Keywords

Introduction

Recently, voices have been raised calling for increased collaboration between academia and society, stemming from expectations that collaboration will make universities matter by producing new knowledge for solving societal problems related to urgent issues such as inequality, health, environmental degradation, and climate change (Benneworth et al., 2017; Jonsson et al., 2021). However, forging the path to making universities matter through fruitful collaboration demands careful consideration. On the one hand, collaboration can enrich the scholarly work of teachers and researchers by producing empirical data and infrastructure, inspiring new research endeavors (Perez Vico, 2018; Perez Vico & Hallonsten, 2019), and opening up new conversations and mutual learning opportunities (Jonsson, 2019; Terosky, 2018). On the other hand, societal collaboration requires time, effort, and skills to identify common interests and build trust (Perkmann & Walsh, 2009; Tartari & Breschi, 2012). In addition, academic values such as openness and independence may influence the incentives for collaboration (Bruneel et al., 2010; Slaughter et al., 2002). To be better equipped for an enriching societal collaboration, managers, policymakers, and individual scholars need to acknowledge both the challenges and the opportunities, not least if the ambition is to develop higher education institutions (HEIs) where collaboration can proceed in a reflective and rigorous way.

While we see an increasing call for scholars to engage and collaborate with actors outside of academia, it becomes apparent that there are multifaceted interpretations and interconnected concepts that may pose challenges or intricacies when it comes to heeding these calls. Despite conceptual overlaps, we can identify two distinct approaches to societal collaboration from a scholarly standpoint: as an object of study and as a scientific endeavor. Scholars who approach societal collaboration as an object of study investigate and analyze its various aspects, such as motivations, processes, conditions, outcomes, and challenges, and gain an understanding of the dynamics, impacts, and factors that contribute to effective collaboration between academia and external stakeholders. Concepts that relate to societal collaboration as an object of study and that have paved the way for these insights include, among others, academic engagement (Perkmann et al., 2021), third-stream activities (Molas-Gallart et al., 2002), and productive interactions (Spaapen & Van Drooge, 2011). Societal collaboration can also be regarded as a scientific endeavor in and of itself. This viewpoint emphasizes the use of scientific principles, methodologies, and rigorous investigation to advance the practice of collaborative engagement. The scholarship of engagement by Boyer (1996), integrated research (Van Kerkhoff, 2014), engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007), and various approaches connected to action research (Reason & Bradbury, 2008) are examples of this standpoint.

Although these two scholarly standpoints have had successful developments on their own, they have rarely cross-fertilized and informed each other, representing undeveloped potential. Drawing on a synthesis of these concepts, adapted for the Swedish higher education context following the origin of this study, we define societal collaboration as the participative form of academic work (integrated into research, teaching, and outreach) that involves engagement with various types of actors outside of academia (Perez Vico, 2018).

Despite the increased contemporary demand for engagement and collaboration, the idea of strengthening the societal engagement of academia is not new. Early on, Ernest Boyer (1990, 1996) called for including engagement as an integral part of the “academic scholarship” in which societal collaboration and engagement are regarded as directly tied to the academic discipline and thus require the rigor, critical reflection, and accountability traditionally associated with research. Developing such skills and academic rigor entails reflecting on existing practices and acquiring comprehensive academic knowledge about societal collaboration. It requires linking theory with practice in a critical and nuanced way, and engagement in reflexivity (cf. Alvesson, 2007; Cunliffe, 2002; Jonsson et al., 2023). Scholars need to scrutinize underlying assumptions about their perceived and enacted societal role and their engagement.

Yet, when looking into various efforts to organize for societal collaboration, we detect a lack of reflexivity related to these issues in the everyday work of contemporary academics. Based on this observation, and with the intention of creating a space for reflexivity to draw on the idea of a “reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration” as an extension of Boyer’s argument about “scholarship of engagement,” we initiated a cross-disciplinary pilot course to discuss these issues.

