Re-envisioning University-Community Relations: The Problem with Partnership, Educational Equity, and Mutual Benefit

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 3:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Equitable Community Partnership for Educational Research

Abstract

Drawing on a critical history of higher education and racial capitalism, the paper critiques the popularized concept of the research-practice partnership (RPP), often formed by universities and school districts. This analysis presents findings from a critical media analysis of key documents related to an out-of-school educational intervention program for students from racially minoritized and low-income backgrounds designed by a research-practice partnership between a predominantly white university and its local school district. This critique problematizes the foundational assumptions that mutual benefit and reparation are compatible ideals and that education itself is a sufficient form of redress. Thus, community-engaged educational programs, no matter how beneficial, can become forms of substitutionary reparation that exonerate universities from contributing material reparations for historical wrongs.

Author

• Christopher Hu, University of Alabama