Abstract
The development of democratic citizenship and youth leadership requires an ability to collaborate with others in ways that are jointly empowering. In this study, we sought to understand how students at an urban liberal arts college in the United States framed their own and others’ efficacy and responsibility in narrative accounts of situations they faced in civic and community engagement. We were interested in how young people learn and work alongside local stakeholders, rather than serve on behalf of people and communities considered to be in need. We aimed to gain insight into occasions in which collaborative agency emerged, or failed to emerge, in the coordinated activity of individuals engaged in the creation of intersubjectivity, shared commitments, and perceptions of group accomplishment. We collected narratives over a 4-year period from 123 Bonner Scholars, campus leaders whose scholarship includes a substantial weekly commitment to service. Our analysis of stories featuring or problematizing collaborative agency showed students grappling with limits of collaborative agency, but also generativity and interdependence. They described civic agency and leadership with other students, non-profit partners, and citizens. In some settings, we heard students striving for a collaborative solidarity, moving beyond collaborative agency toward relationships affording mutual empowerment.
Keywords
The establishment of collaborative relationships and the ability of individuals to work in communities to achieve collective goals are critical to healthy youth development and youth leadership (Christens & Dolan, 2011) and to the functioning of a democratic society (Krause & Montenegro, 2017). Increasingly, we have seen colleges and universities making development for citizenship a primary goal (National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012), and this has often entailed encouragement of service learning and student volunteering. When young people are encouraged to volunteer as a way of “giving back” by working for those less advantaged than themselves this may or may not promote the collective civic action we take to be a hallmark of healthy youth development.
An alternative to working for that emphasizes working with others in research and practice has increasingly been a focus in educational settings where development for citizenship is understood to require skills and dispositions that promote participation in partnerships that advance knowledge, empower people to act, and strengthen communities (National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012). In this model citizens engage with communities and are invited to learn and work alongside local stakeholders as collaborative agents, rather than serve on behalf of people and communities considered to be in need (Bertaux et al., 2012; Raelin, 2016). A deeper understanding of the types of collaborative relationships that are established in community settings could promote more effective civic action and could support urgent efforts to educate young people for democratic citizenship (Musiel, 2003; Yates & Youniss, 2010).
One model for “working with” communities in civic engagement aims for reciprocity, in which there is a respect for the contributions of each partner and a goal of beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders. Yet reciprocity, while a widely used and valued model for contemporary engagement initiatives in higher education, may fail to challenge individualistic and transactional dominant cultural notions of student learning, development, and leadership (Davis et al., 2017). An alternative, more generative frame is emerging, in which campus and community partners strive for something more collaborative and transformative (Musiel, 2013). In this framing, young people may have the opportunity to experience a developing interdependence and collaborative agency, which is marked by a sense of intersubjectivity, shared commitments that are not superimposed by others, and perceptions of collective efficacy and accountability (Raelin, 2016).
The achievement of a sense of efficacy and a sense of accountability are part of a larger sense-making project, in which individuals assign meaning to their experiences. Our efforts to understand how young adults make sense of the meaningful and challenging work they do with others in community settings has led our research team to focus on narrative accounts of their experiences in a variety of community settings. Sharing stories about our experiences is a primary way that humans make meaning, and we do this by positioning ourselves and others as certain kinds of actors engaged with recognizable human plights (Bruner, 1990). As individuals recount “who did what when,” they also evaluate the outcomes they describe, and they establish who is accountable for those outcomes (Ochs & Capps, 2009; Pasupathi & Wainryb, 2010). It is in the construction of personal narrative accounts that students concern themselves with the agency of self and other (Bamberg, 2011; McLean et al., 2013; Sullivan & McCarthy, 2004), and our research has sought to understand how they do this in the context of community service.
While research on student experiences in civic engagement is growing, few empirical studies address how students narrate their own experience of working with, rather than for, others in community partnership. This study is designed to explore college students’ meaning making around experiences of collaboration and shared agency, addressing the following questions: How do students narrate experiences of collaborative agency, even with strong local norms and larger cultural values placing an emphasis on independent contributions and individual leadership? How do we understand the struggles that students are facing as they narrate their experiences of working with, rather than working for, community members, organizations, and partners in more generative models of community engagement? And what are the contexts in which various forms of collaborative agency are more likely to emerge?
Models of Partnership in Civic and Community Engagement: Striving for Generativity
Contemporary models of civic and community engagement typically feature movement from exclusionary, or non-engaged, campuses to campus-community partnerships marked by reciprocity (Clifford, 2017; Musiel, 2017). Exclusionary practices create a wall around the campus community and set clear boundaries of who is in and who is out, with little concern for engaging those outside the campus community. Service may exist in some form, but it is often a brief experience with little preparation or knowledge of the community or groups they are visiting, perhaps reinforcing previous notions or stereotypes of the communities they visit and perpetuating a hierarchy of privilege.
Students often come to college with understandings of service as charity, providing aid for some individual or group characterized as deserving or in need of help (Catlett & Proweller, 2011; Clark-Taylor, 2017). Charitable helping does not challenge the systems that produce inequalities and disparities in our communities. It may also be provided in ways that are not, in fact, wanted or needed by community partners (Bertaux et al., 2012). A goal in civic learning is often to move students and partnerships from traditional charity models to models of reciprocity, in which each stakeholder involved derives some benefits and each can be a resource to the other. In this model, for example, a computer science major might develop a website for a nonprofit that addresses housing instability, and at the same time hone skills that will serve the student’s own future career.
Yet in this “thin” form of reciprocity, working with retains an individualistic and reductive quality (Davis et al., 2017). Engaged scholars have noted that stronger and “thicker” levels of engagement are rooted in particular places over time, and they begin to move toward a vision of the future collective good. This more engaged partnership cultivates a different understanding of community as not something separate and apart, but as a complex, interdependent resource (Musiel, 2013; Siemers et al., 2015). These more generative models of partnership address issues of power and inequality, focusing on systems change and how partners can work together as coproducers of multiple forms of knowledge that will impact all involved (Dostilio et al., 2012).
