Expanding interest in community engagement and participation in research by universities, researchers, community members and funders reflects a dramatic paradigm shift in the way that we understand the research enterprise. Somewhat counter-intuitively with respect to the expectations of traditional mainstream academic research approaches, community engagement and participation have been shown to improve the scientific quality of the research process in relation to research question relevance, informed consent, cultural sensitivity, reliability and validity of instruments, recruitment and retention of research participants, and accuracy of interpretations and findings (Minkler 2005). Research conducted using an engagement approach also increases the potential for findings to be translated into practice or to result in meaningful change (Ahmed & Palermo 2010; Barkin, Schlundt & Smith 2013). Community-engaged projects may take a number of different forms.
In this article, we share our experience of a collaborative project between a non-profit membership organisation and researchers from two universities. We focus on the importance of infrastructure development for moving towards truly equitable partnerships that expand forms of participation and bring together researchers and practitioners in ways that blur traditional power boundaries (Gutiérrez & Penuel 2014; Penuel 2015). Our collective work sits at the intersection of health research, STEM education research, and culturally based teaching and learning. The interdisciplinary nature of our team has allowed for the blending of community-engaged methodologies, which is reflected in our discussion of values in research, below.