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Professionalizing community-based research.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Does community-based research emphasize professional-level data gathering that can positively impact community members? This article explores this question through case studies from environmental education and history, and discovers that a positive answer rests on the skill level of and access to suitable resources. We argue that in order to produce high quality data that is useful to the public faculty must place student skill development at the core of their practice. To do otherwise may unwittingly exacerbate the problematic trend of youth disengagement.

Introduction

As the service-learning movement in the United States modifies its trajectory in favor of civic education and other public outcomes--indeed, on politically re-engaging a generation of disaffected youth--it is no longer sufficient to point solely to increased service-learning activity or other community-based participation as a primary measure of success (Battistoni, 2002). Counting student contact hours in community settings won't suffice. Therefore, many practitioners are now focusing on integrating civic learning outcomes into their service-learning practices in order to better expose students to the mechanisms of local, state, and national policy making (Gottlieb & Robinson, 2002; Howard, 2001; Kahne & Westheimer, 2003). Additionally, in the past decade, many faculty have shifted their curricula to expose students to community-based research (CBR) practices (Polani & Cockburn, 2003). CBR activities can build and sustain community-university partnerships as well as build civic engagement in students. However, CBR experts readily acknowledge that CBR is not appropriate for all research projects, that methodology must be modified in order to account for students' and community members' varied research skills, and that ensuring student preparedness is a primary concern (Strand et al, 2003). Undergraduate students with CBR experience also readily note the importance of appropriate student skill development for project success (Willis et al, 2003).

Today, faculty interested in building civic commitment in students must not only intentionally and regularly discuss curricular connections to public policy, but also in the case of CBR, we must ensure that student findings are seriously considered by community leaders and other public policy makers. But what if student-generated findings aren't considered; or what if they are used and then later discovered to be inaccurate? We suspected that student-generated research data were not being sufficiently utilized to inform public policy. Our response has been to begin an investigation of what was happening, and what could be done in the academy to ensure that students' CBR has sustained public impact.

This paper will briefly discuss the Scott Peterson murder trial, a recent high-profile event in California in which students were utilized as community researchers with unfortunate results, and then explore two case studies from Portland State University (PSU) where faculty members focus specifically on generating high quality, usable data. The first study traces a PSU environmental educator's efforts to ensure high quality, student-generated biomonitoring data, and outlines a methodological strategy intended to increase the accuracy of these data. The second case study outlines curricular innovations that protect and honor a PSU oral historian's deep respect for narrators who are conscientious objectors from the Second World...

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