Generative engagement is not something individual actors do alone; instead, it requires developing a sense of how individual work contributes over time to something greater, and perhaps something new that would otherwise not exist (Dostilio et al., 2012). It also requires recognizing students as potential leaders, who are struggling to produce knowledge and take responsibility as civic agents. As Boyte (2008) notes, students as civic agents are learning to take action where there is no script. Through longer term engagement over multiple semesters, and with staff, faculty, and community partners as guides and mentors in academic and community-based learning, students come to address complex public problems in collaboration with others (Battistoni & Longo, 2011; Budwig, 2013). This is a model of deep and integrative learning that depends on active dialogue and collaboration over time, within the academic institution and between the academy and community partners.
Possibilities for Collaborative Agency
As students engage in community service over time, they make choices within the constraints of their settings and larger social positions. They struggle over what they are able to do and what they are responsible for contributing to the well-being of communities and the specific settings in which they are engaged (Nowell & Boyd, 2010, 2014). As they try to act in accordance with their values, they exercise agency in everyday social interaction with others. They also try to understand others’ agency within the constraints and opportunities afforded by social systems and particular settings. These concerns over one’s own and others’ agency include both competency (what can I do; what is she able to do) and accountability (what should I do; what is he responsible for). Over multiple semesters, students may expand their sense of competency and accountability in a particular community setting and develop opportunities to exercise shared leadership with community partners (The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, n.d.). Occasionally, they experience this shared leadership as a form of intersubjectivity, or a sense of “we” who are competent or not so much, and “we” who are responsible or perhaps less so, in a particular situation. This individual grouping with community partners and identification with partners via shared experiences and accountability is a part of developing collaborative agency with partners.
Raelin (2016) has proposed a shared practice model of leadership, an alternative to conceptions of leadership as the traits or characteristics of individual actors. The focus here is on how leadership emerges through routine experiences over time and the shared meaning making of that activity. His collaborative agency model of leadership emerges in the coordinated activity of individuals with both shared and conflicting interests who engage in genuine dialogue. This dialogue includes sharing, listening, reflection, and a willingness to be changed by the communication. The concept goes beyond collective efficacy, a group’s belief in its capabilities, by also focusing on the actions and interactions that occur within it. Collaborative agency is a practice in which groups engage. This focus on practice also distinguishes it from sense of community responsibility, which measures an individual’s experience of community and is often used as a predictor of engagement and leadership (Nowell & Boyd, 2014).
The construct of collaborative agency is at the center of the current study, enabling a focus both on collective efficacy, or a perception of group accomplishment, as well as the sense of shared commitment and responsibility. We are able to examine students’ understanding of their developing engagement and leadership in community service narratives that feature struggles over their own and others’ competency and accountability.
The Present Study: Method
To examine students’ understandings of collaborative agency in their experiences of working “with” rather than “for” community partners, we turned to narratives gathered from undergraduate students at Rhodes College over a 4-year period as part of the Community Narrative Research Project (CNRP). CNRP is an action research initiative focused on Bonner scholars’ experiences of community engagement. Our research team includes faculty members in psychology and urban studies, in developmental and community psychology, undergraduate student researchers majoring in psychology, education, and urban studies, and student leaders and staff from the Bonner program at Rhodes. As a participatory action study, the inclusion of researchers with different academic backgrounds and roles on campus strengthens our investigation, as this diversity offers a breadth of insights and perspectives on social justice and community engagement. The different forms of knowledge and expertise brought to the team by each member are all essential to our analysis (Thomas et al., 2019; Lykes, 2017). CNRP goals include contributing to scholarship in psychology and community engagement, as well as advancing organizational learning and institutional change to better support campus community partnerships in our local context. At the center of the project is the collection and analysis of narratives written by Bonner Scholars at Rhodes.
Participants
Bonner Scholars work at least 10 hours per week with community partners in the city as part of their 4-year college scholarship at Rhodes College, an urban liberal arts college located in Memphis, Tennessee in the Midsouth of the United States. Rhodes College is largely residential, with 75% of its 2,000 students living on campus. The majority of students are traditional-aged college students, and approximately 30% are students of color. Rhodes has the Carnegie Community Engagement Designation, and many of our students are engaged in community service. Student leadership is prized, and students are encouraged to “become essential,” the most recent tag line on our academic website. While the college is known for service, it continues to strengthen its models of community engagement and better integrate engaged learning and scholarship within the academic program.
Rhodes College is part of a national network of 65 colleges and universities that are supported by the Bonner Foundation. The Rhodes Bonner Scholars Program aims to provide college access to students with a dedication to service and social justice by providing tuition scholarships. The Rhodes Bonner Program admits 15 first-year students each year who are selected by admissions and program staff; 85% of each class must have need for financial aid, as determined by an Estimated Family Contribution at or below US$6,000, and the percentage of students of color in each Bonner class is typically twice that of the Rhodes class as a whole. Bonner scholars have a service requirement of 10 hours per week during the school year and two full summers of service.
All 65 Bonner Scholar programs across the United States are connected and supported by the national Bonner structure. Each school affiliated with the Bonner program employs a director who supports and coordinates Bonner student activity. Through annual meetings and regular conferences, the national organization provides staff and students with instruction, resources, materials, and the opportunity for broader reflection with individuals from other institutions. The Bonner organization developed six common commitments, which are to be woven into the work of each Bonner program, and are often the focus of trainings at both the national and institutional level. These commitments include a collaborative approach to social justice, pushing students to “advocate for fairness, impartiality, and equality while addressing systemic social and environmental issues” (The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, n.d.). The program is designed to help students come to this systemic understanding of social justice by their third or fourth year of the program through dialogue (both formal and informal) with community members, faculty, and Bonner staff and students.
Many scholars develop long-term relationships and take on leadership roles through sustained engagement with a diverse set of community partners, including nonprofit health care, human service providers, schools, after-school programs, social justice-oriented organizations, community centers, and advocacy organizations. Along the 4-year developmental path of the Bonner model, there is a gradual shift from direct service and one-on-one interactions with patrons to capacity building and problem solving, as Bonners are presented with opportunities for leadership through their service sites and within specific issue areas. Reflection on both community and academic experience is a key feature of the Bonner program throughout their 4 years, facilitating introspection and subsequent growth (Bringle & Hatcher, 1999).
