Community-Engaged Research

Abstract

Abstract In the opinion of the authors of this essay, the biggest shift in motivation science will be to bring an increased focus on community-engaged research methodologies. In an effort to establish motivation science as science, researchers have maintained distance between researchers and participants as an acceptable, valid, and correct way of gaining research-based insights. However, this distance has contributed to the continued need to translate scholarship from theory to practice after research has been conducted. Community-engaged research approaches help researchers overcome this theory–practice gap by ensuring that research is inclusive of participants, contextually based, and thus inherently relevant to educational communities.