objectives
Service learning often replicates entrenched hierarchies of power, especially when developed from a framework of benevolent (white) volunteerism (Tilley-Lubbs, 2009). Termed by some scholars as “traditional service learning,” such approaches aim to transform undergraduates to become more “tolerant, altruistic, and culturally aware” and in turn, situate communities as extractive sites of tourism for learning without accountability to the community contexts themselves (Mitchell, 2008, p. 50). In addition, these approaches presume a gap between the home communities of the undergraduates and the communities they are working within. How then, do the problematics of service learning shift -if at all - by utilizing a community-engaged learning and research (CELR) model that centers ethics of relationality (Baloy, Sabati, & Glass, 2016)? Furthermore, (how) do the complexities of CELR transform when students identify more with the communities they are working within, rather than the context of the university and its surrounding community?

Theories
In this paper, we focus on the praxis of re-imagining student engagement by reflecting on the development of a community-school garden, which is a CELR site that is part of a broader constellation of connected undergraduate programs. We unpack how critical-race, feminist and anti-colonial theories informed the conceptualization of the community-school garden through an intentional and sustained process of relationship building with the parents and teachers at the school (Castledon et. al., 2012; Lugones, 2003; Tuhiwai-Smith, 2012).

Methods and Data
This ethnographic case study (Stake, 1998) analyzes testimonios of gardeners and undergraduates given at public events, fieldnotes, as well as conversations with parents and undergraduates (Beverly, 2004). Our analysis draws from the theoretical frameworks that shaped the program design to consider the emergent ways that people are making-meaning of the significance of the garden, focusing on the perspectives of gardeners and undergraduates. We also consider how our driving ethics of relationality conflicts with the fundamental structures, timelines, and desires of the university.

Results and Contribution
For undergraduate Latinx students, the project has made their university experience a little more bearable and, in their own words, has created “possibilities for loving relationships” to emerge with garden-based families, which they juxtapose against their broader sense of belonging on campus. Parents have described the importance of the garden as a space to build relationships with other families and to be with their children.
We recognize the significance of the garden it’s less than two-year inception, and also consider how we navigate the need to leverage institutional funding to sustain this program against our own desires to further entrench romantic narratives of the community or partnership (Joseph, 2002). Thus, we consider the responsibility we have to continue to hold the space that has been created collectively in the community-school garden as a central aspect of the work. This paper is of particular interest to university practitioners who coordinate undergraduate research and curriculum, such as program directors, staff, and faculty. It also contributes to ongoing conversations amongst scholars interested in centering CELR in their teaching to consider the possibilities and constraints of their institutional contexts.

Authors

• Linnea Kristina Beckett, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Sheeva Sabati, California State University - Sacramento