Narrative Data Collection
Twice a year, Bonner students attend Bonner retreats in which they engage in programming intended to provide support and training, strengthen cohort bonds, and guide reflection. At Bonner retreats, we asked students to build upon their established weekly reflective practice through storytelling. We asked them to write and share narratives with one another in response to prompts designed to elicit meaningful reflection and position themselves within relationships and communities. In the fall, we asked scholars to “please write about a situation related to your community service that felt particularly meaningful to you,” and in the spring, to “please write about a situation that felt particularly awkward and you were not sure what to do.” Over 4 years, we collected 403 stories from 123 Bonner Scholars. On each occasion of narrative data collection, we explained the research project and asked each author for written consent to include their story in our research. Only stories from students who provided written consent are included in the corpus of data. The Institutional Review Board at our institution approved all the described procedures prior to initial data collection.
Narrative Data Analysis
Our work has included both interpretive and quantitative methods in iterative procedures that began with close readings and open coding of stories (Charmaz & Henwood, 2007; Henwood & Pidgeon, 2003). These analytic methods are consistent with best practices, and offer a systematic and structured way of going about the interpretation of narrative data (Levitt et al., 2018). Initial open coding of the narratives was done in conversation with our early readings of previous literatures on civic engagement, student development and leadership, and narrative construction of agency. Team members independently read subsets of the stories, identifying both descriptive and abstract themes. These independent readings were enriched by weekly discussion of the stories in a research team which consisted of individuals from different disciplines and different backgrounds, including psychology faculty, psychology majors, and Bonner Scholars of several different majors.
In this community of practice, we shared interpretations of individual stories and of emerging themes, considering how our data related to the previous research we were reading. We found ourselves regularly asking how students were constructing their own and others’ agency as they wrote about their community service experiences, and we determined that two issues that were frequently featured or problematized in our data warranted focused attention: matters of efficacy and accountability. We engaged in close reading, bringing to the team prototypical exemplars of each and also counter-example stories that did not easily fit in this framework for understanding agency.
After deciding to explore these recurring themes, the team moved to a more focused coding paradigm in which three team members independently coded subsets of stories, identifying whether each featured the efficacy or accountability of the author or of other actors in the author’s story. The categories were not mutually exclusive, so authors might feature several of the concerns in a single story (e.g., an author might question both own and other’s accountability, while expressing doubts about own efficacy). Each time the three coders completed a subset of stories, they came together to discuss differences, and these discussions resulted in refinements to the coding manual. After several iterations of this process, we were satisfied that the coding discrepancies were not revealing new ways of understanding the categories. At this point, each story was independently coded by two coders and kappas were calculated to determine inter-rater reliability. Table 1 presents the range of kappas for each coding category. Instances in which coders disagreed were settled in discussion.
Narrative Data Analysis: Inter-rater Reliability.
Once we completed the coding of all 403 narratives, we were able to look closely at subsets of the stories, according to what kinds of agency concerns were expressed in the stories. Our interest in the achievement of a sense of “we-ness” that our Bonner programming seeks to promote led us to focus close readings and detailed analysis on the 149 stories (approximately 37% of the total corpus) that were coded for the presence of four concerns as follows: both self-efficacy and other efficacy, and both self-accountability and other accountability. We analyzed how authors describe and puzzle over “we” experiences and the lack of “we” experiences, seeking to elucidate how and when they describe a collaborative sense of efficacy and accountability.
Chi-square tests showed that this subset of 149 stories did not differ significantly in its representation of students from different years (first-year to seniors). This led us to consider age- and experience-related changes ideographically, rather than by relying on statistically significant change. We collected data in a cross sequential design from all of the Bonner scholars (first-year to seniors) at eight different data collection times. Our student sample experienced critical national events (a 2016 election that many of our students experienced as personally threatening and/or disillusioning) and local events (such as the replacement of key staff members in the program) at different points in each of their Bonner experiences. Our theoretical and methodological approaches encourage a thoughtful sensitivity to the historical and social contexts in which development unfolds, and this requires a careful examination of change in each student’s experiences over time. Thus, our work is designed to examine differences in each students’ narrative representation of their experiences, rather than comparing the “average” first-year students’ experiences and “average” senior students’ experiences.
Chi-square tests also showed that our subset of 149 stories did not differ significantly from the full set of 403 stories by racial/ethnic or gender categories, indicating that students in these different demographic categories did not differ significantly in their tendency to raise issues of own and others’ accountability or efficacy in their narrative accounts. The stories we selected for close study are representative of the gender, ethnicity, and school year of the larger sample in which 59% of students identified as female and 41% identified as male; 53% of students identified as White, 23% Black or African American, 10% Asian American, and 7% Latino.
Two senior team members worked intensively with these stories of own and other agency and efficacy concerns, asking where in these stories we saw authors achieving or seeking a collaborative agency characterized by shared efficacy and shared responsibility. This we took to be distinct from a thinner level of reciprocity as “division of labor” in which the author is capable of and responsible for some matters and an “other” is capable and responsible for others. We were interested in gaining insight about the occasions in which agency emerged in the coordinated activity of individuals with both shared and conflicting interests who were engaged in the creation of intersubjectivity, shared commitments, and perceptions of collective efficacy or group accomplishment.
Two team members worked with subsets of the 149 stories, in a procedure similar to that described for the agency coding, to determine whether collaborative agency was a frame or concern for the narrator. We included stories that discuss the failure or possible failure of “we” or “us” to be adequately responsible or effective. Can we really do this? Can we be effective? And we included stories in which narrators struggle over whether others share my sense of “we-ness.” Are we really in this together and accountable to one another? After we established a coding manual (available from corresponding author), two team members independently coded a set of 22 stories (15% of the subsample) and achieved 100% agreement for identifying collaborative agency in those stories.
In 60 (40%) of the stories, 38 authors described achieving, failing to achieve, or seeking collaborative agency. Close readings of these 60 stories constitutes the analysis we present next.
Findings
Collaborative Agency With Other Bonner Scholars or Other Rhodes Students
We began this study with questions about collaborative agency as a way to describe students’ striving toward generativity in their civic engagement with partners in community settings beyond the college. We were not looking for collaborative agency with other students, and we were surprised to find how frequently students described experiences that featured or problematized collaborative agency with other students. In 28 stories from 22 different students, Bonner Scholars described a shared sense of efficacy and accountability with other students, most often with other Bonner Scholars, in settings where they were developing new initiatives or interventions and had little supervision by more experienced partnering organization staff or volunteers.
