Answerable Research Practice Partnerships: Practicing Aloha ʻĀina, Cultivating Pilina, and Co-Producing Knowledge Accountable to Hawaiʻi (Poster 17)

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work Poster Session

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, public and private investments in Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs), long-term collaborations that use research to improve education, have soared. But attention to how RPPs answer to Native places and peoples remain limited. In this critical, self-reflexive case study, we ask: How do participants in one RPP author meanings about “research,” “practice,” and “partnership” that answer to Hawaiʻi? Informed by Patel’s notion of answerability, we analyze three years of fieldnote data generated through our efforts to transform education in Hawaiʻi. We argue that daily practices of aloha ʻāina (devotion to caring for the land) forged lifelong pilina (binding, relationships). These reciprocal, land-based relations animated a research focus on (re)designing learning to amplify Kanaka ‘Ōiwi (Hawaiian) self-determination.

Author

• Ethan Chang, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa