Search results

Proponents of community engagement to promote social change advocate bringing together researchers, practitioners, politicians, business leaders, advocates and other relevant stakeholders to identify and solve community problems and issues. This chapter will describe the need for academic and community partnerships, how academic institutions can develop priorities, governance and financial structures that facilitate stronger, more effective community relationships and make contributions to the resolution of social ills. The current literature on community engagement, community-based participatory research, community action research, community-engaged scholarship and service-learning are reviewed. The principles and tenets of engaged scholarship are reviewed, barriers to implementation are discussed and examples provided. Academic institutions can play an important role in social change if they are willing to embrace community engagement. A key to success is building trust, sharing power, fostering co-learning, enhancing strengths and resources, building capacity, and addressing community-identified needs. Academic participation requires institutional and faculty commitment to engagement principles, flexible and inclusive governance structures and strategies to educate community members. The development of the relationships and structures required for successful community engagement can be inhibited by imbalances in power and knowledge that often exist among practitioners, researchers, and community members. This review may assist academic institutions to examine implementation of tenure and promotion policies, oversight strategies and structures that assure community development and benefit, as well as opportunities for faculty, staff and student training on principles and best practices of community-engaged research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide examples and best practices of an academic library’s strategy of collaborating with community agencies in assisting community entrepreneurs.

This conceptual paper reflects on the evolution of a new service role for an academic library in providing outreach to community entrepreneurs and is limited to the best practices and lessons learned of one academic library.

This conceptual paper reflects on an academic library’s outreach strategy for assisting community entrepreneurs; collaboration with community agencies is featured as a best practice with examples and lessons learned.

A recent national study of academic business librarians’ outreach to entrepreneurs has established collaboration with community agencies as an effective service strategy. This conceptual paper reflects on the use of this strategy in a specific academic library’s outreach efforts to community entrepreneurs.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the data sharing habits of psychologists with respect to academic reciprocity.

A research model was developed based on Ostrom’s (2003) theory of collective action to map psychologists’ underlying motivations for data sharing. The model was validated by data from a survey of 427 psychologists, primarily from the psychological sciences and related disciplines.

This study found that data sharing among psychologists is driven primarily by their perceptions of community benefits, academic reciprocity and the norms of data sharing. This study also found that academic reciprocity is significantly influenced by psychologists’ perceptions of community benefits, academic reputation and the norms of data sharing. Both academic reputation and academic reciprocity are affected by psychologists’ prior experiences with data reuse. Additionally, psychologists’ perceptions of community benefits and the norms of data sharing are significantly affected by the perception of their academic reputation.

This study suggests that Ostrom’s (2003) theory of collective action can provide a new theoretical lens in understanding psychologists’ data sharing behaviours.

This study suggests several practical implications for the design and promotion of data sharing in the research community of psychology.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the initial studies that applied the theory of collective action to the mechanisms of reputation, community benefits, norms and reciprocity in psychologists’ data sharing behaviour. This research demonstrates that perceived community benefits, academic reputation and the norms of data sharing can all encourage academic reciprocity, and psychologists’ perceptions of community benefits, academic reciprocity and data sharing norms all facilitate their data sharing intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to address the following research question: how do the interlocking editorial advisory boards (EABs) of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) journals map out the field’s diverse academic communities and how demographically diverse is the field and its communities?

The study applies social network analysis (SNA) to web-based EAB data for 38 journals listed under operations management (OM) in the 2010 ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide.

The members of EABs of the 38 journals are divided into seven distinct communities which are mapped to the field’s knowledge structures and further aggregated into a core and periphery of the network. A burgeoning community of supply chain management academics forms the core along with those with more traditional interests. Male academics affiliated to the US institutions and to business schools predominate in the sample.

A new strand of research is opened up connecting journal governance networks to knowledge structures in the OSCM field. OM is studied separately from its reference and associated disciplines. The use of the ABS list might attract comments that the study has an implicit European perspective – however the authors do not believe this to be the case.

The study addresses the implications of the lack of diversity for the practice of OM as an academic discipline.

The confirmation of the dominance of particular characteristics such as male and US-based academics has implications for social diversity of the field.

As the first study of its kind, i.e. SNA of EAB members of OSCM journals, this study marks out a new perspective and acts as a benchmark for the future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among academic optimism, community engagement, and student achievement in urban elementary schools across one district.

Data were collected from all 35 urban elementary schools across one district in Virginia, USA. Correlation, multiple regression, and factor analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

In schools where the faculty are optimistic that their students can succeed despite the obstacle of low socioeconomic status (SES) and where the community is engaged, students are more likely to achieve at higher levels. Findings of this study also supported that community engagement, collective efficacy, trust in clients, and academic press do act as predictors to collectively influence student achievement.

The Goddard measure for collective efficacy was replaced with one developed for more challenging settings such as urban schools.