Bonner Scholars as a team: Sharing responsibility and gaining skills
Several of the stories described working as a team with other Bonner Scholars at community partner sites that enabled students to take on meaningful shared leadership roles. In one case, three different authors narrated the same altercation between young boys at an after-school program that they developed at a local neighborhood community center. Each of the students’ stories raised questions about their shared efficacy, even as they asserted their shared accountability. One student recounted, Olivia [a Bonner Scholar and volunteer], the person that pretty much holds the afterschool program together, wasn’t there that day and the only kids there were three boys. We didn’t think it’d be too bad, after all there were six of us and we had been doing this for a long time. We were pretty wrong. It ended up being horrible.
A second author described the same conflict between youth at the after-school program, then noted, It was a difficult day, and one we all talked about at length at our meeting the following Wednesday. We are all taking great lengths to make sure such a near-catastrophe does not happen again.
And a third student reflected on the same experience, It was physically and emotionally exhausting. We wanted to prove to these kids that we are there for them no matter what, that they can always open up to us. But it’s so hard to convince them when all they know is that boys shouldn’t cry, and they have to be tough and masculine. Our goal is to show them that opening up is much more helpful than hiding your emotions. We couldn’t, however, do all this within a matter of minutes. It was hard. We wanted them to play around, but we couldn’t because fights would constantly occur. We didn’t want to send anyone home, but physical assault with children is not okay. We wanted to understand the root of the anger and these issues, but it’s hard explaining this to a child. While no one got hurt, and everyone went home at the end of the program, the day took a toll on everyone involved. We had to discuss how to properly handle the situation if it ever happened again, and work on making the kids comfortable enough to open up to us. It’s just so hard when you have to come back to the Rhodes Bubble and act like you didn’t just experience an emotionally exhausting situation with kids when kids shouldn’t even be escalating to that level.
These stories illustrate a strong sense of “we-ness” that developed through a shared experience of taking responsibility for the curriculum and management of an after-school program when the team member understood as the leader was not present. A challenging and potentially dangerous situation emerged in which there was no script for what to do and the Bonner Scholars were unsure of their collective efficacy. The students looked to each other for guidance, skill building, and emotional support, and as we learned from our work with the larger corpus of data, they did not often expect to find those things back on campus, outside of their team of Bonner Scholars.
Bonner Scholar as a shared and distinct identity
Being a Bonner Scholar is a strong shared identity for many who are part of the scholarship program, and several of the stories featured reflections on what it means to them to be a Bonner scholar. They noted the sense of responsibility they felt as part of a distinct group and prefaced many of their stories with statements such as, “As a member of the Bonner Scholars program at Rhodes, we are obliged to make an impact.” This is part of the communal discourse of group responsibility, which is tied to these student authors’ Bonner affiliation: Students note a distinct sense of joint commitment to facilitating meaningful and productive engagement in the Memphis community. The students’ shared responsibility is fostered in weekly Bonner meetings, which feature shared reflections and programming that encourage Bonner Scholars to move out of their own comfort zone in community engagement. Several students used this language in their narratives, including prefacing statements similar to this one, “The work we do as Bonners necessitates being uncomfortable.” One student elaborated, Yes, being dedicated to serving the community means sacrificing part of our social lives, being pushed beyond our comfort zones, and having to find the strength to keep going when even our closest friends stop for breaks. But the most successful Bonners are those who try and impact the community while learning from it too; they are the ones who are not afraid to leave parts of themselves behind and to fully embrace the advice that the recipients of their aid have to offer. When we take the time to reflect on our lives and truly appreciate our surroundings then we will fully reap the benefits of our work and be able to cause effective change.
The Bonner Scholars struggled over the expectations that accompany this strong frame for collective identity, propelling them to move beyond their own limited understandings and individual identities. They also wrote about the perceived failures of their peers and the program more generally to live up to these high expectations. A couple of the stories voiced frustration with what they saw as unresponsive leadership in the Bonner Program itself, one student lamenting about a retreat they felt was poorly planned, “we have voiced our opinions about these things multiple times but nothing seems to have changed.”
Other stories offered critiques of peer Bonner Scholars who failed to do what “we” should be doing. In a story that takes place at a children’s hospital, a Bonner Scholar described her disappointment and frustration about the lack of responsibility taken by her peers: There have been times when working with other volunteers that I have not agreed with how they present themselves to this particular community we serve. For example, a few weeks ago I was doing a shift on Saturday with 5 or so other college volunteers. We picked out crafts and movies and went up to the patient lobby area to set up an activity station. Every week a few kids and siblings show up and their parents can stay if they want. We did not have that many kids show up that week, but we had a few quiet ones and a family congregating at a nearby sitting area. Normally we all engage the kids in crafts and games. However, some of the volunteers were continually on their phones even while sitting next to the patient. Furthermore, no one except myself seemed to initiate conversation with the family nearby to include them in the activities if they wished.
Even as these stories problematized collaborative agency with peers, they retained a sense of shared ownership and responsibility. While they asserted their own individual identity and agency, a sense of a strong “we” remained central to their understanding of their experience as Bonner Scholars.
Bonner Scholars in shared campus leadership
Not all of the stories that featured or problematized collaborative agency took place in community partnering sites. Several narratives concerned experiences of student leadership within the larger college community. These were often stories about individual and collective capacity building within clubs or organizations founded by students.
In two different stories, an author described a collaborative agency that included other college students, but also community partners and other stakeholders. In the first story, the author described her efforts to reduce stigma for persons with learning disabilities as part of a student club she helped to establish on the campus: We had a pledge banner at various locations around campus, stopped anyone who passed by and asked them to consider signing the pledge. We passed out buttons with slogans that promoted respect and an attitude change. Five Special Olympics athletes even came to campus to help with the event, acting as highly effective self-advocates.
