Unearthing Assumptions of Engaged Research About (Indigenous) Engagement Within School Communities

This paper explores engagement through multiple prisms: engagement in the context of community-oriented university research, engagement conducted under the auspices of a research partnership with a community organisation that itself sponsors school-community engagement; and engagement as the subject of research. In the research presented here, we are exploring the dynamics and levels of engagement in school-parent relationships in two urban and one regional primary school in the Northern Territory, with a particular emphasis on the carers responsible for Indigenous students in these community settings.
Prompted by our ‘engagement’ with schools and the not-for-profit community development organisation, this research started with the following assumption – that parental engagement with schools has positive effects on children’s educational outcomes, and that this engagement can be generated through the cultivation of enablers. This paper points to the need to re-conceptualise this assumption and examines the pressures from a variety of community and government organisations for collaborative researcher partnerships or university researchers to engage with industry partners (our relationships of engagement) in shaping a priori assumptions about engagement (our inquiry topic).