Envisioning  Scholar-Practitioner Collaborations

Communities of Practice in Education and Sport

A Volume in Research Focus on Education and Sport

Series Editor

Derek Van Rheenen University of California, Berkeley

Research Focus on Education and Sport

Derek Van Rheenen, Editor

Envisioning Scholar-Practitioner Collaborations: Communities of Practice in Education and Sport (2018)

edited by Derek Van Rheenen and Jean Marie DeOrnellas

Envisioning  Scholar-Practitioner Collaborations

Communities of Practice in Education and Sport

edited by

Derek Van Rheenen

University of California, Berkeley

and

Jean Marie DeOrnellas

University of Minnesota

-

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.

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ISBNs: 978-1-68123-997-2 (Paperback)

978-1-68123-998-9 (Hardcover)

978-1-68123-999-6 (ebook)

Copyright © 2018 Information Age Publishing Inc.

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Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Preface

Derek Van Rheenen and Jean Marie DeOrnellas

Introduction: Scholar-Practitioner Collaborations as Communities of Practice

Derek Van Rheenen and Jean Marie DeOrnellas

PART I

1. A Winning Team: Scholar-Practitioner Partnerships in  Sport for Development

Tom Keyte, Meredith A. Whitley, Ben Farai Sanders, Lana Rolfe, Matthew Mattila, Richard Christopher Pavlick, and Heather Louise Baillie Ridout

2. TEAMS (Teaching Excellence Achievement and Motivation Through Sport): Case Study of a University-Community Collaboration

Jan Sokol-Katz, Lorrie Basinger-Fleischman, Jomills Henry Braddock II, and Marvin P. Dawkins

3. Goalball as Engaged Scholarship

Derek Van Rheenen, Jean Marie DeOrnellas, Jonathan Newman, Rick Smith, Jessica N. Adams, Matt Grigorieff, and William T. Wyatt

4. Taking Academic Flight: Scholar-Baller Partnerships and Educational Achievement

C. Keith Harrison, Reggie Saunders, Troy Vincent, Laurel Traynowicz, Jean Boyd, and Cliff Parks

PART II

5. Collaboration Between Academics and Athletic Department Professionals: The Career Transition Scorecard as an Instructive Model

Eddie Comeaux

6. Proactive Program Improvement: Incorporating Assessment Into Student-Athlete Academic Support Services

Tony Mirabelli and Kirsten Hextrum

7. And the Twain Shall Meet: University of Miami Doctoral Student and Athletics Administrator Open Door to Unlikely Collaboration

Felecia Theune and Shirelle Jackson

8. Development of a Comprehensive Student-Athlete Engagement Program: The Warhawk Leadership Academy

Kristina Navarro and Justin Mistretta

9. Education and Athletics: A Case of Research Collaboration at Kansas State University

Lisa M. Rubin, Ian J. Connole, and Cori L. Pinkett

10. A Case Study of the University of Tulsa’s S.H.A.P.E. (Student Health, Athletic Performance, and Education) Project

Danielle C. Zanotti, Christina M. Carter, Kathleen C. Strunk, and Lisa DeMarni Cromer

Conclusion

Derek Van Rheenen and Jean Marie DeOrnellas

About the Authors

PREFACE

Derek Van Rheenen and Jean Marie DeOrnellas

Modern sport was born in the public schools of Britain, beginning a century-long relationship between two social institutions. This first volume of the AERA’s Special Interest Group Research Focus on Education and Sport recognizes the important work done, and yet to be done, at this dynamic nexus.

Bourdieu (1978) identifies the early 19th century adoption of games by upper-class students in English public schools as the genesis of modern sport. In the United States, similar developments occurred in American boarding schools (Bundgaard, 2005), universities (Chu, 1989; Smith, 2011), community colleges (VanOverbeke, 2013), and high schools (Gutowski, 1998; Pruter, 2013), where students organized the first interscholastic and intercollegiate games. These student-initiated efforts gradually ceded control to adult administration through efforts to provide greater funding, stability, and safety. The transition from an ad-hoc student activity to an organized, institutionalized part of American educational institutions has fundamentally changed both sport and schools.

