Mapping Tensions: Positioning Community Engagement Challenges as Generative Space

Abstract

This research offers a contextual snapshot—via the applied tensional analysis (ATA) method—of common barriers that educators face when taking on community engagement work. A six-person research team interviewed 22 faculty and staff actively pursuing community partnerships at three different institutions of higher education in a single region. Participants’ responses were coded to identify common barriers to engagement and the strategies that participants used to overcome those barriers. We draw on ATA (Mease, 2019) as a methodological approach that acknowledges tensions as critical entry points for understanding both the experiences of individual actors and the malleable structures from which those tensions emerge. This article does not attempt to offer one-size-fits-all strategies for community engagement. Instead, it offers ATA as a means for contextualizing specific tensions and strategies within local community engagement settings and for reframing those tensions as generative spaces for community engagement work.

Universities as anchor institutions in place-based development: Implications for South African universities engagement

“…University community engagement has long been accepted as a third function of universities and most Higher Education Institutions (HEI) (Compagnucci and Spigarelli 2020;Zomer and Benneworth 2011;Bender 2008). However, the field of Community Engagement (CE) research has not been void of gaps, barriers, and tensions (Wangenge-Ouma and Fongwa 2012; Damons et al 2018;Almjeld et al 2022). The tensions and contradictions of what CE should be within the university, and how it is supported and institutionalized within the academe are some of the ways through which the gaps and tensions in the literature have been manifested (Bhagwan 2020;Pinheiro 2012;Favish 2010).…”