Dialectics as a tool for navigating the mandates of scholarship and community impact: learning from reflexive practices

Universities are increasingly demanding that faculty fulfill multiple mandates including producing scholarly published work and demonstrating community impact. As such, faculty experience the challenges of community involvement and impact, while also ensuring that community involvement leads to published research. This manuscript discusses a participatory action research (PAR) project that failed to achieve its initial outcome goal of community impact. Heeding the advice of previous scholars, we attempt to ‘work the ruins’ of failure, to stimulate discussion that may assist other researchers in efforts to fulfill this dual mandate of publication and community impact. Rooted in dialectics, and based on our own reflexive practice, and interviews with program staff and participants, we suggest three dialectics for consideration for future scholarship: 1) Community led AND researcher led; 2) Failure AND success; and 3) Messy AND publishable.