Silence as an Educational Tool to Deconstruct Normative Societal Structures and Create Epistemic Trust

This article advances a teaching strategy to help students reflect on how they engage in class discussion by considering silence and silencing of voices in classroom discussions among peers as epistemic violence where a student’s capacity as a knower is questioned. We provide examples of silence(ing) we experienced as graduate international students from the Global South studying educational policy and leadership studies in the United States, to then share how we have used silence as a pedagogical tool to deconstruct the assumptions of the field and the society that keeps the silence as normative. We introduce third thinging as a teaching practice to create epistemic trust when ways of knowing and being are incommensurate. We explain in this paper how as educators, silence can be a tool to humanize difference rather than to silence marginalized knowers

Development of a Transformational Engagement Model to Study University Community Partnerships

Mutuality of benefits and reciprocity are the characteristics of university community engagement partnerships that render them democratic and enable universities to serve a larger purpose in working with communities. A review of literature shows that 1- mutually beneficial and reciprocal partnerships are not always the case in practice, 2- the terms lack conceptual clarity, and 3- the literature provides varied and at times contradictory evidence on how to develop such partnerships. By bringing the university community engagement literature in conversation with the Social Exchange tradition, particularly, Social Commitments Theory and Reciprocity Theory, through a critical interpretive synthesis approach, this study develops a new model to study university community engagement and partnerships. Transformational Engagement Model (TEM) provides a clear definition for mutuality of benefits and reciprocity, suggests that reciprocity can be developed from mutually beneficial partnerships through a transformational process, and provides recommendations on how to facilitate formation of transformational partnerships. By framing reciprocity as an outcome of transformational partnerships, TEM criticizes the current direction in institutionalizing engagement through training individuals to do the counter-normative work. TEM suggests that intentionality from institutions should be directed toward encouraging formation of transformational partnerships. TEM also criticizes portraying mutually beneficial partnerships as selfish, and reciprocal partnerships as selfless and non-utilitarian. Rather, TEM suggests that reciprocal partnerships have to be mutually beneficial and universities can have self-interest in engaging with communities. Finally, TEM provides recommendation on how to form structures that may facilitate formation of transformational partnerships. First, partnerships should be designed in ways that the relationships between individuals could be sustained for long periods. Second, different task types that incorporate different engagement structures are encouraged. Third, tasks need to be interdependent and groups, and not individuals, should be kept accountable for the partnership outcomes. Finally, engagement structures allow analysis of sophisticated engagement structures and investigation of formation of reciprocity among groups and beyond dyadic relationships. I also argue that TEM’s conceptualization of reciprocity is more aligned with the Deweyan conception of learning by doing that the university community engagement advocates.Educational Leadership Studie