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Editorial: Descending from the Ivory Tower: The Challenges and Successes of Community Engagement for Mutual Learning

The aim of this journal is to offer a platform for disseminating research that promotes social change. As an editor of the journal, I believe the ultimate purpose of education is to improve quality of life for all, and this aim must entail moving towards a more socially just society. Educational research should make important epistemological and ontological contributions to social improvement through theories and practices that make a real difference in the lives of people. In theory, academics in higher education can influence social change by integrating the core academic tasks of teaching, research, and community engagement through community-based research and/or service learning. In practice, the process is not so simple.The aim of this themed edition is to share research that promotes participatory forms of community engagement that seek to "break down the distinction between researchers and researched" (Gaventa, 1991, pp. 121-122) to enable collaborative generation of knowledge and the development of awareness as catalyst to mobilise for social change. However, when tertiary researchers decide to descend from their "ivory towers" to work with communities, they are often faced with challenges that hinder their attempts to engage in a collaborative manner with community partners. This is to be expected, because the life experiences of academic researchers and community members living in contexts of poverty and social injustice are usually worlds apart. Researchers trained to be objective, uninvolved "truth" seekers often find it difficult to partner with people who are used to a less clinical approach to interaction and decision making. Engaging authentically with community members requires researchers to invest emotionally in the lives of others, to develop a strong sense of empathy, and to genuinely care about those they are professing to help. Traditionally, research has been conducted on people, rather than with them. Researchers have excluded participants from the research process-what to research, how to do it, and what to do with the results. As academics, we have made decisions on behalf of others, justifying this violation of democratic values by citing our superior knowledge of theory and methodology.This reasoning is no longer acceptable; for knowledge to be converted to relevant, sustainable change, we have to begin to grapple with the intellectual conundrum of how to distribute more evenly the fruits of democracy (Wood, 2014). To do this, we have to be able to develop a trusting relationship with community partners so that we can work together to generate knowledge that will lead to improved quality of life and a more socially just way of being. As researchers, we are in as much need of epistemological emancipation as those we call our community participants.As Hardman (2014) argued, we need an epistemology of engagement that allows for the voices of the different stakeholders in the research to be heard and listened to, so that new knowledge can be synergistically created from combined wisdom. For this to happen, I argue that the research paradigm has to be emancipatory and transformative, the research design must be participatory, and findings have to be disseminated where they will make a difference. We need methodologies that take cognisance of the fact that "change unfolds in non-linear ways, paradoxes abound, creative solutions arise out of interaction under conditions of uncertainty, diversity and instability (Fullan, 1994, p. 4). Such approaches to research allow for an engagement that "provides a space for generative learning, which is explorative in nature, rather than exploitative" (Flardman, 2014, p. 98).Some twenty years ago, Nash (1993, p. 54) said "the fundamental dilemma is that participatory researchers who want to work with marginalised communities must demonstrate how their work is significant for the lives, needs and aspirations of . . . communities." Today, that dilemma still exists, and this themed issue is aimed at promoting debate and contributing to the generation of knowledge in this under theorised field. …