The wide-spread existence of organized athletics in schools indicates that academic achievement is not the sole mission of educational institutions. Bourdieu (1978) writes,

What is at stake, it seems to me, in this debate (which goes far beyond sport), is a definition of bourgeois education.… To value education over instruction, character or willpower over intelligence, sport over culture, is to affirm, within the educational universe itself, the existence of a hierarchy irreducible to the strictly scholastic hierarchy which favors the second term in those oppositions … it means putting forward other criteria of “achievement” and other principles for legitimating achievement as alternatives to “academic achievement.” (p. 826)

Sports are a reflection of power struggles within society, all the more so as they are intertwined with education. Whether the relationship between sport and education is charged, embraced, ambivalent, or taken for granted, this institutional intersection remains central to the study of American society.

Scholarly writing at the nexus of education and sport is spread across numerous disciplines. Education researchers and psychologists have studied the effects of athletics on academic metrics (e.g., Fox, Barr-Anderson, Neumark-Sztainer, & Wall, 2010; Gaston-Gayles, 2004; Rees & Sabia, 2010; Trudeau & Shephard, 2008). Economists have considered the financial effects of intercollegiate athletics (e.g., Clotfelter, 2011; Kahn, 2007; Zimbalist, 2001). Sociologists have considered sport as a part of adolescent culture (e.g., Bissinger, 2015; Coleman, 1961; Eckert, 1989; Foley, 1990), and historians have analyzed the role of organized sports both inside and outside of schools (e.g., Thelin, 1996; Pruter, 2013; Smith, 2011; Sperber, 1998). Other writing has considered how the stadia, spectacle, and scandal of intercollegiate athletics might reinforce or undermine the mission of higher education (Bowen & Levin, 2011; Duderstadt, 2009; Shulman & Bowen, 2011; Simon, 1991).

Given the diverse array of historical writings and novel research at the intersection of American schools and sport, it is somewhat surprising that the century-old American Educational Research Association (AERA) has paid so little attention to this dynamic institutional relationship. While there is a Research on Learning and Instruction in Physical Education Special Interest Group (SIG), the national organization has demonstrated limited scholarly interest in the role and proper place of sport in the American educational system, from elementary to postsecondary schools.

Scholars have come to recognize that the relationship between sport and education is unique and consequential enough to be taken as its own subject, separate from general physical education in schools. Modern sport, as an institutionalized, competitive form of physical activity (Guttman, 1978; Loy, 1968), is a unique space that shapes the physical and social geography of American schools.

MAKING SPACE FOR LIKEMINDED CURIOSITIES

It was not until the first decade of the 21st century that the Research Focus on Education and Sport (RFES) Special Interest Group of AERA was established. Two young scholars, Dr. Keith Harrison and Dr. Eddie Comeaux, deserve primary credit for establishing the SIG. Their efforts began in 1998, when Harrison presented a paper introducing the Scholar-Baller program at the AERA national conference. Drawing on the legacy of All-American scholar-athlete and Renaissance man Paul Robeson, the paper introduced a program designed to recognize and reward student athletes who excel academically. According to Harrison, while his conference proposal was accepted, the paper was placed in a session that had little conceptual coherence.

Comeaux attended AERA and Dr. Harrison’s presentation as a graduate student. The two found that they shared a concern for the dearth of scholars presenting their work at the intersection of education and sport. As such, they collaborated to “bring folks together with likeminded curiosities” (Comeaux, personal communication, October 21, 2016). They also sought to create a place and space “to develop education-of-sport scholars” (Harrison, personal communication, October 24, 2016). Despite Dewey’s (1900) calls for an integration of mind and body (mens sana in corpore sano) within our schools over one hundred years prior, these scholars believed that research on education and sport had traditionally been marginalized within the academy. They wanted to secure an institutional presence within AERA to combat this historical marginalization.