The motivation for initiating a pilot course was that faculty education initiatives have been highlighted as a promising tool for scholarship development (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). Moreover, scholars have identified a need to strengthen the capability of HEI employees through sharing and building on existing knowledge on societal engagement and collaboration from both theory and practice (cf. Jonsson et al., 2021). This need has also been acknowledged outside of Sweden as scholars have pointed to the lack of theoretical framing in faculty development initiatives for societal engagement and collaboration (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). Yet, while the literature has yielded important insights about the conditions for societal engagement and collaboration in academia, covering issues such as academic promotion (Crookes et al., 2015; Glass et al., 2011) and supportive institutional structures (Giles, 2008; Sandmann et al., 2008), less attention has been given to the particular role that education initiatives geared toward faculty can play in fostering a long-term and integrated societal collaboration capacity in HEIs (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). Further, most initiatives, as well as literature on faculty development interventions related to societal engagement and collaboration, concern descriptions of shorter consultations, workshops, or fellowship programs (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017).

In this regard, there is little recognition of the role of courses targeting collective reflections among diverse participants in developing skills and academic rigor toward a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration. This chapter offers insights from a case study of a cross-disciplinary pilot course offered to faculty and support staff at Swedish universities, which corresponded to approximately three weeks of work spread over three months. The study aims to explore how skills and academic rigor for engaging in societal collaboration can be developed toward a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration and engagement. Building on the experiences from the pilot course, we explore and discuss the participants’ reflections on how their partaking in the course may support a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration. The findings are relevant for scholars, university management, and policy actors interested in fostering HEIs’ long-term and integrated societal collaboration capacity.

Means for Strengthening a Scholarship of Societal Collaboration Through Reflexivity

The need to develop skills and capabilities for societal collaboration was one of the aspects Boyer (1990) raised in his argument for expanding the notion of scholarship. He suggested four broader forms of scholarship: discovery, integration, application, and teaching. Compared to academia’s efforts to embrace the scholarship of teaching (Hutchings & Shulman Lee, 1999), less attention has been given to societal engagement and collaboration, which are important aspects of the other forms of scholarship, particularly the scholarship of discovery and application. Nevertheless, there has been a noteworthy drive to incorporate Boyer’s views into faculty development in the US (Blanchard et al., 2009), although there has been much less interest in doing so in a European context.

Following Boyer’s (1996) view, societal collaboration concerns ensuring a societal impact from academic work while at the same time enriching academic work itself. In this regard, theory and practice offer different and complementary insights into phenomena that pave the way for a thicker understanding of reality (Perez Vico, 2018; Van de Ven, 2007). Boyer (1990) distinguishes between general services that academics provide to a community and scholarship activities that are directly tied to the academic discipline, thus requiring the rigor, critical reflection, and accountability traditionally associated with research. Based on this logic, societal collaboration is not considered a third mission but entails teaching, research, and outreach. Therefore, according to Boyer’s distinction, societal collaboration should be viewed as an integral part of academic tasks rather than a separate one—a view that echoes that of many scholars (e.g., Laredo, 2007; Nedeva, 2008). This alignment of perspectives among scholars not only reinforces the significance of integrating societal collaboration into academic endeavors but also underscores the growing recognition within the scholarly community of the transformative potential and value of collaborative engagement with external stakeholders.

Although Boyer (1990, 1996) repeatedly emphasized the need for this consideration under the term “scholarship of engagement,” and despite some interest in collaborative scholarship approaches (e.g., Van de Ven, 2007), societal collaboration has not seen the same comprehensive scholarly journey as teaching has. While teaching has long been recognized as a core component of academic work, with pedagogical theories and practices extensively studied and developed, the exploration and understanding of societal collaboration as an academic skill have not received comparable attention. Scholarship in teaching has flourished, with research and discourse focusing on effective teaching methods, curriculum development, student learning outcomes, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. In contrast, the scholarly investigation of societal collaboration as an academic practice and skill, its methodologies, impact, and integration within academic disciplines, remains comparatively limited.

The concept of reflexivity has been an important component in both the scholarly development of teaching and the development of scholarly rigor in general (Alvesson, 2007; Cunliffe, 2002). Through a reflexive approach, academics can engage in continuous questioning, evaluation, and refinement of their ideas and theories, as well as of the impact of their teaching approaches and practices. Reflexivity prompts researchers and educators to engage in ongoing dialogue with themselves, their peers, and their broader communities, fostering a spirit of intellectual curiosity, growth, and adaptability.

