One of the great pleasures and consistent themes of my career has been participation in movements that involve both research and practice. These have included efforts for campaign reform, civic journalism, youth voting, civic education, service-learning, university-community partnerships, and public dialogue and deliberation.

I think of these as movements that launched at specific moments, grew, accomplished change, and then lost some momentum. My perception is subjective, since in every case, they emerged from previous efforts and have spawned new ones. One could start and end the stories at different moments and contest my implication that these movements have faded, since perhaps they have just changed forms. Still, I have observed particular configurations of people and organizations forming, issuing manifestos of various kinds, expanding, making change, and then tapering off or even fading away.

I first became involved in these movements when I was quite young and had no applicable training (my PhD is in philosophy), so I was naive about what is required to build an effective new field that combines research and practice. Now, I mostly try to stay out of the way of the burgeoning current efforts, because I think it’s crucial to develop new leaders with new ideas. But sometimes, I am directly asked for experience-based advice, and I’m happy to offer it if it really seems helpful. Here are some highlights …

Interventions (such as service projects, public meetings, or voter outreach efforts) do not work–or fail to work–like pharmaceuticals that can prove their efficacy in clinical trials. They always demonstrate a wide range of success, depending on the context and the skills, motivations, and working relationships of the human beings involved.

One important study of service-learning found that it worked, but only when “fully implemented,” meaning that it met various demanding criteria for quality. 193 out of 210 examples of service-learning were excluded from this study because they did not meet those criteria. Frankly, I think that almost any intervention will succeed if it’s done very well. Implementation is always the key.

We should nevertheless develop, study, and promote specific kinds of interventions. We are not discovering whether the intervention works, but making it work by improving people’s detailed understanding and support for it. To that end, several kinds of research are useful, including:

• Research that rigorously demonstrates excellent outcomes in specific cases, to prove that the approach can work and to set standards. Rigor may require methods like randomized experiments with longitudinal follow-up. The results do not generalize, since other situations will differ. These are proofs-of-concept or existence-proofs.
• Research done by the practitioners or in partnerships that involve practitioners. People who work in programs can contribute ideas and practical know-how. Also, being able to participate in the research can be a path to professional advancement for them. This is important because any field needs human capital.
• Research that addresses the choices that practitioners are currently struggling with. Is it better to mobilize voters in-person or on social media? Should students choose their service projects or be assigned their topics? Results will not generalize completely, but empirical research can offer insights.
• Research into the kinds of strategies that may promote quality at large scales, such as professional development, licensing and certification, or government mandates. Like the interventions themselves, these are not things that either work or fail to work; we have to make them work. But we can learn more about effective methods.
• Research that addresses values. Why should we try to make a given approach work? Usually, because we hold beliefs about what is bad about the present and what would be better. Such beliefs are not biases; they are appropriate motivations for building a movement. However, they are contestable, and we should not simply assume their validity. The solution is to articulate and defend value-commitments, and not just once for the movement as a whole. Participants should be able to debate alternative versions of basic values.

Another way to put the last point is that movements need theory. Theory is always partly normative (related to values), not just empirical. And theoretical reasoning is comparative: it’s about choosing a working theory after considering alternatives. Therefore, movements need people who articulate and defend alternative normative views.

Networks of practitioners and scholars typically face pragmatic choices. Should we create new journals and conferences or try to place publications in influential venues? Should we converge on common measures or help people and organizations to develop novel measures? Should we emphasize the positive findings about our approach or share the uncertainties? What are the boundaries of our movement and the overlaps with other ones? Should we merge or split?

These questions involve tradeoffs, so they don’t have obvious answers. Nor would anyone be able to enforce one strategy. Therefore, I would anticipate a mix, with some people publishing in old venues and some starting new ones, some advocating common measures and some trying new ones, etc.

In general, I have found that it’s hard to get researchers to collaborate with practitioners (often nonprofit staff) or educators (including teaching-focused faculty). However, the main difficulty is not the people and their divergent values or interests, nor their attitudes toward each other. They often turn out to be rather similar and to get along well. The difficulty lies with their jobs. An assistant professor must publish, which requires originality and challenging methodologies. A nonprofit leader owes an evaluation report by the end of the quarter, and the report must accentuate positive results. Recognizing such differences (and there are many more) is a first step toward finding specific projects that can serve both sides.

See also principles for researcher-practitioner collaboration (an earlier take with similar suggestions); engaged theory and the construction of community