What is Community Participatory Action Research

This chapter describes the service-learning experience of the author in a graduate-level service-learning course for education students. It explains how that experience stimulated critical reflection on positionality and practice as a social justice-oriented educator-researcher who plans to conduct community-based collaborative research with teachers and students. The author approached the course with a critical perspective and endeavored to engage in service learning cautiously, careful to recognize and resist colonial assumptions, dynamics, and practices. In addition to its impact upon the author's development as a researcher, this chapter discusses how the service-learning experience also prompted deeper consideration of the ways in which pedagogy, knowledge production, and social justice transformation are linked, especially in a postcolonial framework. This chapter concludes with recommendations for doctoral students who are preparing for scholarly practice, and for researchers who seek to expand the current understanding of service learning with graduate students.