Students-as-partners and engaged scholarship: Complementary frameworks

This chapter reflects on studying capstones as a capstone project. The University of Calgary's undergraduate community rehabilitation and disability studies program, where author Rankin is on the faculty, requires a practicum experience as its capstone. To enable integrative learning for our student researchers, we employed a SaP approach, which can be defined as a “reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualization, decision-making, implementation, investigation, or analysis”. Full participation first means building pathways to social and economic citizenship, particularly for students from communities that have not been afforded access or enabled to succeed. Second, it involves connecting the knowledge resources of the academy with the pressing and complex problems facing multiple communities.