Informed by the promises of reflexivity to support learning and develop academic rigor, we suggest that a “scholarship of engagement” should also include reflexivity as it provides a space for debating assumptions and differences in practices (Lövbrand, 2011; Phillips et al., 2013). Reflexivity enables academics to scrutinize current collaboration strategies, values, and beliefs and identify new options and alternative ways of collaborating. In this way, reflexivity can assist academics in making informed decisions about when and how to engage in collaboration, thus paving the way for developing a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration.

In line with these ideas, the pedagogical background for the pilot course was to provide a space where participants could critically question assumptions underlying their own practices (Cunliffe & Jun, 2005). In this context, we further apply Schön’s (1984) ideas of the reflective practitioner, meaning that theory is used to reflect on practices and vice versa. Based on Schön’s (1984) ideas of the advantages of collaborative reflection among participants from diverse disciplines and contexts, Schratz (1993) further proposed a method for developing reflective professionality in teaching. While Schön (1984) and Argyris (1991) are mainly concerned with critical reflection that connects theory and practice, reflexivity also involves questioning the basic assumptions underlying the ends, means, and relevance of a practice (Cunliffe & Jun, 2005). Reflexivity goes beyond learning through reflection to include critical self-reflection in the rigorous critique of routinized practices, individual thought patterns, responsibility, and contributions related to social conditions (see also Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2017).

Course Content and Outline

Drawing on Boyer’s (1990) “scholarship of engagement” and a reflexive approach, we designed a pilot course. The ambition was to offer participants an opportunity to critically scrutinize assumptions underlying their practice through scholarly eyes and connect practical and theoretical perspectives.

We developed a set of qualification descriptors encompassing knowledge, skills, and judgment that make up a scholarship of societal collaboration, reflecting existing descriptions of such competencies (Blanchard et al., 2009; Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). The descriptors were adapted to a Swedish institutional context and served as learning outcomes with key implications for the course design, delivery, assessment, and standards (see Table 1). The learning outcomes targeted the ability to discuss what societal collaboration is, how it can be understood, who is expected to contribute, what outcomes academia and society can expect from it, and why it is considered important.

Table 1 Learning outcomes for the course
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The course was structured into several modules covering key themes. Each module was designed drawing on a diverse set of pedagogical approaches to enrich course participants’ pool of experiences and to encourage reflexivity for learning. The modules included conventional seminar-type lectures with the course and guest lecturers, experience-sharing workshops with the participants, as well as panel discussions with invited guests representing different perspectives on the selected themes. The participants were asked to read the assigned literature and other course material for each module and document their own (or a colleague’s) experiences related to the theme. This form of preparation served as a point of departure for the experience-sharing workshops and enabled collective reflection. To pass the course, the participants needed to demonstrate that they had fulfilled the learning outcomes through a written assignment of (future) practical use to themselves. In Table 2, we offer an overview of the modules and the assignments.

Table 2 Course content and assignment
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The pilot course was made available to faculty members across all Swedish universities, and it was organized and delivered on two occasions. The initial course, held during the fall of 2019, encompassed a series of three on-campus sessions spread over a period of three weeks, hosted at distinct universities located in diverse cities. Thirteen participants, comprising researchers and educators from six universities, took part. On the second occasion, the course transitioned to an online format in response to the Covid-19 pandemic that arose during the fall of 2020. To facilitate remote learning, a digital learning platform was established, and all lectures, featuring the course instructors and a guest lecturer, were pre-recorded. These recorded video materials varied in duration, ranging from 10 to 30 min each. The experience-sharing workshops, panel discussions, and guest lectures with invited speakers were all held via Zoom. On this second occasion, the course participants were more diverse, representing both support staff responsible for collaborative efforts at universities (six participants) and faculty members (three participants). The purpose of a diverse composition was to bring together faculty and individuals from support functions that facilitate the core activities of academic work and often underpin collaborative efforts at universities (Fang, 2016; Watermeyer & Lewis, 2018; Watermeyer & Rowe, 2021). Recognizing the potential divergence in viewpoints between support staff and researchers, we identified the importance of fostering boundary-spanning discussions for interactive learning. By doing so, we aimed to create opportunities for mutual understanding and knowledge exchange that would contribute to the cultivation of reflexivity (cf. Jonsson et al., 2023).