In as second story, written while she was a senior, the same author reflected on her experiences over time: The first [meeting of a student club at Rhodes] of the semester was a few days ago, and it was so elevating to see this program function without my leadership. I am deeply confident in the abilities of the new leadership team, and know that they have grown to develop just as much passion about advocating for our Special Olympics friends as I have. I hope I have inspired them to reach toward the same goal of relationship building among volunteers and athletes, toward the greater end of equality for people of all abilities. Each week, the program itself is “rewarding” and “meaningful,” but most important for me is a confidence that the movement, which did not exist at Rhodes before I matriculated, will be alive and well even after I graduate. [Club at Rhodes] has involved hundreds of Rhodes volunteers as unified partners, fundraisers, and advocates, almost every varsity athletic team, staff, faculty, and even the President. I have found people at Rhodes that understand what it’s all about; I am not occupying this consciousness alone, as I sometimes felt I was in the early days of the program. I have encountered young student volunteers who have no idea I started the program, and I love this! [Club at Rhodes] has become a staple of student service involvement at Rhodes, and in Memphis. It is bigger than me. This idea, this movement, this revolution.
This is but one example of how Bonner Scholars grow to be leaders on our campus, and in the stories, they reflect on the impact of this collaborative leadership. In one story about leadership in the organization that hosts V-Day monologues at Rhodes, modeled from the Vagina Monologues, a student leader noted, I feel like we’re finally part of a cultural shift. Slowly but surely, people’s reactions to the monologues are changing. They weren’t shocked or offended that students had shared their stories. They were supportive.
It is important to remember that Rhodes students are a part of a campus community in which the discourse about leadership included the website tag line, “become essential.” Like many colleges in the United States, our school celebrates individual efficacy and achievement. The “we” that gets highlighted in these engagement stories is counter-cultural in a meaningful way. This counter-cultural messaging is not without challenges.
In another reflection on leadership, an author struggled over gendered conflicts internal to the student organization and raised doubts and fears related to the women in the group being able to respond effectively to the male students practicing “being essential” by dominating the discussions and taking up all of the space: A bunch of the women FINALLY got together a few weeks ago and realized that we all shared the same feelings. We planned on storming the meeting and telling off the two men, but once we got there we all lost our nerve . . . The fact that a group of strong-willed college-educated women can’t even bring themselves to speak honestly about the emotional violence that’s being done to them is ABSURD, but I still don’t know what to do about it. The external conflict with these men has caused an internal conflict within myself that has made me fundamentally doubt the strength that I previously thought I had. They treated us as weak and we began to feel that way, and even though intellectually I know it’s not true, I cannot silence the little voice in me that says that maybe they’re right.
Another author, who served as a director in our student-led service program for non-Bonner scholarship students, contrasted differing perspectives on student leadership roles as she noted, “we are not helping people write resumes or print something off . . . we are holding their experiences in our minds. We become part of what that person knows about the world; we help frame that experience.”
There was a recognition in many of the stories that the students were part of something transformative and generative, but that their work was not always recognized or valued by campus administrators and faculty. In another story, the author talked about the challenges of capacity building work on campus. The student leaders approached administrators at the college for more institutional support for service and engagement and felt confused by their response: Often, I, and my fellow Directors, are told, “Give up the small battles.” So we do. But what does that process mean/look like? It looks like oppression in a lot of ways. We give up our agency “voluntarily” or it is taken from us. The only way we prevent fragmentation of our team is if we protest or surrender. But nothing happens without a fight. This makes me stronger; more cynical, yet oddly hopeful; it humbles me, it calls me to cling to my faith. It feels like oppression. I don’t feel like we have a choice if we remain Directors to do anything outside of the bounds imposed onto us.
This tension between cynicism and hope is a theme running through our corpus of narratives. Through our close reading over time, we have come to understand that the orientation toward collaborative agency helps to temper individual cynicism with hope for change via communal efforts.
In narrating their experiences of collaborative agency with other Bonner Scholars, authors emphasized the importance of working as a team, and depended on that team to develop skills, problem solve, and reflect on their community engagement. These teams were critical, as they were providing support in community settings with few staff and volunteers, and they were not following a script. Authors also voiced a strong and distinctive collective identity as Bonner Scholars, which included a joint commitment to getting community engagement “right.” They frequently offered criticism of themselves, one another, and their leadership for not meeting high standards for just and meaningful work. With these rigorous reflections on their intense and prolonged community engagement, we have seen them become strong campus leaders. In their stories, they narrate feelings of accomplishment, but also struggles to create meaningful change and to be recognized fully in an individualistic and hierarchical campus culture.
Collaborative Agency With Staff at Community Partner Sites
In a group of 17 stories from 12 students, the “we” established was not with other students, but with professional or paraprofessional staff, most commonly in community settings that provided direct service within clearly articulated guidelines. Most frequently, these were crisis-related services or programs serving children and youth. Several of the stories problematized a sense of collaborative agency. Interestingly, these stories did not always challenge charity models of service (as per the Bonner program’s values). Some students’ reflections indicated that their collaboration with staff required an adoption of the hierarchies of professional helping embedded in many health and human service organizations and thus inhibited collaborative engagement in their specific service contexts. As such, working with a community partner in some cases meant working with nonprofit professionals for clients in need.
Students as nonprofit staff members
In several of the stories, the students came to see themselves as staff, who shared obligations and developed competencies to serve. One described an experience with a patron who offered an unexpected and disturbing prayer to Satan at a soup kitchen housed in a local church. The student aligned himself with staff working at the church, “It was weird to think about, but since a lot of us were equipped to handle awkward situations, I feel like we handled it to the best of our ability.”
Another student described working to secure housing for homeless veterans with a social services agency, Over the summer, we had one client who we would call with no luck or answer for about for a few days. Due to the brevity of most of the situations that we were dealing with, a few days had the potential to be detrimental. This client was 78 years old and was literally homeless just the week before. One of the social workers I worked under had found him housing just the week before, so we needed to know that the client was doing alright and adjusting properly.