Academic optimism and community engagement were found to work in ways that improve student achievement. Understanding the social contexts in classrooms and schools allows education leaders to work with faculty in examining current practice, in an effort to improve the educational outcomes for all students, even those who must overcome the obstacles to learning posed by their low SES.

With only one previous study of this construct in an urban elementary setting, the current study sought to test those findings in an effort to continue pushing this research agenda into urban settings.

This research investigated how biological scientists' perceived academic reputation, community trust, and norms all influence their perceived academic reciprocity, which eventually leads to their data sharing intentions.

A research model was developed based on the theory of collective action, and the research model was empirically evaluated by using the Structural Equation Modeling method based on a total of 649 survey responses.

The results suggest that perceived academic reputation significantly increases perceived community trust, norm of data sharing, and academic reciprocity. Also, both perceived community trust and norm of data sharing significantly increases biological scientists' perceived academic reciprocity, which significantly affect their data sharing intentions. In addition, both perceived community trust and norm of data sharing significantly affect the relationship between perceived academic reciprocity and data sharing intention.

This research shows that the theory of collective action provides a new theoretical lens for understanding scientists' data sharing behaviors based on the mechanisms of reputation, trust, norm, and reciprocity within a research community.

This research offers several practical implications for facilitating scientists' data sharing behaviors within a research community by increasing scientists' perceived academic reciprocity through the mechanisms of reputation, trust, and norm of data sharing.

The collective action perspective in data sharing has been newly proposed in this research; the research sheds light on how scientists' perceived academic reciprocity and data sharing intention can be encouraged by building trust, reputation, and norm in a research community.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to generate insight into the experiences of Syrian academics in exile in Turkey; and second, to explore approaches to collaboration and community building among academics in exile and with counterparts in the international academic community.

The study employs a hybrid visual-autobiographical narrative methodology, embedded within a large group process (LGP) design.

Findings are presented in two phases: the first phase presents a thematic analysis of narrative data, revealing the common and divergent experiences of 12 exiled academics. The second phase presents a reflective evaluation of undertaking the LGP and its implications for community building and sustaining Syrian academia in exile.

While this is a qualitative study with a small participant group, and therefore does not provide a basis for statistical generalisation, it offers rich insight into Syrian academics’ lived experiences of exile, and into strategies implemented to support the Syrian academic community in exile.

The study has practical implications for academic development in the contexts of conflict and exile; community building among dispersed academic communities; educational interventions by international NGOs and the international academic community; and group process design.

The study makes an original contribution to the limited literature on post-2011 Syrian higher education by giving voice to a community of exiled academics, and by critically evaluating a strategic initiative for supporting and sustaining Syrian academia. This represents significant, transferable insight for comparable contexts.

This chapter draws from the authors’ experiences with service-learning pedagogy in allied health training programs, and illustrates ways in which community-engaged teaching and learning can prepare students to become ethical healthcare practitioners. The authors infuse examples from their own courses throughout the chapter, mostly from the clinical fields of speech-language pathology, audiology, and occupational therapy. However, the chapter is applicable and generalizable to faculty from a wide scope of allied health training programs. The chapter introduces considerations for establishing campus–community partnerships in an ethical manner, as well as ways to foster student self-reflection and critical thinking through an ethical lens. Principles from the codes of ethics of various allied health professions are incorporated throughout the chapter along with examples of how each can be applied in community-based clinical experiences. Through a review of relevant literature, analysis of professional codes of ethics, case-based examples, and a step-by-step guide to course development, this chapter provides readers with a mechanism to ground their courses in professional ethics in a way that is relatable and relevant to students.

Scholarly studies on mentoring have mostly focused on traditional mentor–mentee relationships, with little or no emphasis on how institutionalized mentoring activities that include different pedagogical approaches could be used to enhance the professional development of academics. To address this knowledge gap, this article examines how an institutionalized multilevel mentoring program could be used to enhance the professional development of early-career academics and academics in designated groups in a South African university.

The data for the study were gathered from 18 mentees and 2 program administrators using semi-structured interviews. The data gathered were assessed by way of thematic analysis that involved a detailed process of identifying, analyzing, organizing, describing and reporting the themes that were developed from the data set.

The findings revealed that when mentees participate in different mentoring and professional development activities that are structured based on different pedagogies, they can engage in higher-order thinking processes and develop multidisciplinary experiences within an expanded professional learning community. Enabled by the situated learning setting, mentees can negotiate the meaning of their professional practice within a professional community and comprehend the nuanced pedagogical approaches including scaffolding learning used by mentors to shape their career trajectory and guide them to secure promotions.

The current study contributes to the scholarly discourse on situated learning by showing that mentoring could be planned and implemented as a pedagogical endeavor with diverse learning activities and structured as a form of professional development program within a professional community.