Engaged Research and Practice : Higher Education and the Pursuit of the Public Good

What practices can researchers use to gain a more nuanced understanding of educational issues in the community and be part of the solution to those issues?

Engaged Research and Practice is about two prevailing and complementary ideas that have surfaced in the higher education arena: engaged research and higher education for the public good. Engaged research is scholarship that not only attempts to open up new knowledge, but it does so with a sense that the new knowledge, insight and directions have a direct relationship to needs and problems within our communities, institutions, and policy arenas.

Engaged, actionable, or participatory research and scholarship attempts to tackle the identified issues of our communities and society. This handbook offers important insights and tangible examples of how higher education leaders may work directly with communities and in policy settings to understand the deeper meanings often lost in conversations about educational opportunity. Each chapter addresses the ways in which faculty, community and administrative leaders may connect research and practice through unique research projects. The authors offer clear explanations of "how" their engaged research was conducted to illustrate explicit pathways for practitioners. This book also includes short narratives where authors involved with this research reflect on their experiences and the lessons they have learned while immersed in community and policy related work.

Betty Overton is a Professor of Clinical Practice in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education (CSHPE) and the Director of the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good. Betty is active in higher education, serving on the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Universities (NCA), the board of the American Association of Higher Education & Accreditation (AAHEA), and the editorial board of Liberal Education, published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).

PennyA. Pasque is professor in Educational Studies, director of the QualLab, and director of Qualitative Methods in the Office of Research, Innovation and Collaboration (ORIC), College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University. Pasque is editor of The Review of Higher Education (with Dr. Thomas F. Nelson Laird). RHE is considered one of the leading research journals in the field and is the official journal of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.  

Her research addresses complexities in qualitative inquiry, in/equities in higher education, and dis/connections between higher education and society. She works with qualitative methodologies as well as studies qualitative methodologies that work toward social justice and educational equity. Pasque’s research has appeared in over 100 journal articles and books, including in The Journal of Higher Education, Qualitative Inquiry, The Review of Higher Education, Peabody Journal of Education, Diversity in Higher Education, Cultural Studies<->Critical Methodologies, among others.

Her books include Qualitative Inquiry in Higher EducationOrganization and Policy Research (with Lechuga, Routledge), Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education: Methodological Innovations, Implications, and Interventions (with Carducci, Kuntz & Gildersleeve, Jossey-Bass), Critical Qualitative Inquiry: Foundations and Futures (with Cannella & Salazar Pérez, Left Coast Press), American Higher Education Leadership and Policy: Critical Issues and the Public Good (Palgrave Macmillan), Empowering Women in Higher Education and Student Affairs (with Nicholson, Stylus), Transforming Understandings of Diversity in Higher Education (with Ortega, Burkhardt, & Ting, Stylus) and Engaged Research and Practice (with Overton & Burkhardt, Stylus).

Currently, she’s editor for the “critical & social justice” section of the upcoming Routledge Encyclopedia (Salvo & Ulmer, eds.), writing a chapter / reviewing for a Handbook on Critical Approaches (theory and methods) to education research (Young & Diem, eds), a co-PI on an epistemic injustice research project (with Leslie Gonzales, Michigan State University) and collaborating with former students on the RED-DIRT Indigenous Research project (Dr. Corey Still, Breanna Faris & Monty Begaye).

Previously, Pasque served as department head and professor at NC State University. She was also the Brian E. & Sandra O’Brien endowed professor and named Researcher of the Year while at the University of Oklahoma.

John C. Burkhardt has directed the National Center for Institutional Diversity since 2013. He also is a professor of clinical practice in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan and serves as special assistant to the provost for university engagement. He was the founding director of the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good, which he led from 2000 to 2013. From 1993-2000 he was program director for leadership and higher education at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where he led several major initiatives focused on transformation and change in higher education and participated in a comprehensive effort to encourage leadership development among college students.