In both of these examples, students identified as staff who were competent and responsible for attending to adult clients in direct service provision. In other stories in this group, the authors identified with staff at sites that served children and youth, including after-school programs and summer camps. In one story, an author narrated how coworkers were planning conversations to challenge stereotypes that young men at an after-school program held about women, The first things we chose to address was the undertones of misogyny that were prevalent in their speech and how they chose to speak about women. After having this talk, many of the guys felt a little confused as to why a person would be offended to the what seemed to be light hearted jokes and comments they would make. We also had a discussion with the guys on queer identity and concepts of masculinity. At times I was not completely sure if our talk had done the good it intended to however after watching and hearing them struggle with their language about several social issues and accepting the reality that we weren’t trying to be the bad guys who considered them to be bad people the guys showed us they we were indeed affective. This became evident in our upcoming projects and how they described their experience with us when it came to an end.
The narrator of this story was relieved that the young people in the program did not evaluate the staff as “the bad guys.” Though the young people in the program were initially confused by the conversations, they came to accept “us.”
In other stories, narrators shared more difficult situations, in which they had few resources and few staff. These tough situations were made more tolerable by the sense that the staff were in it together. A Bonner Scholar working at a summer camp reflected, Tuesday of the second week of camp for me was one of the hardest days ever. After showing up that morning, I became aware that the Camps coordinator would not be there that day. I assumed that one of the other individuals who worked in the office would take her place but it turned out to be me. On this Tuesday four of the meeting rooms that we used to house twenty students each were occupied by the sheriff department. This meant that the only rooms that were available to us were the gym, the art lab, computer lab, and the great summer outdoors. With a lack of space and no direction myself and coworkers had to create a new schedule that would work while balancing a total of 174 campers with only a total of 8 or 9 counselors at the moment. That day encompassed feelings of frustration, anger, and disappointment. During the great balancing act, we had to deal with a few lost campers, several injuries, physical altercations among campers and much more that simply could not be addressed in that moment.
In these stories, even when students expressed concerns about the ability of the self or of the staff to manage the situations, the authors seemed steadfast in a sense of shared accountability and efficacy.
Problematizing collaborative agency with staff: interpersonal and organizational issues
Several stories, however, featured challenges to the development of shared efficacy and accountability in collaborative agency with staff. A couple of the stories featured a “we” that encompassed their supervisor, and they described their own lack of readiness as someone new to the organizational setting. In one story, a student focused on a lack of efficacy that made her unable to serve the clients as a staff member, At a nonprofit that helps Hispanic victims of domestic violence, I typically take phone calls and do other administrative work. One time, as I was taking calls, a woman called who was very distressed and desperate. Instead of calling 911, this victim called in after her abuser had been trying to break her door down and threatened to kill her and her children. By the time she called, the abuser had already left, but the woman was still desperately crying and worried that he would return. In this situation, during calls we typically label “crisis calls” at the office, I had no idea what to do. In the end I feel that I sounded just as worried and perturbed as she did on the phone. Really, we are supposed to do just the opposite—I was supposed to keep my composure to inspire calmness and confidence in the victim as well. I spoke with my supervisor and ended up handing the call over to her. I learned, from listening to how my boss handled the crisis call, how to manage these kinds of situations in the future.
Even as the narrator struggled over her capacity to serve in this difficult situation, she seemed confident that she would grow into her role, becoming more capable over time. As illustrated in this example, students occasionally struggled over collaborative agency with staff when they were not yet ready and did not feel capable of handling the difficult situations in which they found themselves. More frequently, they experienced tensions with other staff and adult volunteers as they perceived a failure of shared efficacy and responsibility.
In several of the stories that problematized collaborative agency with other staff, it is the other staff members who were positioned as coming up short. These stories often began in the voice of “we” and featured strengths of their shared work. One student, for example, working for a program that serves refugee families new to Memphis, started the narrative by describing “what we do well” as an organization. Another student working for a large land trust and urban farm started the story with a summary statement that informed the reader that “we had lots of interesting projects going on.”
Yet both of these stories then moved to problematize the “we” of collaborative agency with other staff members. The student working at the site providing refugee services described a conflict she felt with other staff around their capacity for program development and innovation. She wanted to “move beyond what we do well,” in after-school mentoring and tutoring, helping to develop new elements of the academic enrichment programs for high school students. The student at the urban farm shared frustration that others with whom he worked did not share his sense of responsibility. His narrative featured an example in which he worked all day in the summer heat and his coworkers goofed off in the air conditioning.
In the first example, the problem is framed as an organizational lack of capacity and vision. In the second example, the problem is framed as a lack of interpersonal accountability. Other stories outline tensions with a specific staff member who is perceived by the narrator as incompetent and irresponsible. For example, a student working for the local affiliate of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) opened her story in the voice of “we,” We suggest to the court secure placements for the children, programs we think they should partake in, counseling, and any other service that would be in the best interest of the child(ren) involved in the case.
But then the focus of the story quickly moved to a detailed account of an ongoing conflict with her supervisor, whom she perceived as doing a number of things that had negative implications for the children under their supervision.
For the last week, my supervisor has been calling me constantly to tell me to do something and then calling right back to tell me not to do what he just instructed me to do . . . I am constantly badgered to “stay on top of this case,” but there is nothing I can do and I am reprimanded for everything I do. It is absolutely ridiculous, and it is all because of my supervisor’s new boss constantly telling my supervisor to change everything we have been taught to do. If I cannot mentor these children, there is nothing I can do in this case. I would be of more help to these children if I was NOT a CASA. This will be the last case I take.
This story illustrates the failure to engage in collaborative agency with a staff member, and it raises questions about the responsibilities that a student assumes when there is not an adequate team in place to support children and families in crisis. The story is not explicitly framed as a structural issue, but it highlights the difficulties for students working with unprepared or overwhelmed staff and the potential impact on patrons.
Problematizing shared leadership with staff: a systems critique
A few of the stories explicitly used a more structural lens to problematize shared leadership with staff members and a perceived inability to engage collaboratively. These stories explored instances where collaborative agency could have developed, while acknowledging the issues within our systems that precluded it from doing so. Many of these students also discuss struggling with their role within said systems, via their efforts to engage collaboratively and effect positive change for communities. One student shared critical reflections from extensive experience with schools in China and in Memphis, and ends with questions, “How do we get motivation back into students’ hearts? Why is access to higher education a privilege and not a right? How do we fix these problems?”
