Problematizing Research-Practice Partnership: Rethinking Mutual Benefit, University-Community Engagement, and Educational Equity

This essay advances a critique of the popularized concept of research-practice partnerships (RPPs) in education by problematizing the avowed principle of mutual benefit and by arguing that community-engaged projects and programs can function as forms of substitutionary reparation that exonerate universities from substantively contributing material benefit and redress to their local communities. This tendency to substitute the material for the educational or pedagogical fails to adequately consider the unequal power relations between universities and their local communities and reflects an obsession with tasking education with remediating all social problems. This essay concludes by re-envisioning university-community relations through a vision of sacrifice and offering practical recommendations and suggestions for community-engaged scholars.