Hanna Keller

EXPL291

7 February 2019

Reflection B

Morton’s “Starfish Hurling and Community Service” essay both challenges and

affirms my view of service. Originally, upon reading the starfish story, I have to admit

that I initially related to the protagonist hurling starfish into the sea to save them. I felt

that they were right in their endeavour to save as many starfish as they could, and I

believed that the analogy to community service and doing good deeds was profound.

However, when Morton began to dissect the fallacies present in the story, I realized the

errors in my perspective. Unlike people, the starfish are completely passive, have no

voice, and are ultimately an inappropriate comparison for the community constituents

that researchers aim to help. Community constituents, unlike the starfish present in the

story, often do not blindly trust those who perform community-based research. The

ignorance of intervening in ecosystems without prior knowledge of how those

ecosystems work is yet another important point that Morton makes in response to the

starfish allegory. Morton is essentially warning potential researchers - whether they be

educators like faculty members or students engaged in university-facilitated service - to

not enter blindly into the world of community-based research. It is an extremely

dangerous endeavour to pursue this kind of research without first knowing extensive

information about the community partners and about the community itself - as an

apparent outsider, it is not an easy task to immerse oneself in the process of community
service without becoming familiar with how the community functions, in terms of its

individual components and as a whole. Though it may initially seem rather noble to rush

headfirst into community service, or to do good wherever and whenever one can, this

method of blind confidence in one’s altruistic abilities may ultimately cause more harm

than is intended. When those with more privilege perform research on human subjects

in an attempt to aid the community’s development - after failing to educate themselves -

the research project can quickly backfire. Additionally, Morton and Stoecker in particular

both teach us that we must be careful with exactly how we go about performing our

research - again, community-based research is more collaborative than anything.

Research must therefore be conducted with and not on community constituents and

partners.

Stoecker’s text also introduced me to the concept of extensive preparation in

anticipation of community-based research. Without sufficient preparation and planning

prior to embarking on a service-affiliated research project, these projects are almost

destined to fail in their objective to improve the well-being of the communities in which

they are conducted. Before reading the chapters in Stoecker’s text, I was, quite frankly,

unaware of just how much organization was needed in order to begin the actual

research portion of the project. For instance, asking the right questions about potential

community partners - while community partners perform their own investigations into the

researchers - is crucial to achieving a better and more holistic understanding of the

possibilities, opportunities, or even drawbacks that could arise during collaboration on a

research project. Finding sufficient resources in the community to aid in the

implementation of social change, or to help conduct research more efficiently, is yet

another critical step in the preparatory process, as is having an individual - or a small

group of individuals - prepared to lead and organize the research. The four-step project

cycle (Diagnose, Prescribe, Implement, and Evaluate) made understanding the

logistical side of research much easier. When you have a plan in place, research is

much more efficient, providing more productive results and more effective

implementation techniques for social change.

The ABCD model further emphasized to me the need for proper preparation and

organization when it comes to community-based research. Learning what resources are

available in the community to you as a researcher is not only extremely beneficial, but

imperative. Finding the strengths in a community - what can be utilized in resolving

issues and improving the community as a whole - is just as important (if not more

important) than assessing the weaknesses in the community, or what may need

resolving. Knowing the full extent of the research situation means not only realizing

what to fix, but also how to best go about fixing it, which includes cultivating influence

and power in the community. Reaching out to local businesses and organizations

outside of the community partner with which one is conducting research is crucial to

actually implementing research. Finding partners with economic power or large public

spaces with which to engage with the community can prove immensely beneficial in the

long run.