In a story about a small success, featuring a child who is thriving and in the process of being adopted by his foster family, a student described her work as the youngest member of a foster care review board, I am the youngest Board Member by at least 15 years, so often I have to assert myself more strongly than I would prefer. I also sit on the Board with an overwhelming number of older, wealthy white women. I feel as if I should stop myself there because me distinguishing gender, class and race already makes more assumptions that I am comfortable with—but I do think these characteristics, however right or wrong my assumptions may be, largely contribute to my overall experience on FCRB. I often find myself going head to head with these ladies because I regularly think they are not being empathetic enough to conditions of poverty, and they often think I’m just young and naive. Most days that we hold FCRB, I feel our tensions get in the way of us doing any good—we are just another part of the “system” that is a roadblock to success.
The narrator in this example perceived the foster care system as failing because of its lack of capacity to nurture individual development, even as caring people took responsibility and success stories were possible. Other stories were more despairing. A student working for a crisis hotline described her sense of futility of working with regular callers in crisis, I strive to have my conversation and response be as genuine as possible. But in these situations what is there to say. We have a mental health care system that has left these people in limbo in terms of them being able to receive licensed care that could actually help them, I’m just a volunteer. These regular callers will never not call, they are in eternal crisis, what can I possibly say that would make a difference.
It is interesting to contrast this story with the crisis hotline story before, written by another author who questioned her readiness, but who looked forward to becoming a skilled and responsible team member with her supervisor. In this story, the challenges are not solved by additional training and experience. Rather, this narrator perceived that competency and accountability may only be practiced in an adequately resourced mental health care system.
In traditional human service and health care settings, students engaged frequently with staff and supervisors, and they narrated a striving for collaborative agency with those professionals. In several stories, they voiced a sense of shared accountability and efficacy, even as they questioned their own abilities. In other instances, they problematized shared agency with staff due to a lack of organizational capacity and vision, or perceived failures on the part of individual staff or supervisors. And in a few notable stories, problems arise for authors out of an awareness of their role in systems that perpetuate privilege and oppression.
Collaborative Agency With Fellow Citizens
Our earliest thinking about the emergence of collaborative agency among Bonner Scholars was focused on the possibilities for re-defining the “people served” as “fellow citizens.” In 15 stories contributed by 11 students, these kinds of relationships were featured or longed-for. In contrast to the stories that featured collaborative agency with staff, set in direct service settings, these stories were most commonly set in contexts that invited students to see the persons affected by an issue as fellow citizens and community members rather than clients (Toolis & Hammack, 2015). They included a community center and café, a community garden, and an urban park conservancy. These stories also took place in the contexts of political campaigns and broader civic engagement efforts.
In the story below, the author reflected on the limits of her work with a local community development corporation. She problematized collaborative agency, as she questioned her role in neighborhood capacity building as an outsider to the community, I work on a community development project that tries to be community oriented but the more work we do the more obvious it is that the largely African American low-income community surrounding us does not want to be involved. I also don’t feel comfortable or right organizing or advocating for groups that I am not a part of. I don’t want my voice to cover up the voices of passionate people from marginalized groups who can say what they want rather than me sitting here trying to pretend that I in all of my messed up college student glory know what is best for them in their life.
This author recognized the failure of the organization to be in solidarity with community members and offered a critical account of her part in those efforts. Another student focused on his work with an educational reform nonprofit, and the academic preparation and investment he had made to really understand the issues that families face in low-income urban neighborhoods. He had taken educational policy classes and completed multiple internships in schools. He was helping to facilitate a community discussion between school officials and families whose school was being taken over by the state-run school district.
Even though I have researched, studied and worked with the issue of inner city public education . . . for most of my time at Rhodes, I saw that I failed to grasp or relate to the reality faced by some of the most at-risk consumers of this system like the argumentative parent in the room who was confronting state and local officials . . . I stood in the back of the room as almost more of an observer than a participant. I did not really know what was best to do. I felt as though I really wanted to engage more and understand the situation and challenges faced by these individuals in order to know how best to help. But I felt like I brought little to the table and really could not contribute anything to the conversation in the presence of all of these individuals who had so much personal experience and investment in this issue. I felt as though, after my years of work and experience in this area, I should have more to offer. I also felt awkward, feeling as though whatever I said would be perceived as coming from someone who did not have any authority to speak on the issues at hand. I remained standing and watching until the close of the meeting, thanking those that came and contributed as they all left. I look back on this experience as one of the most impressionable service experiences I have had because I learned so much both about myself and about the issue area that I am interested in. I also have mixed feelings about whether or not I should have pushed myself to engage more or whether or not I had the background and experience to be able to.
This author questioned his efficacy and accountability, as well as his ability to be in collaboration with other civic agents. Furthermore, as we saw in many of the stories, it was not easy for students to let go of an expectation that they should act independently as a leader, that they should take charge and contribute their expertise to those who needed it. Several struggled to discern when they should listen rather than speak.
In several of these stories, however, collaborative agency was featured rather than problematized. The focus was on how conversations with people in the settings led to relationships, which then led to a sense of common purpose and goals. One student, who worked for an urban park conservancy over multiple semesters, created an oral history project, collecting stories of people’s experience with the park over time: I’ve walked through [urban park in Memphis] hundreds of times. But J’s story, along with many others’, helped me truly know the place. I now feel stories surround me as I amble through, like ghosts guiding me as I walk. My story is now mixed with theirs. And it will be forever.
In many stories that featured work with children, children are posed as other, and collaboration featured other staff. But in a set of four stories from one student author about children whose families are new immigrants to the United States, arts-based work enabled a sense of collaborative agency with the children themselves: We were one, creating and playing together each day. It was beautiful to see the students help each other and work together to succeed. The girls who were part of the dance program grew together, gained confidence, embraced the art of their cultures, and obtained a more beneficial outlet for their frustrations. I do believe that the dance program was essential to this community. It was amazing to see how my relationships had grown with the children I have worked with since freshman year. I have learned so much about their different cultures and bonded with them based on shared experiences. At the start of freshman year, I would never have thought we could have so many similarities.