When Comeaux and Harrison approached the AERA membership chair about establishing a new SIG, she originally suggested that they collaborate with the existing Research Focus on Learning and Instruction in Physical Education SIG. Comeaux and Harrison, however, felt strongly that the research interests and creative work of education-of-sport scholars were unique and had not been represented in AERA to date. Association leadership therefore tasked Comeaux, Harrison and their colleagues to establish an intellectual rationale for the proposed SIG. At a minimum, there would need to be 40 new or current AERA members committed to joining the new SIG, as stipulated in the association bylaws.1

In 2005, the Research Focus on Education and Sport was established within AERA. The RFES website reads,

The SIG provides a forum for the presentation, discussion, and encouragement of research and critical thought from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives on issues pertaining to the interplay of education and sport. A primary goal of Research Focus on Education and Sport is to advance and critique research on the interface of education and sport. We believe that the continual dialogue with a community of scholars, and the ensuing knowledge and multiple perspectives offered by this kind of engagement will push the boundaries of thought on education and sport research. (https://rfessig.wordpress.com/about/).2

TAKING STAKE OF WHERE AND WHO WE ARE AS A COMMUNITY

Just over a decade since the establishment of the Research Focus on Education and Sport Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), it seems timely to reexamine the SIG’s brief history and consider the future intellectual path of our community. This exercise in self-reflection may be useful for the SIG as we begin a book series intended to appeal to education and sport scholars broadly, and particularly to those working at this important institutional intersection.

An informal content analysis of conference sessions, papers, symposia and business meetings for the past twelve years reveals several themes. Initially, the members of the newly established SIG coalesced around a research agenda challenging the social construction of an academic-athletic binary within the public discourse. Scholars sought to deconstruct this institutional divide, creating space for a more nuanced reading of the intersections of school and sport (e.g., Bell, 2006; Bell & Strohmeyer, 2012; Bimper & Harrison, 2011; Hughes, Giles, & Satterfield, 2008; Mahiri & Van Rheenen, 2010).

Throughout SIG history, scholars have been concerned with how academics and athletics are often set up in opposition to one another in schools and on college and university campuses. This dichotomy has been the backdrop for studies on stereotypes (e.g., Blackmon, 2014; Peterson, 2009; Comeaux, Griffin, Bachman, & Porter, 2016), institutional forms of oppression (e.g., Long, Rahimi, & Liston, 2014; Van Rheenen, 2011, 2013), and noncognitive factors underlying and/or undermining the academic performance of participants (e.g., Martin, 2006; McKenzie, 2010; Roxbury & Shelton, 2013; Bulut et al., 2014; Bulut et al., 2015; Youakim, 2010).

Within this conflicted conceptual framework at the school/sport nexus, “education” has been narrowly defined, focused on academic metrics of success such as GPA, retention and graduation rates. The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA’s) mandated legislation surrounding the Academic Performance Rate (APR) and Graduation Success Rate (GSR) has likewise supported reductionist notions of student success. (Broughton, 2015; Comeaux, 2015; Van Rheenen, 2015), placing pressure on educational institutions to increasingly invest in academic support services for college athletes (Hirko, 2014; Suggs, 2014; Wolverton, 2008).

Recent scholarship has sought to predict and positively influence students’ educational experiences more broadly, promoting improved campus climate (e.g., Bernhard, 2016; Comeaux & Fuentes, 2014; Jones, Bell, & Liu, 2015; Rankin et al., 2013; Ziegler, Cameron, & Griffin, 2014), heightened sense of belonging (e.g., Bernhard, 2012; Fearon, Barnard-Brak, Robinson, & Harris, 2011; Fearon, Barnard-Brak, Robinson, & Sulak, 2012; Gaston-Gayles, Crandall & Morin, 2016) and a more holistic model of development (e.g., Comeaux & Harrison, 2011; Navarro, 2014). Part of this work has involved giving student athletes a voice, allowing participants to describe their own lived experiences so as to better inform potential change (e.g., Bimper, 2013; Browning, 2016; Flowers, 2010; Godfrey, 2010; Van Rheenen, Minjares, McNeil, & Atwood, 2011). These efforts have intentionally confronted some of the reductionist and transactional efforts at promoting academic performance.

