Dialectics as a tool for navigating the mandates of scholarship and community impact: learning from reflexive practices

ABSTRACT

Universities are increasingly demanding that faculty fulfill multiple mandates including producing scholarly published work and demonstrating community impact. As such, faculty experience the challenges of community involvement and impact, while also ensuring that community involvement leads to published research. This manuscript discusses a participatory action research (PAR) project that failed to achieve its initial outcome goal of community impact. Heeding the advice of previous scholars, we attempt to ‘work the ruins’ of failure, to stimulate discussion that may assist other researchers in efforts to fulfill this dual mandate of publication and community impact. Rooted in dialectics, and based on our own reflexive practice, and interviews with program staff and participants, we suggest three dialectics for consideration for future scholarship: 1) Community led AND researcher led; 2) Failure AND success; and 3) Messy AND publishable.

Résumé

Les universités exigent de plus en plus des professeurs qu’ils remplissent de multiples mandats, notamment la production de publications scientifiques et la démonstration de l’impact sur la communauté. Les professeurs sont confrontés aux défis de l’implication et de l’impact sur la communauté, tout en veillant à ce que l’implication de la communauté aboutisse à une recherche publiée. Ce texte traite d’un projet de recherche-action participative (RAP) qui n’a pas atteint son objectif initial d’impact sur la communauté. Suivant les conseils de chercheurs antérieurs, nous tentons de « travailler les ruines » de l’échec, afin de stimuler la discussion qui pourrait aider d’autres chercheurs à remplir ce double mandat de publication et d’impact sur la communauté. En nous appuyant sur la dialectique, sur notre propre pratique réflexive et sur les entrevues avec le personnel du programme et les participants, nous suggérons trois dialectiques à prendre en considération pour les futurs projets académiques : 1) dirigés par la communauté ET par les chercheurs ; 2) échec ET succès ; et 3) désordonnés ET publiables

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory Action Research
• Reflexivity
• Tenure
• Poststructuralism

Mots-clés:

• recherche-action participative
• réflexivité
• titularisation
• poststructuralisme

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Throughout this manuscript, first person reference (‘I’) will refer to the first author who initiated and led this project, and ‘we’ refers to both authors. The second author joined the project after its initial conception.

2. To protect anonymity, we use pseudonyms for all participants in this project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eric Legg

Eric Legg, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Community Resources & Development at Arizona State University. His research explores the question of how we construct community sport experiences to maximize positive development outcomes, with a specific focus on positive youth development. As a former non-academic, he is a strong advocate for community applied research and seeks to work directly with schools, parks and recreation, and community sports providers to create sports experiences that maximize positive outcomes.

Allison Poulos

Dr. Allison Poulos is an Assistant Professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. She is a behavioral scientist who conducts community-engaged research, with an emphasis on physical activity as a source of children’s health and well-being. Guided by a social-ecological framework, her research investigates how individual, environmental, and policy factors affect behavior, and how they collectively impact health and well-being in school and neighborhood settings. Her work focuses on promoting access and opportunities for quality physical activity opportunities throughout the comprehensive school day, including before, during, and after school.