LEARNING FROM PARTNERSHIP FRAMEWORKS

In this symposium, Bullock and Hess define CER as “the systematic and rigorous production of knowledge through reciprocal partnerships with people beyond the academy that contributes to the improved governance of social or political problems.” Reciprocity and equality are important tenets of CER, which Bullock and Hess also discuss. The emphasis on governance is distinguished from two popular action-research frameworks used in public health, criminology, sociology, social work, and education. CBPR engages with nonacademic partners to improve participant recruitment, data analysis, results dissemination, and overall design of research projects. Minkler and Wallerstein (Reference Minkler and Wallerstein2008) identified the key elements of CBPR as engaging community members and researchers who cooperate for the production of new knowledge; focusing on co-learning; developing strategies for building capacity; empowering participants to increase control over their life; and balancing research and action. CBPR requires project participants to deauthorize traditional ways of knowing to foster a critical consciousness and action in an unjust system (Freire Reference Freire1970; Wallerstein and Duran Reference Wallerstein, Duran, Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel and Minkler2017).

RPPs comprise the second framework. Coburn and Penuel (Reference Coburn and Penuel2016) established that “researchers and system leaders share an open-ended commitment to build and sustain a working collaboration over multiple projects.” Coburn, Penuel, and Geil (Reference Coburn, Penuel and Geil2013) further stated that the objectives of RPPs are for partners to (1) foster long-term collaborative arrangements that develop over multiple years; (2) commit to an open-ended commitment to working together; (3) center partnerships on matters of concern for educator and community partners rather than solely developing theory and knowledge; (4) mutually address needs and goals of all partners; (5) establish practices for making decisions together, designing innovations together, and conducting research together; and (6) produce original analyses that address questions of mutual interest to educators and inform the ongoing joint work of the partners.

On the surface, CBPR and RPPs sound similar. However, they illustrate differences in how participatory research conceptualizes who are partners and what they receive through partnership. Some scholars argue that CBPR is founded on the premise that project ideas must evolve from the community rather than an idea that researchers take to the community (Thompson Sanders Reference Thompson Sanders2019). Scholars in public health (Wallerstein and Duran Reference Wallerstein, Duran, Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel and Minkler2017, 27) advocated for CBPR to build on a southern or emancipatory Freirean tradition to “foster democratic participation of community members to transform their lives.” In contrast, researchers and “system leaders” are involved in problem definition in RPPs (Coburn and Penuel Reference Coburn and Penuel2016).Footnote ¹ Whereas CBPR focuses on problems that people confront in everyday life, RPPs focus on key dilemmas and challenges that practitioners face, which pose consequences for community members. Similar to RPPs, CER does not necessarily privilege nonacademic partner interests like CBPR does. In this symposium, Bullock and Hess view CER closer to the “northern tradition” of action research (Lewin Reference Lewin1948), in which partnerships steer away from one partner deferring to another.

Although these two frameworks represent only a small example of a rich universe of scholarship on participatory research, they reveal common tensions in research partnerships. Figure 1 represents the tensions among these frameworks in a Venn diagram. First, all three frameworks share a commitment to being problem driven. To produce relevant knowledge, partnerships should focus more on outcomes addressing social problems than on resolving debates in scholarly literature. To remain problem driven, all three approaches also emphasize the importance of being conscientious about context, which suggests that partners should seek a balance between research and action. CER shares with CBPR and RPPs a commitment to engage in a process in which all partners are given agency in the decision-making process and their understanding of the research and its potential are enhanced through project participation (Coburn and Penuel Reference Coburn and Penuel2016; Wallerstein and Duran Reference Wallerstein and Duran2010).

Figure 1

Common Relationships and Tensions Across CER, CBPR, and RPPs

CER also shares an emphasis on clarifying group motivations and expectations with the other two frameworks. Transparency strengthens reciprocal working relationships. This emphasis is key given that partnerships often do not take place because they require openness and unlearning old practical habits and norms that govern “how things have always been done” (Chicago Beyond 2019). Some scholars point to an inception problem—that is, potential collaborators never begin a conversation about partnership in the first place (Levine Reference Levine2020). Others find that prospective collaborators intentionally avoid “difficult conversations” on how to build reciprocal partnerships, opting for paths of least resistance (Lipovsek and Zomer Reference Lipovsek and Zomer2019).

