Research, Actionable Knowledge and Social Change: The Social Contract for Research and Interventions in University Partnerships

A professional text written for social science researchers and practitioners, Research, Actionable Knowledge and Social Change provides strategies and frameworks for using social science research to engage in critical social and educational problem solving. Combining the best practices of critical analysis and traditional research methods, this professional text offers guidance for using the Action Inquiry Model (AIM), a transformative model that explains how to successfully conduct action-oriented research, in a multitude of professional service organizations. The aim of the text is to encourage a new generation of research-based partnerships reforms that promote equity and access for under-served populations.

Topics discussed include:

•The historical precedents for universities engaged in social change
•The limitations of current social science theory and methods
•The critical-empirical approach to social research
•The issues relating to social justice within the policy decision process
•The use of social research to integrate an emphasis of social justice into economic and policy decision making

Research, Actionable Knowledge and Social Change does not propose different foundations for social research, but rather argues that it is necessary to reconsider how to work with theory and research methods to inform change. This text can also be used by students enrolled in graduate and Ed.D/Ph.D Higher Education Leadership programs, and graduate programs across professional fields including K-12, public administration, sociology, health, cultural studies, organizational development and organizational theory. It further offers students guidance for research design and dissertation research.

Edward P. St. John is Algo D. Henderson Collegiate Professor of Education at the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. He is interested in education, justice, and public policy. He serves as series editor for Readings on Equal Education and has received awards for his leadership from the Association for the Study of Higher Education and for scholarship from the National Association of Student Financial Aid.

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.