The+moral+framework+of+community+engagement+research

Jeff Trahair, Senior Lecturer, University of Adelaide [jeff.trahair@adelaide.edu.au]
 * The moral framework of community engagement research**



** Keywords: **Volunteering, ethical frameworks, community engagement

** Track: **Theoretical or conceptual frameworks to advance research

** Format: **Research paper

**Date & time:** Thursday 2:00-3:10 **Location:** Wilson

**Summary:** The current proliferation of novel programs of community engagement suggests that a change in the underlying paradigm of higher education is occurring. Yet the ethical foundation of community engagement is poorly understood and articulated. It needs to be better understood because this knowledge will enable a shift in the prevailing paradigm. It will also guide more appropriate methods of enquiry, and so provide a firmer base for research. Should, for example, the governance of community engagement be conformed to existing research and teaching goals? Are there other community activities which could inform the development of codes for community engagement?

In Australia, volunteering has a well-developed voice about its moral importance, and these strengths are foundational in the elaboration of a national code or standards framework. These standards have been the direct result of consultation of the ‘coal-face’ practitioners. Typically, this discourse is not via large scale professional conferences and congresses but far more likely to be via a disseminated process, spread across communities and regions, with workshops, based on collaborative and more domesticated mutual exchange centred around experience sharing. This ‘ground-up’ approach results in a strong basis of moral knowledge being shaped into concepts, encrypted in documents and codified. This then, directs and shapes the course of volunteering through a wide range of vectors: strong to gentle, focused to holistic, immediate to long term. Community engagement is arguably the richest form of pursuit of knowledge and knowledge transformation yet to appear in the evolution of our university culture. Although it arises in the rhetoric of novel and new things, it is really an old and well established aspect of university culture. The standards ‘exercise’ may be a good method for the community engagement researchers to adopt in studying its ethical foundation.

**References:** There were no references provided with this proposal.

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