Method

Aligned with our overarching objective, a comprehensive case study was undertaken to assess the pilot course, with particular attention given to how the participants perceived the course (cf. Merriam, 1998; Yin, 2014). The empirical data encompasses multiple data sources, capturing insights from distinct temporal vantage points spanning the pre-course, during-course, and post-course phases. By utilizing a diverse range of data collection methods and time points, we aimed to gain a holistic understanding of the participants’ experiences and how their perspectives evolved throughout the educational journey. Before offering the course, we collected documentation of participants’ previous societal collaboration experiences and perspectives through course applications and accompanying CVs. The ambition was to contrast their pre-understandings with their understanding after the finished course. During the course, we took field notes and observed the participants’ interactions and interests in specific course elements. We focused on capturing their reflections and the types of questions that were raised. All participants were initially informed that the course was part of a study, and all interviewees were further informed about the study and the use of the data. After the course, we conducted a survey to capture perceived experiences and learning outcomes. Drawing upon the dataset obtained, an interview guide was crafted to facilitate follow-up interviews. Out of the original cohort of 22 participants, a substantial majority of 18 individuals were willing to be interviewed. To uphold confidentiality and safeguard the identities of the respondents, pseudonyms were employed. Table 3 provides a comprehensive overview of the interviews conducted and the corresponding pseudonyms assigned.

Table 3 Overview of interviews
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The interviews were conducted in Swedish through Zoom due to the Covid-19 restrictions, using a semi-structured template (see Appendix 1) focusing on various themes related to the participants’ experiences and learning. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim.

We applied a data-centric open coding strategy in which the analytical process starts out with data that are fractured, conceptualized, and integrated to build theoretical insights (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). First, all authors carefully reviewed the data and engaged in general discussions focusing on participants’ experiences and insights from the course. This discussion laid the ground for a tentative coding frame that was transferred into a coding scheme in the software NVivo. All data were uploaded in NVivo, and the 18 interviewees were assigned as NVivo cases and classified according to six attributes (attended course, gender, seniority, profession, discipline, and university). Second, the material was processed and coded in NVivo through an abductive coding technique where we iteratively moved between coding themes that emerged in the raw data and our initial coding frame, in line with systematic combining approaches (Dubois & Gadde, 2002; Yin, 2014). This allowed for more reflexive sense-making of the material (Merriam, 1998), as we initially used the tentative coding frame to guide the analysis while it was continuously revised and new codes emerged from the data. Third, we searched for themes and patterns, both manually and with the aid of crosstab and matrix queries in NVivo, combining interview classifications and codes. From this work, three overarching themes emerged, together with patterns that captured qualitative differences between participants’ experiences of the course. These patterns and themes were validated through continuous discussions between the researchers and triangulation between the multiple sources of data (Merriam, 1998).

Results

In the following section, we present and discuss our findings structured according to three themes that capture participants’ reflections on their experiences from the course to identify enabling conditions for developing skills and academic rigor toward a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration.

Theorizing Collaboration—the Value of Having Access to a “Smorgasbord”

An overall theme from participants’ accounts is the perceived value of having access to a “smorgasbord” of models and frameworks to support theorizing collaboration. This made it possible to navigate the research landscape of collaboration and gain insights into the scholarship of societal collaboration. Several informants emphasized that the orientation in existing research was a significant benefit from the course. Max, who in parallel with the course worked on a collaborative project, explains:

We got a lot of help from the course, with, like, probing the literature […] We have bought all the books, and we have, like, taken in everything. And you read over and over again as well.

Theorizing stimulated participants to consider their collaboration practices in light of different perspectives and models. An example comes from Indy:

The biggest yield I got, I feel, was that there was so much research […] it gave me some food for thought that we should think more about working, if you could say, on a scientific basis with collaboration.

