“It takes a village / community to write an article, conduct research, prepare for workshops.”

Over 70 publications, 220 conference sessions, and 165 consultations in SLCE have my name on them. Several have arguably had some impact on research and practice. One that had considerable impact on me is a chapter I co-authored with three undergraduate student leaders (Brandon W., Julie M., Alissa) titled “Service learning as a shared developmental journey.” That writing project articulated and formalized in the work I undertake the dynamic of “mutual transformation through a process of co-creation in the context of a mentoring community.” The nature and significance of the scholarship that bears my name and my growth as a practitioner-scholar can best be examined through this lens.

Co-creation—of scholarship, courses, professional development, infrastructure, resource materials, etc.—was, is, and will remain the defining modus operandi of SLCE scholarship and practice I am involved with. Almost twenty years ago, my colleagues and I first came to SLCE and associated scholarship when rising juniors Nick and Gretchen launched our co-development of what became the DEAL Model for Critical Reflection (in the context of a summer capstone that was our first experiment with SL); senior Jason developed the structure for the model’s Articulated Learnings, which became the basis for in-depth work on formative and summative assessment of learning through critical reflection. Faculty member Sarah A., graduate student and staff member Myra, undergraduate reflection leaders and research associates (including Mary Catherine, Jennifer, Julie M., Alissa, and Brandon W.), and I co-led a multi-year, inter-institutional research project focused on integrating critical reflection and assessment, which refined DEAL and generated resources (e.g., student and instructor versions of the tutorial Learning through Critical Reflection, rubrics) to support instructional design, faculty development, assessment, and research. As a current example, Sarah, Edward, Jeff, and I are facilitating the SLCE Future Directions Project, an international learning community that includes anyone interested in co-creating the future of the SLCE movement through bold visioning and calls for bold action. The SLCE-FDP has worked closely with and published (on the project’s website and in the MJCSL) 23 thought pieces contributed by 55 authors, approximately half of whom are new contributors to the literature and several of whom are community members or students. [Note: My contributions to this project bring the total number of pieces published in MJCSL that I have co-authored to 15: 8 articles and 7 thought pieces, encompassing 40 unique co-authors, eight of them graduate students and one of them the leader of a national community organization, but no undergraduates … yet.] From before our original small team knew it was a “thing” to the everyday way of being of a much larger and more diverse community of practitioner-scholars today, we are committed to building our own and others’ capacities as co-educators, co-learners, and co-generators of knowledge and practice.

Between these two bookends—by way of sharing examples of scholarship that I believe is nurturing emerging inquiry and practice—my colleagues and I have advanced research related to faculty learning through (a) EDGES (Education and Discovery Grounded in Engaged Scholarship), an innovative approach to professional development for community-engaged scholarship (with Jessica J. and Audrey), (b) a book chapter that synthesized and called for research on faculty learning (with Jessica J., George, Audrey, and Sarah A.), and (c) a self-study in Canada (with a group led by Yasmin and Janice) in which faculty and staff investigated their own learning about reciprocity through global SL. Over (too much) time, our community of practitioner-scholars broadened to include the learning and inquiry of community members through (a) the conference session “Who’s Doing the Learning?” (with community partners Dan and Chris and their faculty partners Annette and George, (b) a book chapter (with community members John C., Jamie, Chris, and Jacquelyn; students Kaytee and Kathryn; faculty members Toddi, George, and Gary) that used the WakeNature Preserves Partnership as a case study to inquire into partnership evolution, and (c) a thought piece (with Janice and Peter) calling the SLCE movement to reimage the scholarship of teaching and learning such that all partners inquire into the learning of all partners. My work with the Center for Service and Learning and faculty/staff/students in several units at IUPUI has deepened understanding of and capacity to investigate civic learning; generated the SOFAR Model for Partnerships and the TRES instrument/protocol for investigating partnership quality; and produced the co-edited 2-volume set Research on Service Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Assessment. Collaboration (with John and Matt) on the Democratic Engagement White Paper was followed by joining thengraduate students Lina, Sarah B., Kathleen, Barbara, and Brandon K. to produce a concept review of reciprocity—both of which have served to frame others’ work. In a two-year international collaboration, the IARSLCE Editorial Fellows (with Sarah B., Kathleen, Nehal, Kyle, Barbara, Becky, Harold, Katie, Stacey, Kristin, Cecilia, Billy, Lane, Tom, Jessica R., Julia, Neivin, Susan, Cari, Jessica W., Jessica T., Lina, Liz, David, James, Carrie) co-created a substantive, online, interactive conference Proceedings as a global resource for SLCE scholarship. Lori, Sarah S., Stephanie, Alexa, and I co-authored a set of substantive blog posts that assemble useful, accessible SLCE resources.

I am currently undertaking a multi-year community-engaged scholarship project in collaboration with Beyond Fences, a grassroots social justice community organization in NC (led by Lori and Amanda) focused on access to support services for nonhuman animals and changing the dominant paradigm of the national animal rescue community—documenting, refining, and sharing their democratic approaches. I am organizing a wide network of colleagues to gather extant examples and generate new work on the possibilities for and tensions associated with enacting democratic civic engagement across a range of practices related to teaching and learning and to work in and with communities. Another project involves working with practitioner-scholars within Imagining America to conceptualize what we are calling “democratically engaged assessment,” building on 3 years of work together to collect and produce frameworks and tools to support assessment practices that live out the values of democratic engagement in the face of technocratic and neoliberal forces that often threaten to undermine them.

The village/community of which Barbara speaks in the epigraph above, as it has taken concrete form in the SLCE scholarship I have cogenerated, consists of over 185 colleagues—including a dozen community members and 55 undergraduate/graduate students. It is a privilege to collaborate with colleagues who keep me on a learning edge and who nurture—indeed, push—my understanding of and my very-much-stillunder-development capacities for co-creation. Our “village” supports the growth of my own and my colleagues’ agency as practitionerscholars, educators, leaders, citizens, researchers, and learners and, hopefully, encourages others who are touched by our work in their own “shared developmental journeys.” Given the intensely co-created nature of the body of scholarship that bears my name, it is most appropriate that this nomination be for “Clayton & Colleagues.” Several of us hope to be part of the 2018 IARSLCE conference, which will (hopefully) be the 16th year in a row we (over 55 of us) have co-facilitated sessions at this event. We appreciate this nomination’s recognition of the work we have facilitated, led, and contributed to throughout almost 20 years. Thank you for considering it.

Patti H. Clayton (March, 2018)