Generative Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Strategies for Engaging a Community of Practice

Abstract: The Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) at Michigan State University, hosts an annual community of practice (COP) with the goal of providing space for interested community-engaged practitioners to come together to discuss and explore current scholarship on community-engaged pedagogy. The 2022-2023 COP focused on critical community-engaged learning (critical service learning) and participants engaged in dialogue on issues of power, privilege, feminist thought, decolonization, and social justice perspectives. The COP also discussed the application of these critical approaches to current community-engaged learning practice as related to community partnerships, critical reflection, course design, the student experience, and assessment. This COP was an interdisciplinary collective of tenured faculty, academic specialists, researchers, and graduate students. The original goal of this interdisciplinary COP was to create a written resource that would help bring these theoretical ideas into practical recommendations for practice, which ultimately led to an opportunity to collaboratively write a book review. Within this roundtable, the co-facilitators of the COP will discuss the community’s journey of writing a book review together, highlighting the book charting process they used, as well as the joys and lessons learned from the process. Following, the facilitators will engage participants in discussion around ideas related to producing scholarship through COPs. Questions to consider will include: how have COPs come together to do this kind of collaborative work, what strategies have been used (or could be used) to produce interdisciplinary scholarship as a COP, and how are we advancing the field of community-engaged learning through COPs.

Narrative: This roundtable will provide space for conference attendees to explore the tradition of communities of practice (COPs) and dialogue about ways that COPs can be engaged to produce meaningful interdisciplinary scholarship, ultimately advancing the field of community-engaged learning. The Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) at Michigan State University, hosts an annual COP with the goal of providing space for interested community-engaged practitioners (CEPs) to come together to discuss and explore current scholarship on community-engaged pedagogy. This COP was an interdisciplinary collective of tenured faculty, academic specialists, researchers, and graduate students.

The original goal of this interdisciplinary COP was to create a written resource that would help bring these theoretical ideas into practical recommendations for practice, which led to an opportunity to collaboratively write a book review. Within this roundtable, the co-facilitators of the COP will discuss the journey of writing a book review together, highlight the book charting process they used, and the joys and lessons learned from the process. Following, the facilitators will engage participants in discussion around ideas related to producing scholarship through COPs. Questions to consider include: how have COPs come together to do this kind of collaborative work, what strategies have been used (or could be used) to produce interdisciplinary scholarship as a COP, and how are we advancing the field of community-engaged learning through COPs.

CCEL’s 2022-2023 COP focused on critical community-engaged learning (critical service learning) and participants engaged in dialogue on issues of power, privilege, feminist thought, decolonization, and social justice perspectives. The COP also discussed the application of these critical approaches to current community-engaged learning practice as related to community partnerships, critical reflection, course design, the student experience, and assessment. Within the first semester, each month had a topic of exploration and members populated an annotated bibliography with related literature. Topics included:
-What Is Critical Service-Learning/ Community Engaged Learning?
-What Are Critical Community-Engaged Partnerships?
-What Is Critical Service-Learning Pedagogy?
-Community Burden And Partnership/ Research Saturation

Members read and discussed pivotal works including Mitchell (2007, 2008) and Santiago-Ortiz (2019). This exploration of literature and robust discussion laid the foundation for the second semester where the COP members read Cress et al.’s (2022) Faculty Service-Learning Guidebook: Enacting Equity Centered Teaching, Partnerships, and Scholarship and engaged in a book charting process (Stanfield, 2000) to collaboratively write a book review.

COP members drafted a book charting template specific to our COP goals using the Institute of Cultural Affairs ORID (objective, reflection, interpret, decisions) approach (Stanfield, 2000). First, the COP established goals and relational aims in terms of what we hoped to do with the book charting project. The set relational aim was to complete a book review that incorporated multiple authors and stakeholders in the process, to provide relevant feedback regarding the practical application of the book to the disciplines/ work of multiple authors, and to clarify what the book was about and how it informed the work of the authors. Further, the experiential goals detailed how we wanted to be together in the process, and included an imperative to take a collective approach to the book reading and reviewing process, to express how the book could be used practically, and work toward our overarching COP outcomes. Outcomes included:
-Understand foundational community-engaged learning scholarship and relevant strategies for application.
-Apply critical frameworks to existing foundational scholarship and explore implications for practice.
-Support a network of scholars and contribute to building an enhanced community-engaged campus culture.

The COP then built out the chart template with questions pertaining to each ORID category. Next, each member selected a chapter to read and completed the chart for that chapter. Some chapters had two COP members who were interested so they read, charted and discussed similarities and differences. Upon completion of all of chapter charts, members came together to present their chart to the larger group and again, discuss similarities and differences in perspectives across the book as a whole. Finally, the co-facilitators pulled from the book charts and notes from the whole group discussion and drafted the book review, which was sent to the whole community for editing.

The session will be split into two equal time periods. The first will focus on the COP experience of the session facilitators. Second, following the description of the co-facilitators own COP experience, the round table participants will engage in discussion around ideas related to producing scholarship through COPs. Dostilio (2017) outlines a competency model for CEPs in which they have a critical commitment to model effective communication to enhance the co-construction of scholarly products (p. 50). Dostilio continues that CEPs need to engage in collaborative endeavors with community-engaged stakeholders to produce these works. It is part of CEPs’ work to create generative experiences that contribute to the field, and COPs are an opportunity for CEPs to collaboratively generate interdisciplinary scholarship. Questions the participants will consider in this roundtable include: how have COPs come together to do this kind of collaborative work, what strategies have been used (or could be used) to produce interdisciplinary scholarship as a result, how can COPs consider community partner involvement and voice, and how we are advancing the field of community-engaged learning through COPs?

Cress, C. M., Stokamer, S. T., Van Cleave, T. J., & Kaufman, J. P. (2022). Faculty service-learning guidebook: Enacting equity-centered teaching, partnerships, and scholarship. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Dostilio, L. D. (Ed.). (2017). The community engagement professional in higher education: A competency model for an emerging field. Campus Compact.

Mitchell, T.D. (2007). Critical Service-Learning as Social Justice Education: A Case STudy of the Citizen Scholars Program. Equity & Excellence in Education 40, 101-112.

Mitchell, T. D. (2008). Traditional vs. critical service-learning: Engaging the literature to differentiate two models. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 14(2), 50-65.

Santiago-Ortiz, A. (2019). From critical to decolonizing service-learning: Limits and possibilities of social justice-based approaches to community service-learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 25(1), 43-54.

Stanfield, R. B. (Ed.). (2000). The art of focused conversation: 100 ways to access group wisdom in the workplace. New Society Publishers.