Learning to Do Substantive Relational Work in Community-Based Research

Abstract

Relationships are at the core of doing community-based research (CBR) that works and matters. However, the process through which university researchers learn to engage in relational work is often presumed to be understood rather than explicitly articulated. Building on approaches that conceptualize relationality and critical historicity as central to the success of equity-oriented approaches in education, the authors present a polyvocal autoethnography where researchers in a CBR project learned to engage in substantive relational work (relational work committed to caretaking relations and critical bifocality) with community partners. By analyzing everyday moments, they highlight the invisible learning process of a doctoral student working alongside a university researcher, program staff, and youth leads at a non-profit organization. They discuss how relational work is both work necessary to move equity-oriented service learning work and general CBR endeavors forward—as well as work that matters in itself for researchers to reconceptualize discursively and materially.