Perspectives on capacity strengthening and co-learning in communities: Experiences of an Aboriginal community-based research steering committee
Date
2016-01-05
Authors
Stringer, Heather
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Abstract
Community-university partnerships have become more prevalent to support community-based research, especially as a collaborative approach to research with Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. One practice is the activation of a community-based research steering committee to initiate, govern, and review research pertaining to their local community. Within literature related to community-based research, perspectives on capacity strengthening and co-learning from the members of a community-based research steering committee are under-represented. A qualitative case study approach was used to explore the research question: What are the experiences of the Alexander Research Committee (ARC) members in defining and operationalizing capacity strengthening and co-learning across multi-sectoral research projects? Nine current and past members of the ARC participated in individual semi-structured interviews and five of these ARC members also participated in a subsequent focus-group discussion. Analysis of these qualitative data indicated that foundational relationships and a conducive learning environment are key factors for a community-based research committee to experience co-constructed knowledge and learning. The findings of this study highlight the importance of an operational foundation of trusting relationships in order to establish and sustain a working environment where a community-based research committee can learn together and from each other. This study also yielded insights about how this community-based research committee predicated capacity strengthening from the understanding that ‘we are all learners’, with each member bringing forward unique strengths, questions and growth to the research processes.
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community-based research steering committee, capacity strengthening, co-learning, community-university partnerships, qualitative case study approach