Social justice.

While some authors position engaged scholarship squarely in the social justice arena [15, 16], many refer to social justice principles without being explicit. Some speak of the importance of fighting for equity and civil democracy by integrating vulnerable and marginalized populations into research and action [12, 17]. Ultimately, engaged scholarship should focus on individual and social well-being [18]. For several authors, faculty have a moral obligation to develop complementary relationships between scholarly achievement and the public good and to study public issues [12, 18–20], given that, especially in Canada, most research activities and universities are publicly funded.

Citizenship.

Bridger and Alter [18] assert that faculty need to integrate their role as expert with their role as citizen. To maximize the impact of their work, these two roles must become inseparable—for example, in choosing to act as consultants in activities or projects that are outside the university but that can benefit from their expertise [18]. This requires “engaged faculty” to think and act as members of society [16, 21] in order to change the world for the better [19, 20, 22]. This broadening of faculty’s civic roles has led some to become “citizen-scholars” [23], while others have gone so far as to call this posture “activist scholarship” [24]. These activists see a need to reconsider how university work is positioned in order to unite the two worlds (the academy and the public sphere), going even so far as to propose that intellectual productions and political involvement should be joint efforts, so that they are mutually enriching [24]. In this respect, the engaged researcher acknowledges having a social accountability and civic responsibility to engage with the wider society—at local, national and international levels—on issues of public relevance [3, 15, 19, 20, 25, 26].

High-quality scholarship.

The first principle is that of meeting the highest academic standards through high-quality scholarship [3, 18, 19]. Cuthill & Brown [3, p.130] assert that “quality within engaged scholarship is both academically defined and socially accountable”. Thus, while engagement requires a great sense of rigour [17, 25], it also calls for reconsidering the ways in which researchers conduct themselves, to ensure the value and relevance of research on both the social and academic levels [27]. For intellectual activities to be significant, it is important that the partners show flexibility and creativity [23, 28], in finding ways not only to produce knowledge in collaboration with actors from civil society, but also to communicate this knowledge to the public [17].

Reciprocity.

Engaged faculty need to adopt reflective and iterative methods [3], in order to maximize their impact rather than their products [12]. To produce this impact, and especially to broaden and deepen the connections between the university and civil society [17], partnerships and collaboration are at the heart of engaged scholarship [19, 20, 29]. More particularly, partnerships should also include non-academic or practitioner partners, who often have a fuller understanding of complex societal issues [27, 30, 31]. Moreover, academic engagement considers creating such partnerships to be an integral part of academic functions [17]. Public involvement, the integration of different types of knowledge in knowledge production [3], and the creation of meaningful interactions are all recognized as critical factors in predicting research use [32]. This suggests the importance of reciprocity between the academy and civil society during not only the production of knowledge, but also its dissemination [12, 13, 17, 18, 33, 34]. It involves sharing knowledge and resources to produce sustainable and mutually beneficial outcomes for both communities and universities [13, 19, 25, 27, 35–37].

Identified community needs.

In their work, engaged faculty address important civic issues or real societal problems [18]. For this, they need to adopt a perspective that is problem- rather than theory-driven [31]. They are called to be socially responsive [20] and to organize intellectual activities that are deeply rooted in practice [19].

Boundary-crossing.

In contrast to their colleagues who follow more traditional career paths, engaged faculty do not conceive of their research programs in accordance with the “intellectual agenda” of a particular discipline [38]. Engaged scholarship fundamentally involves a multi-inter-transdisciplinary approach [3, 31, 39]. It assumes an interaction across disciplines and relevant sectors. Moreover, engaged scholarship must overcome disciplinary boundaries [3, 17]. In this sense, it is a boundary-crossing scholarship [40, 41], because:

“…putting theory and practice in relationship with each other is not an intellectual cognitive activity that can be constructed in one’s head; rather, it is an embodied relational activity that necessitates bringing members of scholarly and practitioner communities into conversation with one another. Engaged scholarship privileges the diversity of perspectives that theorists and practitioners bring to making sense of a problem and honors their unique knowledge and expertise as valid.” [42, p.252–253].

Faculty work has long been departmentalized by discipline, and it is becoming increasingly subdivided into distinct and separate teaching, research, and service tasks [43]. Far from being mutually exclusive and segmented, engaged scholarship is focused on integrating teaching, research, and service [12, 13, 27, 31, 40]. In this view, engagement requires putting teaching and service on a par with research [12]. Moreover, it requires integrating their academic activities into a coherent whole [43, 44]. This means that teaching and service activities should be based on advancing one’s research, and that teaching should be seen as a form of service to the community [44]. Far from taking on extra workload, by planning integrated activities that combine different academic functions and address several objectives simultaneously, engaged faculty optimize the impact of their work [44].