The trend toward analysis of the broader experience of student-athletes on college campuses. Recently the SIG has been a place for these professionals to investigate and share best practices. At the national conference in 2015, for example, the SIG sponsored a panel titled “Bridging Scholar -Practitioner Gaps in Intercollegiate Athletics and Higher Education.” In Comeaux’s (2015) edited volume, Making the Connection: Data-Informed Practices in Academic Support Centers for College Athletes, the chapters offer a range of evidence-based approaches to enhance current practices of those directly working with college athletes. At the 2016 AERA national conference in Washington DC, the SIG hosted a panel discussion titled “Intersections of Scholar-Practitioner Identities: Data-Driven Practices at the Nexus of Sport and Education.” “Student development,” a growing part of many intercollegiate athletic departments, has enjoyed a similar expansion within the SIG, complementing the analyses that had previously been completed around student athlete transitions, career and leadership development, and personal growth (e.g., Bell & Pasku, 2016; Flowers, Luzynski, & Zamani-Gallaher, 2013; Harris, Kelly, Lovelace, Slater, & Fekadu, 2016; Haslerig & Navarro, 2014; Hoffman, Hoffman, & Suggs, 2011; Navarro & McCormick, 2016; Navarro & Mamero, 2014).

THE ROAD AHEAD: ENGAGED SCHOLARSHIP AND MEANINGFUL RESEARCH

To date, the RFES SIG has focused almost exclusively on higher education and intercollegiate athletics. The research focus of the SIG has likewise given primary attention to higher levels of competition (Division I vs. Divisions II and III), male over female participants, and revenue (football and men’s basketball) over Olympic or nonrevenue sports. As noted previously, the development of the Research Focus on Education and Sport SIG required a rationale distinct from the Research on Learning and Instruction in Physical Education SIG within AERA, a network primarily interested in the K–12 school experience. This organizational identity has meant that the scholarship that has emerged from the RFES SIG has remained somewhat narrow in focus.

A recent trend towards promoting scholar-practitioner collaborations in the RFES SIG has been an area of discord among its members, especially as the SIG has sought to articulate a coherent organizational identity. As former SIG chair Dr. Lydia Bell persuasively argued, “AERA is basically an organization for academics. While some scholars are also practitioners, the focus of the organization is to promote scholarship, foster rigorous educational research, and provide mentorship for academics” (Bell, personal communication, September 8, 2016, emphasis original).

Indeed, AERA is an association focused on research; scholars have been the primary designers and architects of research within higher education. In the second decade of the 21st century, the overarching challenge at the nexus of education and sport research appears to be one of academic relevance and the production of meaningful, applicable scholarship. Particularly within the new millennium and current political climate, higher education has had to respond to increasing expectations of relevance in a global knowledge society and economy (Brennan, 2007; Cummings, 2006; Cummings & Teichler, 2015). Increased competition among research institutions worldwide, reflected in the quest for international rankings, has led colleges and universities to espouse a balance between basic and applied research rather than solely pursuing knowledge for its own sake. Scholarship at the intersection of education and sport remains a fertile field for the combined production and dissemination of basic and applied research.

The RFES SIG members have done an admirable job of challenging the socially constructed binaries that set up school and sport and the student and athlete as oppositional identities. Given the historical marginalization of this community of researchers to date, we must likewise be cautious not to reify elitist distinctions between scholar and practitioner.

This initial book seeks to explore the scholar-practitioner concept not as an either/or proposition but as an and/plus potentiality. Specifically, engaged or public scholarship supporting communities of practice seeks to democratize the generation of knowledge. Knowledge, in turn, informs best practices, particularly when professionals work side by side with scholars invested in novel and meaningful research projects. The following chapters highlight the important work being done through collaborations of scholars and practitioners at the intersection of education and sport.

