Lina Dostilio, Graduate Student Network Chair, IARSLCE Board

Lina Dostilio

Director Academic Community Engagement, Duquesne University

Graduate Student Network Chairperson, IARSLCE Board

As a graduate student, I am grateful for the ways in which the Association nurtures novice researchers and helps them to connect their interests to a deepening body of community engagement research.  The theme of Connected Knowing reflects a spirit within the Association that has influenced my own research and development as a connected practitioner scholar.

My current work  (a dissertation) is concerned with community-university partnerships that are democratically oriented. It draws upon and connects research in education, organizational and institutional development, social psychology, and social coalition building. As I considered multiple disciplinary bodies, epistemologies, and ways of knowing, I was moved beyond my primary disciplinary training. I found it necessary to connect my strong educational research foundation to other bodies of work and as a result, encountered the loneliness that can accompany developing scholarship outside of a traditional trajectory.  This is a loneliness that is not all that unfamiliar to those of us who consider ourselves to be what John Saltmarsh describes as the next generation of engaged scholars. Many of us have a few supportive faculty within our respective graduate programs who understand service-learning and community engagement. Some of us are fortunate to have faculty who have contributed to these literatures. From my conversations with the Association’s graduate students, we most often find ourselves needing the support and guidance of scholars outside of our campus homes and beyond our disciplinary fields.

As the next generation of engaged thinkers, we intuitively seek to build connected knowing; we embrace identities that shatter a traditional faculty role, taking on mantels as practitioner scholars, scholar activists, and even critics to engagement research; and we weave our intellectual traditions with those of other cultures and epistemologies.  The Association provides a home to this spirit of intertwining and intervening work, and this year’s conference theme most appropriately brings this spirit to life.

Our Graduate Student Network (GSN) provides opportunities for me to connect my thinking to other incubators of thought. I have served as an Editorial Fellow, an experience that positioned me to critically review many innovative research projects. I am mentored and mentor others. I found a group of critical thought partners who were all interested in the construction of reciprocity and we established a thinking and writing group to which our divergent interests contribute strong analysis. Finally, I have the opportunity to use the upcoming conference as a vehicle to connect my studies to other cutting edge work and to develop a plan for how I might continue a research trajectory. While my trajectory may have once felt outside of the norm, it now feels supported and connected, giving me a sense that I am doing important work with other engaged thinkers. I feel connected. My work is connected. And, I look forward to connecting to your work at this year’s conference.

Julie Hatcher, IUPUI

Julie A. Hatcher, Associate Professor, Philanthropic Studies

Senior Scholar, Center for Service and Learning

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

As an educator in higher education, I am keenly interested in creating “connected knowing” experiences for college students.  Through my own experience and understanding of good teaching and learning practice, I value learning experiences that challenge students to connect their learning to prior knowledge, connect their learning across multiple disciplines, and connect their learning to future action within communities through their personal and professional lives.  It is this latter dimension of connected knowing that I find of most importance.  I often challenge students to consider how what they are learning can impact their future action as citizens and professionals.  I endorse John Dewey’s concept of “social intelligence”; knowledge is gained in relationship with others and knowledge is to be used to improve social conditions.  Developing civic-minded graduates, who will in turn become civic-minded professionals is a vital role for colleges and universities to assume in democratic society. 

Yet how this type of “connected knowing” develops civic-mindedness is unclear.  Certainly, research indicates that prior experiences in family networks, schools, volunteer activities, faith-based organizations, and international travel all contribute to civic-mindedness among graduates and professionals.  And we know that both informal and formal mentoring relationships are very important within learning environments and professional settings.  Yet there is an added variable that is of significance, indeed is of statistical significance, to developing civic learning outcomes, and that is “dialogue across difference”.

I have become more attune to “dialogue across difference” through collaborative research projects in the last couple of years with both the Bonner Foundation and the Project on Civic Reflection.  Led by the ongoing research and evaluation work by Cheryl Keen, I was invited to assist in the design of the 20^th Anniversary Study of Bonner Alumni, a national study of graduates of the 4-year, service-based scholarship program funded by the Bonner Foundation.  At the IARSLCE conference in 2010, we presented preliminary findings.  After our session, Dan Richard, University of North Florida, approached us with an interesting question.  He was interested in teaching a service learning course in a graduate statistics class and wondered if he could use the data set generated from the Bonner research.  As a result, Dan and his graduate students embarked upon a semester project to unpack the relationship between a number of variables and the concept “civic-minded professional”.  Of all of the variables, “dialogue across difference with others who are different than me” carried the most weight in terms of its relationship to civic-mindedness.