Some aspects of CBPR and RPPs fall under CER’s “big-tent” conception of reciprocal partnerships that involve people beyond the academy. To address imbalances among researchers, community organizations, funders, and participants, CER involves sustained co-learning and reciprocity with people beyond academia, a value that is stated in both CBPR and RPPs. CER overlaps with RPPs in its emphasis on partnerships with practitioners as well as with CBPR in its emphasis on partnerships with either practitioners, community members, or both.

Both literatures highlight important principles for mutual partnerships in different ways. Penuel, Allen, Coburn, and Ferrell (Reference Penuel, Allen, Coburn and Farrell2015) conceptualized RPPs as “joint work” at the boundaries of research and practice. They view co-learning as an intentional act to cross boundaries as a way to understand differences and shape mutually shared outcomes and to resist a unidirectional translation from research to practice. To circumvent the problem of inception in RPPs, Levine (Reference Levine2020) argued that academics and practitioners must decenter their own specific priorities by focusing on problems and identifying how their own expertise can accomplish shared tasks. For partnerships that formalize, collaboration is time-intensive (Coburn, Penuel, and Geil Reference Coburn, Penuel and Geil2013). Project partners must permit themselves to engage in a process that is unavoidably messy, long, uncomfortable, and rarely linear (Coburn, Penuel, and Geil Reference Coburn, Penuel and Geil2013; Lipovsek and Zomer Reference Lipovsek and Zomer2019). In CER, multiple interactions are important in demonstrating commitment, which is integral for building trust (Lipovsek and Zomer Reference Lipovsek and Zomer2019). Furthermore, a level of honesty and transparency emphasizes the crucial steps of building an exploratory phase and coordinating timelines, which allows for sufficient time to test waters; share aspirations; name challenges; and address any concerns involving trust, consent, and exploitation (Lipovsek and Zomer Reference Lipovsek and Zomer2019).

CBPR studies highlight a commitment to co-learn with a critical consciousness (Freire Reference Freire1970). RPPs tend to differ, given that learning is based mainly on independent first-person self-reflections (Coburn and Penuel Reference Coburn and Penuel2016) rather than an explicit commitment to share lived experiences and lessons—although there are exceptions (Levine Reference Levine2020). We find that CER draws from literature that supports structuring discussions in which group members recursively revisit how system structures shape their lives and focus on how learning from one another provides benefits that impact everyone (Thompson Sanders Reference Thompson Sanders2019). We also find the CBPR literature useful in understanding how to avoid tokenism, in which some participants believe that a partnership is reciprocal and equitable whereas others think and experience otherwise (Dieter et al. Reference Dieter, McKim, Tickell, Bourassa, Lavallee and Boehme2018; Thompson Sanders Reference Thompson Sanders2019). Written records, group contracts, and memoranda of understanding can provide a basis to address these tensions.

Similar to Freire’s (Reference Freire1970) critical consciousness and interpretive methods, CER encourages researchers to “attend to and analyze their possible personal power vis-à-vis those they study” (Yanow and Schwartz-Shea Reference Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2015, 442) and to think of themselves as “positioned subjects” who bring their identities and theories to the field (Shehata Reference Shehata, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2015). CER further builds on Freire’s idea of praxis and bell hooks (Reference hooks1994), asking both researchers and their collaborators to translate their critical awareness of their position and power to mutually create ground rules that explicitly discuss group values of respect, decision-making processes, shared leadership, and accountability and a commitment to learn together for a greater purpose.

At the same time, an emphasis on positionality and reflexivity also encourages caution in partnerships. CBPR and RPPs are two examples of participatory research that decenters academic priorities in favor of focusing on problems and outcomes. Orsini (Reference Orsini, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2015) highlighted concerns over some outcome- or problem-driven frameworks that tend to use people instrumentally. We share this concern. A project may achieve its stated goals and objectives but can exploit people outside of academia for benefits exclusively offered within academia (Thompson Sanders Reference Thompson Sanders2019).