NOTES

The bylaws now stipulate that 75 members are required to maintain Special Interest Group (SIG) status.

We would like to thank Dr. Jennifer Hoffman, one of the early participants of the SIG, who currently houses the SIG website at the University of Washington.

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INTRODUCTION

Scholar-Practitioner Collaborations as Communities of Practice

Derek Van Rheenen and Jean Marie DeOrnellas

In his “Programme for a Sociology of Sport,” Bourdieu (1988) writes,

A number of the obstacles to a scientific sociology of sport stem from the fact that the sociologists of sport are, so to speak, doubly dominated, both in the universe of sociologists and in the universe of sport…. If you think about it, by developing this paradigm, one could perhaps find here the basis of the particular difficulties encountered by the sociology of sport: it is disdained by sociologists, and despised by sportspeople. The logic of the social division of labour tends to reproduce itself in the division of scientific labour. One thus has, on the one side, people who know sport very well in the practical sense but can’t talk about it and, on the other, people who don’t know sport at all well on the practical level and who could talk about it but disdain to do so, or do so badly. (p. 156)

Despite Bourdieu’s privileging certain ways of knowing over others, scholars and practitioners at the nexus of education and sport suffer a similar social division of labor. And yet, scholar-practitioner collaborations are at the core of work on athletics and schools. As Bourdieu notes, sport scholarship remains relatively underdeveloped. But athletics is also a place that offers tremendous potential for interactions between scholars and practitioners to engage in applied research. It is a site in which social and moral-ethical issues “of interest to both scholars and practitioners, such as student rights and educational and social equity, exist. As evidenced in this volume, the intersection of sport and education is a place where scholars who are interested in conducting impactful research can find partners in inquisitive and informed practitioners. We also see how universities are increasingly creating scholar-practitioner positions that reside at this dynamic intersection. Several authors in this book occupy these unique positions.

As the first book in a series from the American Educational Research Association Research Focus on Education and Sport Special Interest Group, this volume presents several case studies of collaborations at the nexus of education and sport. In particular, the volume hopes to explore how partnerships between scholars and practitioners can simultaneously generate new knowledge and contribute to the development or improvement of effective practices. The boundary between these roles is often permeable, allowing crossings in which scholars participate in the everyday world of practitioners, while practitioners engage in novel research in order to generate new knowledge. In this vein, Wasserman and Kram (2009, p. 16) conceive of the scholar-practitioner as “a continuum of roles, rather than just one identity where pure scholar and pure practitioner anchor each end of the continuum.” One might not identify as a scholar or researcher but learn to think like one and become an integrated and valued member of a research group and/or project. Researchers might likewise learn to think like practitioners and in turn might inform, even alter, the original research agenda. Lessons learned from such reflections demonstrate the accomplishments, challenges, and future opportunities of these scholar-practitioner partnerships.

In the call for chapters for this volume, then, we invited contributors to help develop a coherent, rigorous, and relevant body of knowledge that informs best practices at the intersection of sport and education. The development of this knowledge intentionally sought a balance between basic and applied research, placing a premium on collaborations between experts in a variety of fields and at sites in which educational work takes place. As such, research at the intersection of education and sport draws on the lived experiences, demonstrated expertise, and epistemological understandings of both scholars and practitioners. We challenged collaborators to work together to address four guiding questions:

How do scholar-practitioner collaborations form? How do scholars engage practitioners within the research process? How do practitioners initiate these collaborations and help frame the most pressing research questions?

How do scholars and practitioners work together within their partnerships? What are challenges to this work, and how might practitioners and scholars collaborate in a way that is mutually beneficial?

How can these collaborations achieve their intended outcomes, and what are the benefits from these collaborations?

Are the findings, interventions, and best practices generalizable? Where successful, can these practices be replicated?

