Understanding the Dynamics of Co-creation of Knowledge: A Paradigm Shift to a Complexity Science Approach to Evaluation of Community-campus Engagement

Abstract

Communitycampus engagement (CCE) offers transformative opportunities for collaborative knowledge creation. Over the last few decades, thoughtful energy has gone into identifying the parts of a CCE and then developing tools to study these parts, with discrete focus on community groups, students, and faculty. Bringing a complexity science approach to CCE evaluation can amplify our understanding by capturing the dynamic nature of collaborative interactions that occur between faculty and students and their relationship with community organizations and groups. Our article begins by introducing key features of a complexity science approach that are well suited to address the evaluation of CCE initiatives. We then position CCE within this approach and discuss how key features of complex systems can operate in the context of CCE. These features include a focus on context and initial conditions, dynamic interactions of adaptation and learning that are nested at different scales, and outcomes that emerge and selforganize in unexpected and nonlinear ways. We draw upon the contextual fluidity (CF) practice model that provides a bridge between abstract concepts of complexity science and the very practical world of community engagement. With awareness of context, dynamic interactions, and emergent outcomes, we propose questions that those evaluating CCE may want to consider.