Another example comes from Lou’s experience of learnings concerning their work with societal collaboration in teaching:

Even though I have worked with education for a long time, I may not have thought about educational collaboration in the way it was framed in the course. […] I have received a lot of insights that we could spin on here.

As Indy’s and Lou’s statements illustrate, participants discovered more evidence-based and structured ways of working with societal collaboration through insights into theoretical perspectives. Another recurring benefit was finding concepts and terms for describing collaboration activities already being carried out. Charlie illustrates this:

I got some Aha! experiences. Like putting into words phenomena that you have experienced, but may not have been able to really describe for yourself. It was a lot like that… I like neat models like this.

Some informants also emphasized that insights into theoretical perspectives were essential to developing a sense of rigor in their professions. These insights also relate to the accounts above on providing frames for communicating and explaining practices. Indy exemplifies this further:

I [sought] theoretical knowledge about collaboration and [wanted to] feel that this is my competence—that I wanted to strengthen it. As someone with subject competence at the university who wants to strengthen themselves in their subject, I felt that: Yes, but this is my niche, and here I would like to strengthen myself.

In addition, some participants experienced that they gained greater insight into challenges and critical perspectives through theories. Dani elaborates on the choice of literature:

[I] often return to certain texts as well, and the literature we had. And feel that I better understand certain things and why they are organized as they are. And problems. And [I] can […] describe difficulties and opportunities in a better way.

Participants not only found framings for challenges they had already experienced, but the theoretical perspectives also offered insights into unfamiliar problems, as explained by Kim:

And I think I have brought with me, like, different… yes, models and also any future problems that may arise with collaboration. […] I am aware of what can arise and different interests and motivations.

However, a few participants also indicated that the course theorized and problematized collaboration to an unnecessarily large extent.

[The course] also made collaboration perhaps more complicated than I myself have experienced it. […] So, I do not know. Now I’m theoretically oriented enough to appreciate it […] But… sometimes you can, like… As soon as researchers put their teeth into things, it becomes very complex. (Dani)

Two faculty members with extensive practical collaboration experience considered collaboration a purely practical pursuit with limited need for theorizing. Kyle describes it as follows:

[Collaboration] is quite a lot about tangible things such as information dissemination—how to create networks and how to…, who you invite to meetings and such things. … And I did not think we got there really in the course, such tangible things. It is not, like, researchable how one spreads information. Yes, maybe it is. I do not know. But I mean… But this is so much based on the fact that I am then very much a practitioner in the context.

However, Austin, in contrast to Kyle, did see a point in theorizing, but for other reasons:

I did not intend to […] sit at home and read books on things that are entirely different topics. […] And I’m not an economist or collaboration theorist, or whatever it is. And that’s not why I was there. I was there to discuss and get inspired.

Indeed, although the participants overall seemed to appreciate the theoretical perspective on collaboration, some requested more practical perspectives, including methods, checklists, and best practices. Interestingly, most of these were faculty members, who expressed more negative sentiments toward theorizing than support staff. One observation that points toward an explanation is that support staff participants tended to see a greater need to legitimize themselves to faculty and saw theoretical grounding as a means for achieving this. Charlie explains:

I think that I have gotten, so to speak, a theoretical foundation to stand on. And I wish I had [taken the course] several years ago, and got like a…, more weight in different arguments, more […] research to refer to, for example… when arguing for various things.

An Opportunity for Reflection and Reflexivity

The course targeted reflexivity through collective discussion to blend theory and practice by sharing experiences among participants from various contexts. The discussions encouraged the participants to reflect on their perspectives and provided an opportunity to draw on their experiences to conscious insights into assumptions about societal collaboration. Participants appreciated the opportunity to reflect with others and contribute to learning about others’ practices.