This concept of “dialogue across difference” is a fundamental principle used by the Project on Civic Reflection (soon to be the Center for Civic Reflection).  Facilitators are trained to lead a small group of participants in structured and thoughtful reflection about a short thought-provoking poem, story, or essay.  The goal is to clarify personal values and commitment and to build civic capacity and community through dialogue.  Comments are shared, ideas are pursued, and insight is gained.  Participants have included college students in 25 states, including 10 Campus Compact states, AmeriCorps members in 17 states, and civic leaders across the country, including Illinois, Florida, Washington (DC), Montana, and New Hampshire. It is a powerful tool that can be readily adapted within service learning classes and co-curricular activities.  Preliminary research indicates a number of benefits derived from civic reflection.

I look forward to the upcoming conference as an opportunity for such dialogue.  Without a doubt, it is rigorous research that will generate and test theory, increase understanding of service learning and civic engagement, and inform good practice and public policy.  Yet it is dialogue, especially with others who are different than me, that will challenge my thinking, deepen my understanding, and ultimately sustain my motivation and commitment to the research and the work that I do.  The IARSLCE conference will offer numerous opportunities for such dialogue.  Whether it is over coffee with new colleagues, during the graduate student reception, or as part of the question and answer time allotted within each session, dialogue, by design, is a fundamental aspect of the learning environment at this conference.  We welcome your participation!

Shelley Billig, RMC Research

Shelley Billig, Vice President, RMC Research Corporation

Connected Knowing as a theme for the 12^th IARSLCE couldn’t come at a better time.  There has been a strong push in both the PK-12 and higher education world to conduct useful research, to translate that research into practice guidance and tools, and to disseminate the information as quickly and as widely as possible.  The IARSLCE can be a wonderful catalyst for research to practice, and this theme can help us to organize our efforts and bring at least some of them to scale.

Our review of the studies on research to practice in education shows that there are six major challenges to be overcome: 

1.     Knowledge issues, such as having few conclusive results, poor technical quality, and lack of relevance or utility for practice;

2.     Accessibility issues, such as weak information channels among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers and limited skills among practitioners to understand and interpret research findings;

3.     Professional culture problems such as researchers and practitioners having different languages and priorities, overreliance on professional wisdom or consensus, and the highly contextualized knowledge created from the research community;

4.     Careless or inappropriate use of the research from the practitioner side and overclaiming results on the research side;  

5.     Systems issues, such as having a fragmented research enterprise, few credible models of using research to shape educational policies, no mechanisms for using the research efficiently to redesign educational policies or practices; and

6.     Of course, limited funding. 

The way to begin to overcome these challenges is to develop research diffusion models, establish boundary-crossing practices across disciplines, and engage in developing knowledge communities and systematic dissemination vehicles and mechanisms.  The IARSLCE does this – we have multiple opportunities to share research, develop common research agendas, provide valuable expert feedback on studies, and publish our results. The IARSLCE is the only research community that serves K-12 service-learning purposes and one of the few that serves higher education in an interdisciplinary approach to service-learning and community engagement research.  We are the place to convene and share our work to serve the research to practice needs of the field.

For these and many other reasons (including meeting the nicest researchers in the world), I urge you to consider submitting your research papers, be they around findings, theory, or methodology, for presentation at this conference.  If accepted (or not), you should come to the conference to join in on the effort to advance both research and practice in our field.  At the least, you will gain knowledge.  In addition, you will gain access to a network of researchers who are passionately dedicated to service-learning and community engagement and to furthering research to practice to improve the educational experience of all students. 

Andrew Furco, UMN

Andrew Furco is the Associate Vice President for Public Engagement and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota

"Connected Knowing" is the perfect theme title for 2012 International Research Conference on Service-Learning and Community Engagement. Both explicitly and implicitly, the term, “connected knowing”, characterizes the essence of service-learning and community engagement research. In so many ways, it embodies what the annual research conference has sought to accomplish over its twelve-year history. 

