Dr. Michelle Searle, Associate Professor of Educational Evaluation and Special Advisor to the Principal on Community Engagement, has been awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her project Learning in partnership: A multi-site, cross-institutional examination of community-engaged pedagogy in a Canadian context.
Her research will examine how community-engaged pedagogy brings students and community organizations together to address real-world challenges and learn from one another. In her words: "universities often talk about preparing students to make a difference in the world, and we wondered what that looks like in practice? This project explores one promising answer: community-engaged pedagogy."
This research will take place across three Canadian universities: Queen's University, University of Alberta and Ontario Tech University, where Dr. Searle and her team will explore how students, instructors, staff, and community organizations engage with and experience these partnerships, as well as how they are developed and supported. She explains that their objective is "to identify what helps community-engaged learning thrive, what barriers remain, and how universities can create stronger, more equitable partnerships that benefit everyone involved. Ultimately, the goal is to provide practical, evidence-informed guidance that helps move community-engaged learning from an exceptional experience to an integral part of higher education."
The inspiration for this project comes from Dr. Searle’s academic and professional experience with community-engaged research and pedagogy, through which she has recognized the valuable learning opportunities these practices offer university students. As she points out, "students become more engaged, community partners contribute valuable expertise, and together we tackle issues that matter. Yet despite growing interest in community-engaged learning, we still know surprisingly little about how to design and sustain these experiences well." Accordingly, this research highlights the importance of deeply understanding community-engaged learning and how to enhance its impact, reciprocity, and sustainability in highly demanding academic environments.
Dr. Searle is extremely proud of the team behind this project as it truly reflects the philosophy of community-engaged research. The team brings together community leaders, emerging scholars, and researchers from Queen’s University, the University of Alberta, Ontario Tech University, and Mentor Canada, with expertise spanning community-engaged pedagogy, program evaluation, knowledge mobilization, Indigenous and decolonial methodologies, psychology, policy, mentoring, and equity-focused research. Dr. Searle is looking forward to working alongside co-investigators, Drs. Katrina Carbone, Heather Brown, Rebecca Gokiert, Melissa Tremblay, Wendy Craig, and Amanda Cooper, as well as community engagement leader Véronique Church-Duplessis, whose work has fostered meaningful connections between communities, research, and knowledge mobilization across Canada. She also acknowledges the contribution of doctoral students, Jennifer Thompson and François-Daniel Portelance, who brought the grant application to life and will continue to collaborate with the research team. For Dr. Searle, "the best ideas emerge when people with different experiences, expertise, and perspectives come together around a shared purpose", highlighting collaboration as a central part of this project.
Finally, what excites Dr. Searle the most about this research over the next years is learning from people who are doing outstanding work in the field of community-engaged research. As she notes, "across Canada, there are instructors, students, and community organizations building innovative partnerships every day, but their experiences are rarely brought together in ways that help others learn from them". She hopes that this project will shape how community-engaged learning is understood in higher education, emphasizing its potential to prepare students to contribute to a more interconnected global community. In her words, "if this research helps institutions build stronger partnerships, create richer learning experiences, and better serve their communities, it is worthwhile. Not surprisingly, we see this project as the foundation for a larger national research program that will continue exploring how community-engaged pedagogy can strengthen both higher education and the communities it serves."