Democratization of knowledge.

Engaged scholarship argues for the democratization of scientific knowledge and its accessibility for all [33]. It also questions the assumption that the academy holds a monopoly over knowledge production, and instead sees the academy as an important locus for debate around decentralizing and rethinking knowledge production [24].

Individual level.

The role of faculty consists in three interrelated areas of activity: teaching, research, and service. Engagement finds expression not only in each of these separate academic functions, but also in their integration.

Engaged teaching is the most developed of the three academic functions in the literature, especially in the United States. It equates to transmitting, transforming, and extending knowledge and bringing about change in learning with various audiences through either formal or informal arrangements [21, 34]. Despite this, the literature concentrates primarily on teaching university students. In this context, engaged teaching views the community as a landscape for strengthening students’ discovery and learning, in which they think and act on local as well as global issues of real importance [9, 27, 44]. It is primarily intended to facilitate students’ ability to integrate theory and practice and engage in praxis [42, 45]. This implies that students should be broadly prepared with deep knowledge and the professional skills required to be successful not only in the workplace [46], but also within the existing social, political, and economic institutions and relations of today and tomorrow [47]. In other words, engaged teaching educates students to live as responsible citizens, mobilize multiple forms of knowledge to make good decisions, and use their capacities to contribute to public good [21, 26, 37, 47]. To achieve this, university curricula combine the acquisition of traditional knowledge with concrete actions, so that the teaching model is anchored in reality and more active (such as hands-on learning) [35, 45, 48]. Engaged faculty pay special attention to how they teach, and the teaching approaches most often cited are service-learning [13, 15, 16, 20, 27, 35, 49, 50] and experiential learning [16, 20]. Schneider [48] defines service-learning (also called community-based learning) as students’ direct involvement:

“…with societal issues and with groups seeking to solve problems and improve the quality of life for themselves and others. Again, the instructor's role is to provide social, moral, and technical context to help students generalize from the particular, connect scholarship with practice, and articulate grounds for commitment and action. Students establish new and reciprocal relationships with community leaders, and they come to recognize the legitimacy of experiences and perspectives very different from their own.” [48, Hands-on pedagogies: para.3]

Schneider [48] also defines experiential learning as:

“…direct experience in field settings, with open-ended problems, projects, and challenges. The instructor helps the students, either individually or as a group, learn to process their experience, put it in a context of general principle—practical, intellectual, and ethical—and rethink their content learning in light of the field experience. The boundaries between theory and practice are blurred, with practice accepted as a legitimate source both of knowledge and challenge to reigning theories.” [48, Hands-on pedagogies: para.2].

Other engaged teaching approaches were also identified: project-based learning [48], integrative learning [48], relational learning [48], and internships [27]. Those activities can take place in a campus setting or off campus where learning has meaningful consequences that can influence the thinking and the lives of others [26]. Whatever the teaching approach, creating reflective spaces is highly recommended to maximize learning from these experiences [42].

Engaged research incorporates reciprocal civic engagement practices into the discovery, development, and mobilization of knowledge to the mutual benefit of community and academic interests [17, 34, 36, 38]. Doberneck and colleagues [28, p.20] go further, asserting that it also includes creative activities, defined as “original creations of artistic, literary, fine, performing, or applied arts and other expressions or activities of creative disciplines or fields that are made available to or generated in collaboration with a public (nonuniversity) audience.” However, engaged research must be systematic and rigorous [51] and, as such, must be based on the current state of knowledge, and results need to be disseminated in publications so they can be critically reviewed and debated among peers [37]. However, the relevance of engaged research is not limited to developing science based on the latest theories and methods [52]. More essential is the integration of theory and practice, as well as the inclusion of community partners as active contributors to identify clear goals and research questions that address a real-world issue [26, 27, 44, 52]. Thus, besides designing and conducting the best research, in scientific terms, researchers have to work on issues that are useful and meaningful to the community, so that the results ultimately benefit that community [26, 27, 52]. To do so, they use various research approaches: community-based participatory research or community-based research [13, 27, 35, 49, 50], participatory research or participatory action research [13, 27, 51, 53], and applied research [13].

