Published August 2024
By: Jessica Forrester
Highlights:
- Community-engaged research is an important process in our toolkit, particularly for scholars who work with youth or are leading Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) projects.
- To strengthen my advocacy skills, I recently attended an intensive training that provided strategies and advice that may help other scholars too.
- In this post, I share some approaches and strategies, including reflection on practice, scholarly validation, and how to support the next generation of researchers.
Community-engaged research is a collaborative process that prioritizes knowledge, ideas, and recommendations from those directly affected by the research outcomes. This work involves community members as equal partners throughout the research process, which is also a core part of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR; learn more via Youth-Nex’s YPAR Nexus). During my recent work, I’ve focused on building the research infrastructure for Youth Action Lab (YAL), a YPAR initiative that partners with local schools and organizations to introduce young people to research that matters to them.
To strengthen my advocacy for youth-led and community-engaged research like YAL, I recently attended a Summer Intensive on Community-Engaged Scholarship. The week-long workshop series focused on various topics related to community engagement, like strategies for sharing your community-engaged research with academic and public audiences, career advice, and conceptual understandings of community-based research. In this post, I want to share more about what I learned during these workshops and how it connects to my future engagement, practice, and mentorship.
Reflection on Practice
At its core, research generates knowledge, promotes innovation, advances science, and more. In some cases, it is done in silos without the target population actively involved. So, how do we include the community and youth voices in our scholarship? Here are some ideas:
- Internally reflect on the purpose of participation & engagement. Before initiating community partnerships, first consider your goals of engagement and promise to the public. Are you engaging youth and adult community members to a) obtain feedback on your fully developed action plans? b) work directly with other community members to formulate solutions? or c) empower members of the community? Once you have determined your stance on collaboration, then you can incorporate appropriate tools to match your goals.
- Expand your toolkit & techniques. There are a number of free resources available that push engagement and research methods past traditional options like surveys and interviews. Lisa Vaughn, Ph.D., and Farrah Jacquez, Ph.D., wrote an article on participatory research methods and included examples for the different steps in the research process (i.e., partner, design, collect, analyze, disseminate, and act). Also, the Victorian Department of Environment‚ Land‚ Water, and Planning created an engagement toolkit with a list of techniques for planning, implementing, and evaluating community-engaged activities.
Scholarly Validation
As an academic scholar, I sometimes struggle with the best way to advocate for YPAR within traditional scholarship standards. With an increased appreciation for publicly engaged scholarship in higher education, I’m excited to see more community-based and youth-led research being communicated creatively and written with community partners. Here are some tips that stuck with me from the Summer Intensive:
- Build a supportive network. Community plays a powerful role in promoting affirming attitudes about research and scholarship. This can include national organizations and conferences as well as learning communities at your institution. For example, Youth-Nex’s YPAR Working Group brings together practitioners and researchers who are interested or engaged in YPAR (see this group’s resources on the YPAR Nexus and consider joining). This space allows members to learn about the latest insights in YPAR and solicit advice about their own practice.
- Communicate your scholarship to different audiences. Take time to “unfurl your community-engaged work” to consider how to share the complex methods of youth-led and community-based research. Different publishable options include writing about conceptual models framing your research, processes and practices for engagement, outcomes for university and community partners, and lessons learned from the partnership. See this article for an unfurling planning tool and examples from a research project and dissertation.
Building the Next Generation
My work at YAL has been done in collaboration with several graduate students, an experience that has inspired me and given me hope for future research in our field. Part of my goals in higher education is to support the next generation of critical scholars motivated to use community-based, action-oriented, and youth-centered methodologies in their work. The American Council of Learned Societies released a report titled “Preparing Publicly Engaged Scholars: A Guide to Innovation in Doctoral Education” to show the value of community-engaged work for graduate students and provide recommendations for sustaining publicly-engaged doctoral education. My hope is that advocating for youth-led and community-engaged research will become commonplace in higher education, and faculty and graduate students will be supported in their journey of discovery.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, please email [email protected]. Please visit the Youth-Nex Homepage for up to date information about the work happening at the center.