POLITICS OF RESEARCH PARTNERSHIPS

We hope that this review of two prevalent participatory frameworks provides more clarity about CER. We now discuss other scholarship that encourages a more critical understanding of the politics of partnering with people outside of academia to raise questions that engaged researchers must foreground.

First, to what extent do collaborative processes or agreements privilege who is and is not considered a partner? These decisions are consequential because partnering with a subset of stakeholders and decision makers can replicate power dynamics that are antagonistic to improved governance. We believe that this is not an impediment but rather a productive point of exploration for political scientists to consider how power and authority are exercised in the formation of collective enterprises. For example, Goodman, Bird, and Gabel (Reference Goodman, Bird and Gabel2017, 205) provided an insightful spectrum of research partnerships that serves to orient political scientists and their collaborators to the challenges and benefits of partnership approaches. Other work encouraged critical understanding of how researchers define “community.” We similarly ask, what is considered a community? Moreover, who gets to define it? Our questions align with interpretivists such as Orsini (Reference Orsini, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2015), who found that CBPR risks overlooking the important role that researchers play in constructing and interpreting “community” in the first place. We also contend that this applies to RPPs in constructing and interpreting who is deemed a “system leader” or practitioner more generally. Who defines the “system” in question? Although CER may define community broadly, it still must contend with political and politicized processes of how groups are constructed rather than taking them as givens.

Second, can mutual collaborations still involve academics who choose to distance themselves from their partners to conduct research? Scholars have emphasized the importance and benefits of maintaining distance from community for the sake of research and the community itself (Labaree Reference Labaree2002; Orsini Reference Orsini, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2015). In the coproduction of knowledge, some studies suggest that creating distance from partners or partnering communities, in fact, would bring academics closer to identifying important concerns for a community (Orsini Reference Orsini, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2015) and foster accountability against powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and influential groups (Goodman, Bird, and Gabel Reference Goodman, Bird and Gabel2017). Conversely, full separation tends to promote research questions and conclusions that are tangential to the problems experienced in everyday life (Smith Reference Smith2020). In other projects, nonacademic partners create buffers in which researchers may find their evidence undermined by well-resourced NGOs and foundations that favor their own expertise and anecdotal evidence.

Relying on ethnographic studies, we suggest that political scientists must use their discretion and engaged listening to detect tensions between their insider/outsider status (Brown Reference Brown2012; Cramer Reference Cramer2016) wherein researchers as outsiders must “go native” and insiders must step back to become “observationalists” (Labaree Reference Labaree2002). We believe that political scientists should take an active role in intentionally codesigning and sustaining collaborations. Indeed, studies suggest that equitable research frameworks can strengthen the rigor and relevance of research products (Leung, Yen, and Minkler Reference Leung, Yen and Minkler2004; Minkler and Baden Reference Minkler, Baden, Minkler and Wallerstein2008; Savage et al. Reference Savage, Xu, Lee, Rose, Kappesser and Anthony2006). However, we also hope that this symposium will encourage political scientists to use CER for reaching newer audiences interested in improving governance (and less interested in traditional research publications). If not, producing research without providing any tangible outcomes for nonacademic partners will contribute to existing public concern about political science’s disconnection from public life (Smith Reference Smith2020).

It is important that CER avoid the practice of instrumentally using partnerships to generate findings for exclusively academic audiences. To foster reciprocal partnerships, CER requires academics to practically improve governance to resolve social and political problems (further explored by Jackson, Shoup, and Williams in this symposium). We view the best versions of CER to be inspired by a Freirean “listening-dialogue-action” framework that creates equitable ways to achieve reciprocity wherein “everyone participates as a co-learner to jointly construct a shared social reality” (Wallerstein and Duran, Reference Wallerstein, Duran, Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel and Minkler2017). Under these project norms, we envision academics and nonacademics engaging in fully transparent discussions about how they benefit from collaboration, what they are risking, what they can offer for the good of the group, and how best to work with one another.