Community-Based Research and Higher Education: Principles and Practices - Hardcover

by Kerry J. Strand (Author), Nicholas Cutforth (Author), Randy Stoecker (Author)

Community-Based Research and Higher Education is the long-awaited guide to how to incorporate a powerful and promising new form of scholarship into academic settings. The book presents a model of community-based research (CBR) that engages community members with students and faculty in the course of their academic work. Unlike traditional academic research, CBR is collaborative and change-oriented and finds its research questions in the needs of communities. This dynamic research model combines classroom learning with social action in ways that can ultimately empower community groups to address their own agendas and shape their own futures. At the same time it emphasizes the development of knowledge and skills that truly prepare students for active civic engagement.

Front Jacket

Community-Based Research and Higher Education is the long-awaited guide to how to incorporate a powerful and promising new form of scholarship into academic settings. The book presents a model of community-based research (CBR) that engages community members with students and faculty in the course of their academic work. Unlike traditional academic research, CBR is collaborative and change-oriented and finds its research questions in the needs of communities. This dynamic research model combines classroom learning with social action in ways that can ultimately empower community groups to address their own agendas and shape their own futures. At the same time it emphasizes the development of knowledge and skills that truly prepare students for active civic engagement.

Community-Based Research and Higher Education is written by five academics from different disciplines with extensive experience in community-based research as teachers, researchers, administrators, scholars, and community activists. They draw on their own and others' experience to develop concrete guidelines for creating and sustaining partnerships through CBR projects as they also outline the principles that guide decisions about research design and methods. The authors offer extensive practical suggestions for incorporating CBR into courses and curricula; include voices and experiences of people from across the country who are doing CBR on their campuses and in their communities; and describe a wide range of exemplary research projects with diverse community partners, such as the Southwest Improvement Council in Denver, Washington D.C.'s Council of Latino Agencies, and Youthbuild, a job training program based in New Jersey. The authors conclude by detailing a series of action steps that can help institutions realize a vision of higher education based on research-oriented campus-community partnerships.

Back Jacket

Community-Based Research and Higher Education is an exceptional book that represents a major contribution to the growing community-engagement movement in universities worldwide. This is an action handbook for faculty, university administrators, students, and community leaders. The book provides a blueprint for life after service-learning; it is a guide to building the capacity of community-based organizations to bring about lasting social change in our communities.
-- Phil Nyden, professor of sociology and director, Center for Urban Research and Learning, Loyola University, Chicago

"Everyone in higher education interested in promoting its civic
mission will gain from this seminal exploration of community-based
research. The book not only illuminates best practice, it addresses the
larger questions of why and how to transform higher education."
-- Elizabeth L. Hollander, executive director, Campus Compact

"This groundbreaking book clarifies the conceptualization and nuances,
rewards and challenges, of community-based research. Exhaustive examples, drawn from the authors' work with many multicultural communities, and compelling justifications will appeal to novices and veterans, practitioners and theorists. This is the book on community-based research, and an excellent text for courses involving students in research with communities."
-- Jeffrey Howard, assistant director, Academic Service-Learning, and editor, Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, University of Michigan

"In a knowledge-based society attention must be paid to social justice. The concerned faculty writing this book do just that and demonstrate how. The resurgence of community-based research championed here could be the beginning of a major epistemological shift in the way we think about and organize the interaction between academic knowledge and community lifescholarship of engagement at its best."
-- R. Eugene Rice, senior scholar, American Association for Higher Education

"I have waited for this book to fill the gap on my community methodology shelf, but it won't be there very long as I will use it with my students, and share it with my colleagues who are developing community-based research in their service-learning classes."
-- Dwight E. Giles, Jr., professor of higher education administration, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Author Biography

Kerry Strand is the Andrew G. Truxal Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Community Research, Hood College.

Sam Marullo is associate professor and chair of the sociology department at Georgetown University and cofounder and director of the community Research and Learning (CoRAL) Network of Washington, D.C.

Nick Cutforth is associate professor of educational leadership in the College of Education at the University of Denver.

Randy Stoecker is professor of sociology at the University of Toledo.

Patrick Donohue is assistant professor of political science, Middlesex County College, and interim director, Trenton Center for Campus and Community Partnerships.