Since its inception in 2001, the annual conference has sought to bring together producers and consumers of research from across varied and disparate academic disciplines to connect their particular perspectives of service-learning and community engagement to build a more clear and more well-articulated field of study and practice. It is through connected knowing across the disciplines that the field of community engagement research has been built.

The annual conference encourages connected knowing by showcasing new findings from brand new, cutting edge research studies and then linking this new knowledge with the previous research in the field.  Every year, through the conference presentations, the research base for service-learning and community engagement is further strengthened, helping to build the current robust body of knowledge for service-learning and community engagement.

Because of the multi-disciplinary nature of service-learning and community engagement, the research in the field draws from a broad range of theories and relies on various methods and paradigms of inquiry, ranging from positivistic experiments to more interpretative and critical inquiry.  The annual research conference intentionally seeks to connect these different ways of knowing in ways that enlighten us about the strengths and limitations of each paradigm and method.

The annual conference was established with the specific intention of linking the service-learning and community engagement research knowledge that is produced within higher education contexts with the knowledge that is produced within K-12 and other educational contexts.  By connecting research knowledge from across the educational spectrum, the body of research on community engagement has been strengthened in innumerable ways. For example, this connection has helped identify similarities and differences in how older and younger students experience service-learning and community engagement.  It has also helped bring to the fore the universal aspects of service-learning that are important, regardless of participating students’ educational levels.

As an international conference, the annual conference supports connected knowing across national border and cultural boundaries. With research sessions facilitated by participants from dozens of countries, the conference offers space to explore simultaneously national and global trends in the study and practice of service-learning and community engagement. This work helps us understand more fully the nuanced differences in how service-learning and community engagement is practiced across national borders. After eleven years, the conference remains an important venue for connecting (across national borders) the latest research on service-learning and community engagement.

In many regards, connected knowing is a mainstay of the conference. Each year, the conference connects individual researchers who are interested in advancing the rigor and value of service-learning and community engagement research, but who often do not have within their work setting a community of engagement researchers with whom to collaborate and share their work.  The peer relationships that are fostered through the conference sessions and discussions have engendered a strong, tight knit community of scholars who ultimately rely on each other for support, critique, and encouragement.

John Saltmarsh, NERCHE / UMass-Boston

John Saltmarsh, Co-Director, the New England Resource Center for Higher Education, Professor of Higher Education Administration, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

The conference theme of connected knowing resonates strongly with my research interests and my observations of the trajectory of the civic engagement movement, in the United States and globally. What the authors of Women’s Ways of Knowing identified as a different way of knowing  - a way of constructing knowledge that is relational and ontological (as bell hooks puts it, about ways of knowing and habits of being) and that had implications for women in the academy, now, it seems, has much broader implication for women and other underrepresented groups in higher education.

Connected knowing is at the center of the explorations underway of the next generation of engaged scholars. Research is emerging that indicates that a new generation of scholars in graduate school and in early career faculty positions are increasingly diverse, are more inclined to connect community issues to their pedagogical practice, are more inclined to design research agendas tied to social issues and improvement of the human condition, are more inclined to understand knowledge generation as a collaborative process of networked knowledge creation, resist attempts to fragment the integration of the faculty roles, and have expectations that the institutions that they are a part of will support their engaged scholarly work.

It is my hope that the conference theme will serve as an invitation to researchers who are exploring the dynamics and implications of the many dimension of faulty culture associated with next generation engagement. While there is a growing body of research, much of it cited in the paper entitled Full Participation: Building the Architecture for Diversity and Public Engagement in Higher Education   (www.fullparticipation.net), we need more studies of how graduate students are socialized into professional identities as engaged scholars. We need to know more about the expectations of engaged graduate students as they enter into their careers as academics. We need to know more about how institutions of higher education are responding to this next generation of scholars, and how campus leaders are creating organizational cultures that not only allow engaged scholars to thrive but that shift institutions from, as Harry Boyte has written, “scattered civic activity to deep civic identity,” integrating institutional priorities of diversity and inclusion, student success, and public engagement.

The conference theme is an opportunity for researchers to share their research on the implications of connected knowing and to design research studies that will generate deeper understanding of next generation engagement scholars and campuses.