Using a Critical Reflection Framework to Deepen Community-Campus Relationships and Partnerships: A Multi-Institutional Mixed-Methods

Abstract: Although relationships are central to community engagement and service-learning they are an underdeveloped topic of scholarship and research. The TRES II Reflection Framework (RF) that incorporates the TRES II (Transformational Relationship Evaluation Scale) was developed to aid in practice and research. Participants describe their relationship, examine it in multiple ways including with the TRES II scale, and then articulate their learning by developing action steps to be taken to improve and deepen the relationship. Ninety-three individuals participated in the development of the RF, including students, community organization representatives, professional staff, and faculty. The research included 47 participants across 12 relationships on five campuses completing the RF. A survey was sent to participants one week after their participation. Completing the RF positively influenced the participants’ perception of: (a) their commitment to the relationship, (b) their clarity regarding the relationship, (c) how they think about others in the relationship, (d) their perspective on relationships now and in the future, and (e) follow through on subsequent communications and action steps. Participants reported that the RF had the greatest impact on altering their perspectives and practice on communication, interactions, attaining outcomes that are mutually beneficial, and the role of the relationship on each partner’s work. The research supports the conclusion that, for the first time, there is evidence that an intervention can lead to expecting improvements in community engagement relationships. The RF and the research will be presented to the audience and reactions about their use will be solicited.

Narrative: Cruz and Giles (2000) noted the field’s emphasis on student outcomes in service-learning research and proposed that partnerships be a unit of analysis. That led to the challenge: Can service-learning relationships be measured, conceptualized, and analyzed? This presentation will summarize the development of an intervention that allows community and university partners to reflect on a relationship and research that demonstrates its effectiveness in deepening relationships.
Bringle et al. (2009) conceptualized a ETT continuum of relationships: exploitative (costs exceed benefits, lack closeness, equity, and integrity; unrewarding or harmful outcomes), transactional (task oriented; mutual benefits exceed costs), and transformational (focused on growth and change). This framing of relationships provided the impetus for the development of the initial Transformational Relationship Evaluation Scale (TRES). Kniffin et al. (2020) expanded this continuum to include relationships that are unilateral, in which resources and benefits flow in one direction. The resultant EUTT (exploitative, unilateral, transactional, transformational) continuum is the conceptual framework underlying TRES II. This scale assesses relationship quality using the EUTT continuum across ten domains of relationships: (a) goals, (b) conflict, (c) decision-making, (d) resources, (e) role of this partnership in each partner’s work, (f) role of this partnership in sense of self, (g) extent and nature of interactions, (h) power, (i) communication, and (j) outcomes. Although TRES II by itself has value for practitioners and researchers (Kniffin et al., 2020), we posited that participating in critical reflection around TRES II makes the scale more consequential. Using the DEAL model of critical reflection (Ash & Clayton, 2009), a reflection tool was developed in which TRES II is embedded. This research examined two questions: (a) Does the TRES II Reflection Framework affect the perceptions or practices of community engagement relationships among participants? (b) Is actionable learning generated from using the RF and then put into action?
Methods. Ninety-three individuals participated in developing the RF, including students, community organization representatives, professional staff, and faculty. The research included 47 participants across 12 relationships on five campuses completing the RF. Nine participants identified as faculty, 17 as administrators, eight as students, eight as staff at community organizations, and one as a community resident; four participants did not self-identify. Typically, participants completed different sections of the RF individually and then collaboratively examined their responses and completed the last section in which they identified and developed key takeaways and action steps that they or their partners can take to deepen the relationship. When completing TRES II, participants were asked to select a response option for each domain that best reflects the “current” status and the “desired” status of the relationship. A survey was sent to participants one week after their participation.
Results. Analyses confirmed the conceptual coherence of TRES II for the current items (Cronbach’s alpha = .83) and desired items (Cronbach’s alpha = .83). Completing the RF positively influenced the participants’ perception of: (a) their commitment to the community-campus relationship, (b) the clarity regarding the nature of relationship, (c) how they think about others in the relationship, (d) their perspective on relationships now and in the future, and (e) follow through after using the RF on subsequent communications and action steps by a majority of the participants. Participants reported that the RF had the greatest impact on altering their perspectives and practice on communication, interactions, attaining outcomes that are mutually beneficial, and the role of the relationship on each partner’s work. Qualitative results collected from the RF and the survey supported the conclusion that the intervention had an effect. For example, key takeaways included consideration of who could be involved, the purposes of the relationship, new activities, and changes to the relationship. In addition, participants noted that the RF enhanced their awareness of relationship quality and the ability to change that quality through reflection. The most common actions that were identified included expanding who was involved, activities, and support.
Discussion. This research provides the first in-depth example of the value of developing and enhancing extant tools with intentionally-designed critical reflection prompts to increase the tools’ utility and impact on community-campus relationships. Adding critical reflection prompts before, during, and after TRES II resulted in partners learning more about their relationships and generating actionable learning. The research results demonstrated that the RF was an effective intervention for improving participants’ commitment to, clarity around, and perspectives on the relationships as well as for influencing planned practice enhancements within the relationships related to the role of the relationship in their work, nature and type of interactions, communication, and outcomes.
Embedded in TRES II is the distinction between transactional and transformational relationships. The ratings of current status hovered around the transactional ratings, but aspirations for the relationship were significantly closer to the transformational scale value. All of the ratings across the ten domains of TRES II demonstrated an aspiration for growth in the direction of transformation. The finding that all domains had significant differences between current and desired corroborated Clayton et al. (2010), whose earlier research using TRES I documented that more transformational outcomes were generally attractive to participants.
Other than case studies, intentional interventions to improve the quality of community-campus relationships are conspicuous by their absence in the research literature, especially across a wide sample of relationships. That the RF had the capacity to produce these outcomes across a variety of relationships in different institutional contexts is noteworthy. Furthermore, the results support the conclusion that the process helped educate practitioners’ thinking, perspectives, and practices about the focal relationship in the future as well as about community-campus relationships more generally. Thus, the RF is not only an intervention that can improve the quality of relationships; it can also constitute an educational tool for learning about relationships among diverse participants. The research supports the conclusion that, for the first time, there is evidence that an intervention can lead to expecting improvements in community engagement relationships. The RF and the research will be presented to the audience and reactions about its use will be solicited.