Engaged service is defined as the application of a professor’s expertise and scientific or professional knowledge to address specific issues for the benefit of policy makers, public officials, agencies, organizations, professionals, and civil society [21, 54, 55]. As such, engaged service takes the form of a variety of activities, such as advocacy [50], outreach [50], technical assistance [28], and expert testimony or legal advice [28]. For Schwab and colleagues [55], service should be at the heart of an academic career. They suggest that “rather than considering service to be a poor stepchild to research and teaching [activities], service should be (…) the driving force behind good teaching, student learning, and scholarship” [55, p.26].

Institutional level.

Brown and colleagues [33] explain that faculty and scholar engagement depends on context, which they describe in terms of three levels: organizational, institutional, and external (political, economic, social, cultural and technological context). The traditions and values associated with these different levels of influence play a determining role in impeding or supporting activities of engagement among faculty and students [42]. “This is not to say that organizations drive individual behavior, but rather that faculty members’ personal values play out differently depending to some extent on the organizational environment” [56, p.441]. Thus, institutionalization of engaged scholarship is key to its success [57]. The institutional-level conceptualization of the engagement process encompasses four dimensions: mission, reward structure, logistical support, and students.

Mission. For an engaged university, it is essential not only to support research that responds to the needs of local communities and helps those communities, but also to form generations of students who are prepared to contribute positively to the world around them [12, p.15]. Yet, “over time (…), institutions have developed multiple purposes and, in so doing, de-emphasized their civic mission” [21, p.8]. The university culture has thus, over time, generally discouraged academic engagement. Faculty “are led to believe that engaged scholarship is not central to their roles, that there are few rewards for this work, and that it might even jeopardize their careers in the university” [21, p.13]. This is extremely problematic, given that many universities and research projects are publicly funded and, as such, have a civic duty to engage with the wider society—at local, national, and international levels—on issues of public relevance [19]. The “civic orientation” must be exemplified by the institution’s research, teaching, and service mission, and community engagement must be at the heart of this mission [14, 20, 21, 27, 40, 45, 58]. It needs to be seen as a critical tool for achieving the university’s higher purpose [14]. In fact, rather than being limited to the service sphere, community engagement should be seen as an essential component of high-level teaching and research [27]. To achieve this will require a profound transformation of university culture [14, 50]. Such a transformation will require not only that every faculty member embodies engagement [14], but also that institutional leaders support the implementation of engagement-oriented missions [3]. This way of thinking will inevitably lead to a new scholarship [14].

Reward structure. Faculty’s work has the greatest value when aligned with the institution’s missions and strategic priorities [50, 53]. An institution’s promotion or tenure guidelines are one of the strongest expressions of its priorities and values [37]. As such, the current definition of academic prestige and the publish-or-perish culture are the greatest impediments to engagement [42]. They lead “faculty members to view as time-wasters their important responsibilities of teaching and student learning, and service in the school and towards community stakeholders” [40, p.63]. University leaders thus have to modify these norms to shape a new culture that will make the university a place that supports engagement and values connections with the community [35]. Institutions committed to engaged scholarship must establish mechanisms that recognize and reward engaged scholarship practices [36]. This can be achieved through recruitment processes and promotion and tenure criteria that take into account the multidisciplinary and engaged dimensions of faculty’s work [37, 42, 46, 50, 53]. If these aspects are not recognized through the review, promotion, and tenure process, faculty could be reluctant to engage [36]. It is important that those engaging in teaching, research, and service associated with engaged scholarship feel that their contributions are valued by the university, the college, and the department [46]. To feel so, faculty should be rewarded for their work, including drawing upon their expertise (professional service, public work, and/or community-based action research or public scholarship) for the benefit of society as an integral part of their role [21, 57].

Logistical support. The role of institutional support is not negligible; it is decisive in helping faculty adequately respond to growing demands that they work actively for the public good [55]. To this end, universities need to introduce processes that can facilitate relationships with a variety of partners, whether within the university (between disciplines and departments) or outside it (with other universities and non-university partners) [21]. To help those collaborations, institutions may fund and create an administrative team to support engagement activities [12, 27].

Support to students. Some universities offer integrated programs or organize specific projects geared toward developing engagement-oriented skills and interests in organizations outside the university [45]. Students need support for engagement and involvement in the community; this includes engagement opportunities available to students as well as incentives and rewards for those engaged [57]. Moreover, integrating engaged scholarship into graduate education may encourage students to become, themselves, future engaged professionals [13].