The collaborations presented within this volume represent a variety of sites, roles, and research agendas within education and sport. Each of these collaborations has a unique set of research questions, programmatic goals and findings. For the purpose of this book, however, we are most interested in the partnership process across these varied case studies. Specifically, contributing authors within this volume have described the nature of their collaborations—for whom and by whom are these collaborations forged—such that the “findings” are presented as lessons learned from the process of collaboration.

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

Social learning theory, especially the idea of communities of practice, undergirds this project. Introduced by Lave and Wenger (1991), “communities of practice” refer to the informal networks formed through shared enterprise. Lave and Wenger view participation as central to the social process of learning. Under their conceptualization, knowledge and meaning are based on the practices of communities and the identities that individuals build in relation to those communities.

Social learning theory reminds us that we are constantly learning. The case studies presented in this book assume that participants in education and athletic communities of practice have valuable insights to share, but also that the active engagement involved in collaboration is a valuable learning experience in and of itself. A commitment to the development of shared understanding and knowledge likewise deepens participants’ sense of belonging and identity within the larger community of practice and has the potential to bridge the historical divide of scholar and practitioner.

One of the greatest challenges to building communities of practice at the intersection of school and sport is that scholar-practitioner collaborations have tended to be devalued within the academy. Scholars are rewarded for publishing basic research in the promotion and tenure process, often more than for their teaching and mentorship of students. Basic research—theory building and the generation of knowledge for knowledge sake—has enjoyed greater prestige than applied research, particularly at higher education institutions who identify as Research 1 (R1) or doctoral universities.

Practitioners, on the other hand, are reviewed based upon their job responsibilities and performance expectations. Seldom do these expectations include participation in the production of novel forms of knowledge or even participation in evidence-based assessments of the programmatic work in which these professionals are engaged. Practitioners may not even be encouraged to familiarize themselves with research in the field, despite how this scholarship might help improve their daily practice.

Many participants in this volume have overcome these limitations in their jobs to expand the vision of their work. In doing so, they recognize the benefit of a variety of types of expertise, coming together as a community to build new ways of knowing that often shift the way they approach their work.

THE CHAPTERS

This volume includes ten unique chapters, providing a rich collection of scholar-practitioner collaborations. Part I (Chapters 1–4) highlights collaborations that reach outside educational institutions to involve community partners, not-for-profit organizations, multi-national companies, or even professional sports organizations. These chapters reveal the potential of public scholarship that engages with community issues at the intersection of sport and education. Part II (Chapters 5–10) describes collaborations within American higher education. These include programs and services developed intentionally at this intersection, attempting to enhance participant experience and optimal development. These case studies serve as potential blueprints to replicate in other institutional contexts.

The first chapter, “A Winning Team: Scholar-Practitioner Partnerships in Sport for Development,” details the findings of a focus group on evaluation within the sport for development (S4D) field. The contributors, Tom Keyte, Meredith A. Whitley, Ben Farai Sanders, Lana Rolfe, Matthew Mattila, Richard Christopher Pavlick, and Heather Louise Baillie Ridout, represent a variety of universities and not-for-profit organizations and came together to reflect on their experiences within scholar-practitioner collaborations “as representatives of a variety of universities and not for profit organizations. These reflections draw on their combined expertise in order to provide a set of best practices for academic institutions and non-governmental organizations to collaborate with each other. While much of their work has revolved around scholarly evaluations of practitioner S4D programs, they are sensitive to “approaches that may subjugate knowledge and prioritize the voices and perceptions of scholars rather than practitioners and participants in the field” (see Chapter 1, Introduction). Citing both the challenges and benefits of cross-cultural collaborations, the authors call for an increased rigor in research and assessment to both inform future practice and generate new forms of knowledge in the international S4D field.

