Connecting with Communities: Researching a Community-University Partnership in Teacher Education

While there exists a substantial body of literature on community-university partnerships, there is a notable absence of community perspective in the literature. The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences and perspectives of community members involved in a university–community partnership that developed a social justice and alternative placement program for Bachelor of Education students enrolled at a Southern Ontario University. Despite being formed with the best of intentions, authentic university-community partnerships are complex entities and are often very difficult to achieve. This study looks at the important benefits as well as significant challenges for the community partners, and how the complexity of the university-community partnership grows with the numbers of partners involved (multiple community partners in the case of my research). The experiences of the community partners are expressed through the interviews I conducted with participants. In my study, as in the case of many practitioner research studies, uncovering important knowledge about social and political issues starts from the local (community partner) perspective. This research study is meant to be a possible guide for those who wish to undertake similar work. It is my intention that the research study and findings will add insights to the theoretical and conceptual discourse on practitioner research and add to the literature reflecting community perspectives within these partnerships.Ph.D