Provoking+a+next+stage+research+agenda

Molly Mead, Director, Center for Community Engagement, Amherst College [ mmead@amherst.edu ] John Saltmarsh, Co- Director, New England Resource Center for Higher Education , University of Massachusetts Boston [ John.Saltmarsh@umb.edu ] Cathy Burack, Senior Fellow Higher Education, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University [ burack@brandeis.edu ] Ethan Kolek, Director of Evaluation, Center for Community Engagement, Amherst College [ ekolek@amherst.edu ]
 * Provoking a next stage research agenda**



** Keywords ** : Research agenda, student outcomes, community outcomes, civic engagement research

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

** Format ** : Conversation hour


 * Date & time: **Thursday 9:30-10:40
 * Location: **Salon 2

** Summary ** : Over the last 20 years there is a growing body of research on the impacts of civic engagement and service learning efforts in higher education, with extensive research on student impacts and growing work on community benefits. Now is a particularly good moment to take a critical look at our work. In this session we will moderate a conversation about the current limits to our research efforts and challenge ourselves to move in new directions. The goal of the session is to provoke thinking that will lead to the next research agenda for our field.

Much of service learning and civic engagement research is focused on student and community outcomes, testing whether service learning courses, volunteer efforts, and community-based internships produce immediate impacts for students and for local communities. It seems, however, that, as a field, we are not asking sophisticated questions about the impact of engagement on students and communities. This is not a new critique of community engagement research (Gorgol, 2010; Kezar, 2002).

This session considers the obstacles that may stymie us from asking more compelling outcomes questions. Are our efforts to build the reputation of civic engagement discouraging us from undertaking research that is unlikely to show short-term changes? Are we simply constrained by resources? Have we been unable to reconcile our quest for rigor with the challenges of real-world constraints of civic engagement research? If we are not asking the outcome questions about which we truly care, we may be shaping our field in ways that we do not intend, and may not like. It is important for us to consider the educational and political implications of failing to pursue the questions that we value most deeply.

** References ** : <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Berk, R.A., & Rossi, P.H. (1990). Thinking about program evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Eyler, J.S., Giles, Jr., D.E., Stenson, C.M., & Gray, C. J. (2001). At a glance: What we know about the effects of service-learning on college students, faculty, institutions and communities, 1993- 2000 (3rd ed). Retrieved from http://servicelearning.org/filemanager/download/aag.pdf

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Gorgol, L. (2010). Moving beyond outcomes: Next steps for civic engagement research. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Indianapolis, IN.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Kezar, A. (2002). Assessing community service learning: Are we identifying the right outcomes? //About Campus, 7//(2), 14-20.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Silverman, R. J. (1987). How we know what we know: A study of higher education journal articles. //The// //Review of Higher Education, 11//, 39-59.

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