Chapter 2, “TEAMS: A Case Study of a University-Community Collaboration,” highlights the development of a broad-based collaboration that provided and evaluated sport-themed academic curriculum to local elementary school children in an after-school program through the University of Miami’s Center for Research on Sport in Society (CRSS). As described by the contributors of this chapter, Jan Sokol-Katz, Lorrie Basinger-Fleishman, Jomills Henry Braddock II, and Marvin P. Hawkins, the Teaching Excellence, Achievement and Motivating through Sport (TEAMS) program was highly successful, demonstrating significantly higher reading and mathematics standardized test scores, as well as academic self-concept, among participating students. Their narrative reveals the complexity of a university-community collaboration that brought together faculty, graduate students, public school teachers, YMCA counselors, and parents in support of youth at some of the most underresourced schools in Miami-Dade County.

The third chapter, written by Derek Van Rheenen, Jean Marie DeOrnellas, Jonathan Newman, Rick Smith, Jessica N. Adams, Matt Grigorieff, and William T. Wyatt, similarly describes a university-community collaboration and the implementation of a unique academic course. This collaboration between a local nonprofit organization and university staff, faculty, and students aimed to increase athletic opportunities for students with physical disabilities. The course included students to disability studies while learning to play a sport specifically designed for athletes with visual impairments. The chapter “Goalball as Engaged Scholarship” provides a potential blueprint for post-secondary institutions to meet recent legal mandates that expand the responsibility of schools to serve all students, including those with disabilities.

In “Taking Academic Flight: Scholar-Baller Partnerships and Educational Achievement,” contributors C. Keith Harrison, Reggie Saunders, Troy Vincent, Laurel Traynowicz, Jean Boyd, and Cliff Parks, describe a highly successful collaboration in support of developing academic achievement and identity among youth who have often prioritized sports above all else. Their chapter demonstrates how Scholar-Baller, a not-for-profit organization, has pursued its mission through partnerships with high schools, community colleges and universities, as well as the NFL and Nike’s Jordan Brand. Their creative approach appeals to the young people it seeks to serve by developing culturally relevant curriculum and its own brand that intentionally bridges the gap between education, sport, and entertainment. The Scholar-Baller case study provides insights on how personal relationships can lead to mutually-beneficial organizational partnerships in support of youth development.

Part II outlines some of the ways in which scholar-practitioner partnerships take place within American higher education. Chapters 5 and 6 bring us inside the evaluation process of student-athlete support units, while Chapters 7–10 discuss scholar-practitioner activity in creating, implementing, and improving programming for NCAA student-athletes. These chapters indicate the variety of individuals and roles within scholar-practitioner collaborations. Several of the contributors in this section identify as scholar-practitioners themselves, working to balance the need for research rigor and assessment with program implementation and design.

In Chapter 5, “Collaboration between Academics and Athletic Department Professionals,” scholar Eddie Comeaux provides an equity-minded and action-oriented instrument, the Career Transition Scorecard (CTS), to help bridge current gaps between research and practice in academic support centers for student athletes. The CTS aims to improve educational outcomes for student athletes through collaborations focused on deliberate, data-driven assessment, encouraging practitioners to become more rigorous evaluators of their own programs and services. As Comeaux notes, “practitioner researchers essentially become knowledge makers rather than merely knowledge users” (see Chapter 5, The Career Transition Scorecard, emphasis original). Like many of the contributions in this volume, the CTS reflects a model or program that can be utilized across multiple sites, tailored to meet the specific needs of a given institutional context.

Tony Mirabelli and Kirsten Hextrum provide another example of program evaluation in Chapter 6, “Proactive Program Improvement: Incorporating Assessment into Student-Athlete Academic Support Services.” Through campus collaborations between the Graduate School of Education, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the Athletic Study Center at the University of California, Berkeley, these scholar-practitioners were able to improve student outcomes over time as a result of theoretically-grounded and evidence-based assessment. Providing specific institutional and historical context, these authors document the difficult but highly beneficial process of program review when charged with meeting increasing student demand and stakeholder expectations. As an iterative and self-reflective process, this case study evidences effective ways in which support service programs for student-athletes can successfully align institutional need and departmental mission with measurable objectives and goals.

