Community-Engaged Research as Enmeshed Practice

Abstract

This article presents an experiential model for community-engaged research that understands communities as living meshworks of embodied human beings, material circumstances, and affective environments. We first trace how community organizations and academics must increasingly respond to a push for hard data. Using an analysis of a national research study on hunger as an example, we then show how this "data imperative" can lead to collecting more and more measurable data on community members without addressing their human-based concerns. The meshworks approach that we suggest emphasizes recognizing participants' most immediate needs as articulated by participants. As meshworks-inspired research has to be contingent and contextual within the meshworks of the community in which it takes place, we offer examples of what such research can look like in various community settings. Finally, we present a heuristic that community agencies and researchers can use to evaluate their own projects as meshworks while also gathering hard data.

Community Engaged Research as Relationship Building

“…This community-engaged research regards and honors participants, their stories and sociocultural contexts. This study resists university data imperatives favoring traditional research methods leading to quantified results (Bay & Swacha, 2020). This study encourages communityengaged research that fosters connective relationships and helps community members to see and value all identities, including hyphenated (Park, 2013) and marginalized identities facing unique sociopolitical challenges.…”

“…This community-engaged study inquired into the cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge (Moll, et al, 1992;Moll, 2019) shared by parent authors of bilingual children's books as culturally responsive pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014 in formal and informal learning settings. Throughout this study, the experiences and perspectives of participants and researchers intersected and shaped how the data was collected, understood, and presented so the study might directly benefit participants and their communities (Bay & Swacha, 2020). Art-based community-engaged inquiry supported a key outcome extending beyond traditional research: relationship.…”

“…Rather, community engaged research tends toward a mutually sustaining and valuable outcome for participants and researchers alike: relationships. This study practices Bay and Swacha's (2020) described methods by inviting participants and researchers to partner collaboratively in generating, understanding, and sharing community-engaged products also serving as data. This approach steers away from viewing participants as data collection sources, but rather attends to "the human dignity of research participants and see their lives … as rich, vibrant intersections that provide openings for moments of connection and social justice" (Bay & Swacha, 2020, p. 136).…”

“…This study examines the cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992;Moll, 2019) of multilingual families shared by parent authors of bilingual children's books integrated into culturally responsive pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014 shared in formal and informal learning contexts --including K-12 classroom settings, in-person and online public library story times and community events, and public park story walks. In this community-engaged research, the lived experiences of participants and researchers intersect and shape how data is collected, understood, and shared with others (Bay & Swacha, 2020). Parents as participants partner in generating, reflecting on, and sharing community-engaged products in partnership spaces at and beyond the university.…”

“…This emphasis on content and process within the findings is part of a community-engaged scholarship approach. The university's data imperative (Bay & Swacha, 2020) favoring traditional research methods producing quantifiable data as results, is resisted through this art-based, community-engaged inquiry. This collaborative work recognizes and honors the centrality of participant experiences and voices.…”