Students developed relationships across difference, they also came to understand shared intersections of their identities. One student, who would help produce a collaborative arts project on LGBT Memphians the following summer, described their conversations with a transgender woman, As I spoke to Kelly more, I hated her and myself a little less. At the beginning of the summer, I did not know how to act around Kelly and I hated us for being queer. I hated that we could not be like everyone else and have an easier life. Those were my thoughts at the initial start of the summer. At the end, I realized that we were lucky because we had the courage to live our lives unlike so many others. We knew who we liked and how we wanted to be seen. We made our choice and it is not an easy one. However, living in denial of our gender identity and our sexual orientation is more unbearable. We cry but we also laugh and celebrate. We are people.
Several students experienced collaborative agency in civic engagement and political involvement. One wrote about their work with a workers’ interfaith network to protest the theft of wages from undocumented workers in local restaurants. Another worked with a neighborhood organization to develop new safety regulations for pedestrians and cyclists. A third student worked on a campaign to work against a ballot measure that would restrict women’s reproductive health rights in the state of Tennessee, speaking explicitly about solidarity and a new sense of self that developed in the work with others. A fourth student helped to plan a national conference on civic engagement for k-12 teachers. In working with the teachers at the conference, he noted, I realized that the service work I was doing, the public service work of implementing this type of policy, not only served the students of today and the world of tomorrow (as well as today). I realized that this work served the teachers who could see the impact they were creating. The point of civic engagement is to engage others and engage oneself, and I felt empowered by the fact that I could, in a way even so small, empower others to empower others. I am reminded that everyone in this world is connected.
What we saw as we studied this set of stories entailed more than collaborative agency—these authors struggled to create a sense of solidarity among members of the communities they joined.
Conclusion
Our stories show young adults grappling with the limits of collaborative agency, but also the possibilities for generativity and interdependence with community partners via collaborative agency. They demonstrate the potential for undergraduate students to practice civic agency and leadership in collaboration with other students, nonprofit community partners, and citizens. The contrasts in the narratives across types of settings also raise important questions about who undergraduate students are working with when they engage in community partnerships, about which settings enable students to work in more democratic and less hierarchical partnerships, and about how students can be better prepared to enter these partnerships with fellow citizens.
In addressing these questions locally, our research allows us to better support Bonner students in their service, with the hope of promoting collaborative agency as the primary model of engagement. Other colleges and universities looking to promote collaborative agency in community engagement may benefit from prioritizing reflective programming and providing support as students navigate interpersonal, organizational, and structural difficulties in their service with others. Colleges and universities can also promote a sense of collaborative agency by nurturing student leaders engaged in community service and creating space and time for them to connect with and learn from one another. Finally, colleges and universities can work to build partnerships that facilitate inclusive and empowering practices within their service sites, wherein Bonner students, fellow citizens, and staff can work with one another rather than for others in community.
Beyond the suggestions to strengthen routine practices and contexts for community engagement and reflection with students, our focus in this article on collaborative agency in young adult narratives turns a lens toward our own critical pedagogies and fields of influence as professors and campus leaders. Social justice-oriented teaching and peer mentoring may enable students to see social inequalities and to engage in reflection on similarities and differences across identities. And as critically important as this is, we may still be limited in helping students to develop a civic imagination that enables us to act collaboratively and in solidarity for change (Brewster, 2018; Seider et al., 2012). Thinking through the lens of collaborative agency, we may focus additionally on processes that enable us to build the kinds of inclusive and just communities we envision for ourselves and our students. It may also help us see more clearly our own institutions of higher education that emphasize individual achievement and accomplishment at the expense of shared leadership and action. We can begin to examine community partnerships that enable and limit possibilities for collaborative agency with those persons and groups most affected by social inequalities and injustice (Littenberg-Tobias, 2014; Shabazz & Cooks, 2014). Through this lens, we begin to understand these issues as ones of mutual concern.
The stories help us understand an alternative narrative, or frame for engagement, that we might strive for in developing and sustaining partnerships, as it moves us to something more collaborative in our community and to civic engagement. Even as we understand real differences in power, we might aim for conditions that enable a possibility of a “we” being formed in student engagement over time, so that our students might have the opportunity to experience generativity and interdependence even as they develop individual competencies and dispositions.
This is the next step of our engaged research with young adults. As teachers, students, partners, and scholars, we are interested in how to understand and better support the struggle toward collaborative agency—and even collaborative solidarity—in young people’s civic engagement. We recognize that our understanding of collaborative agency is limited because our sample consists of students, but does not include the community partners or fellow citizens, whose voices are also needed to fully understand collaborative practice. In order to best support Bonner students and promote collaborative agency in their service, we need to do more work to understand multiple perspectives on this collaboration and how community partners and citizens experience it.
Toward this end, we look to organizers in contemporary civil rights movements, particularly Black trans intersectional leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement, who have written about the importance of recognizing power in relationships and social identities, but also forming networks and multiple alliances across identities (Within Our Lifetime, 2018). They emphasize a “we-ness” that works against exclusion and marginality, respecting the agency, resourcefulness, and interests of others while looking for common ground as peers. This perspective attends to differences in social backgrounds, current situations, and roles even as it commits to working together against oppressive circumstances and toward systems change (Bertaux et al., 2012; Brewster, 2018).
This notion of collaborative solidarity, coming out of public scholarship and organizing, speaks to the limits of collaborative agency, which may be seen in organizational contexts that do not directly address issues of power sharing. Our partnerships with clinical health care, education, and nonprofit organizations may have goals related to social transformation, but many of them remain structured in traditional, hierarchical forms of professional helping and decision making (Evans, 2015). These are often the most well-resourced and organized settings, and the sites most prepared to host students and other volunteers. Yet in these settings, our students may “work with” community partners in ways that enable collaborative agency with staff members, but not with clients or patrons.
Students involved in civic engagement, working with political campaigns, park conservancies, or human rights activism, are working in spaces of coalition-building, but also conflict. They are not just building diversity skills, though it is critical that they develop abilities to work with people of different social and cultural identities than their own (Bringle & Steinberg, 2010). They have an opportunity to work in solidarity with subordinated groups in ways that facilitate their joint empowerment (Dutt, 2018; Silva, 2017). Students’ own development is inexorably linked with development in the communities they join. This form of collaborative solidarity may not be a goal for all community and civic engagement, but we argue that it is a key feature of generative partnerships and should be claimed as part of our work as teachers and scholars charged with promoting the development of youth and with increasing understanding in our disciplines.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