In Chapter 7, “And the Twain Shall Meet: University of Miami Doctoral Student and Athletics Administrator Open Door to Unlikely Collaboration,” Felecia Theune and Shirelle Jackson describe an ongoing career development project that emerged as a result of their partnership within the athletic support unit at the University of Miami. Citing Kipling’s The Ballad of East and West (1889), these contributors acknowledge the cultural divide that often exists between scholars/researchers who study college athletics and the practitioners (e.g., academic advisors, learning specialists and administrators) who work directly with student-athletes. By embracing each other’s strengths, experiences, and perspectives, the doctoral student Theune and athletics administrator Jackson were able to bridge this divide, using learning theory to ground their interactions while building a career development program.

Chapter 8, “Development of a Comprehensive Student-Athlete Engagement Program: The Warhawk Leadership Academy,” similarly details the creation of theoretically-grounded student-athlete development programming. In her dual role as faculty and athletics administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Kristina Navarro spearheaded extensive and intentional collaborations on and off campus to create the Warhawk Leadership Academy. The Warhawk Leadership Academy (WLA) began with no operating budget but has blossomed into a comprehensive student-athlete development program that serves all student-athletes at the institution and includes community outreach, career exploration, and global engagement components. The WLA case study demonstrates the unique placement of scholar-practitioners (and graduate students as budding scholar-practitioners) within a growing number of NCAA institutions, as well as the innovative work they can do when they effectively develop partnerships on and off campus.

In Chapter 9, “Education and Athletics: A Case of Research Collaboration at Kansas State University,” Lisa M. Rubin, Ian J. Connole and Cori L. Pickett outline a research partnership between the Department of Athletics and the College of Education. Specifically, this collaboration includes a faculty member from the College of Education and staff from K-State’s Student-Athlete Enhancement Center, and focuses on the ongoing evaluation of the K-State Leadership Academy for Student-Athletes. The chapter includes personal reflections from each of the participants, who identify as practitioner, scholar-practitioner, and scientist-practitioner. Their reflections demonstrate the possibilities for scholar-practitioner collaborations to provide opportunities for personal and professional growth for the collaboration participations, in addition to their potential to improve practice. In developing evidence-based programming, the three contributors utilized theoretically grounded and reliable research instruments to improve services to student-athletes.

In the final chapter, Danielle C. Zanotti, Christina Michelle Carter, Kathleen C. Strunk and Lisa DeMarni Cromer describe the Student Health, Athletic Performance and Education (SHAPE) Project, a unique collaboration between the University of Tulsa’s athletics department and Institute of Trauma, Adversity and Injustice (TITAN), an interdisciplinary research institute at the same university. SHAPE’s organizers identify themselves as “scientist-practitioners,” and performed a needs assessment to determine the interest in, and feasibility of, providing sport psychology programming to support the psychological well-being of student-athletes at this university. The development of SHAPE provides an exemplary model for how individuals and organizations across campus that share compatible goals can develop mutually-beneficial collaborations. The contributors recognize the challenges of their unique structure and provide specific remedies for collaborations between campus organizations.

The purpose of this book, then, is to outline the important intellectual and social work of scholar-practitioners at the nexus of institutional sport and education at a variety of sites, both in school and in nonschool settings. This inaugural text, in a series sponsored by the Research Focus on Education and Sport Special Interest Group of American Educational Research Association (AERA), seeks to reveal a number of educational spaces in which this critical work takes place. It is our hope that this book will encourage the creation of more educational spaces where scholars and practitioners can collaborate and generate new understandings of the world we know. We characterize this effort as mutually beneficial and respectful, engendering a vision of hope, exploration and educational transformation.

REFERENCES

Bourdieu, P. (1988). Program for a sociology of sport. Sociology of Sport Journal, 5(2), 153–161.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wasserman, I. C., & Kram, K. E. (2009). Enacting the scholar-practitioner role: An exploration of narratives. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 45(1), 12–38.