Well, there were several interesting conversations… Which made me reflect a little more during that time on what I do myself, how it fits in or does not fit in. But I also became a little extra-curious about some others and learned a little more about what they do and how they think. (Austin)

Informants also highlighted that the discussion gave insights into critical aspects of collaboration that they had not previously considered. This made them aware of specific challenges that made them question their assumptions. As Noa explains:

Because many of the conversations ended up very much on difficulties and obstacles and […] So, it has also opened my eyes of course, that it is not just flowers and green lawns. […] Yes, then I must have been a little blinded […] in that I think collaboration is positive in some way. So I was surprised that there were so many difficulties all the time, that everyone raised in the conversations.

Bringing together participants from diverse disciplines and universities stimulated participants’ reflections on collaboration. Some of the reflections related to cross-disciplinarity:

We came from different contexts, all of us that took the course. […] The opportunity for collaboration looks different for the different areas. […] I will not say that I understand the conditions for everyone, but [it is important] to be humble, to take in and try to understand, and ask people to, like… describe how they experience their conditions in different contexts, linked to collaboration. (Drew)

Similarly, Ari emphasizes the benefits of bringing together participants from different universities:

And it was good that it was from different universities. It was exciting to hear how others are doing things and to be able to discuss it.

On the second course occasion, the diversity widened as both faculty and support staff participated. This diversity was highlighted as positive by most participants. It provided good opportunities to engage in discussions leading to a better understanding of each other’s work roles and prerequisites to engage in a scholarship of collaboration. Lou, a faculty member, shares their experiences of discussions with support staff:

So I really think that you also got a greater understanding of what challenges [the support function] faces. […] Sometimes, you might whine a little about the support. * Little laugh * […] But I think I have gained a greater understanding of how the support works and so on.

Nico, a support staff member, shares their reflections in a way that mirrors Lou’s reflections:

I liked the discussions we had in the group about these issues on all occasions… Yes, but “how is the collaboration experienced by the [faculty] and what can we do to support them, how can we work?” has been incredibly rewarding.

Thus, combining various perspectives through collective discussions provided insights into how the conditions and understandings of societal collaboration vary between universities, collaboration forms, disciplines, and occupational roles. Some participants highlighted the need for conscious self-reflection by contemplating one’s own experiences with others and linking experiences to theory. This raised the awareness of their way of collaboration or new and different perspectives. Participants also stressed that there are not many opportunities for such reflection in contemporary academic life and that the course provided conditions for such reflection. However, several participants, mainly from the course given on campus, wished for more time for discussion. They felt discussions provided an understanding of general challenges related to societal collaboration and differences in how individuals and groups from diverse contexts perceive and approach issues. As Charlie states:

It is very interesting to hear what others do under similar conditions […] And sometimes it can be enough just to hear that others have the same problem, so you know that: “Okay, but then it is not… It is not our team that is wrong. Rather, this phenomenon occurs in all major universities.”

Participants also underlined the benefits of continuously meeting co-participants through peer interactions as it developed confidence that paved the way for more trustful conversations, stimulating reflections, and reflexivity.

… One of the most important aspects of that, I think, is that we started to get to know each other. So, one dared to be more revealing. … One… dared to make oneself a little vulnerable. … And you do not do that until you have some form of trust or…, between each other in the group. (Drew)

Many discussions were first held in groups of three or four, then in plenum. Several participants, like Dani from the on-campus course, found these group discussions to be a very valuable format for collective reflections:

And it worked well when we had, like, group discussions along with our reflections. Because then it happened that everyone spoke and you discussed, and you got to know each other. So I think it’s a good feature, that you have discussions in a small group. Discussions in large groups, like with reflections and so on, are difficult [...]. And that it is not just that you want to shine with your experiences.

Several participants underlined the importance of meeting face-to-face to encourage collective reflection. Yet, participants in the off-campus course experienced that group discussions worked relatively well online. Nico illustrates this:

It’s always a little nerve-wracking before you meet people. […] We work a bit like that, people, that you think it’s hard to meet new people. But it feels safe very quickly, just through one or two group discussions.

The participants were asked to prepare individually for each discussion session by writing about their reflections on the specific theme. Both Dani and Charlie underlined the usefulness of preparing in this way since it forced them into self-contemplation that produced initial thoughts that could be used as a point of departure for collective reflections.

One was forced to formulate oneself. Because then you won some time during the discussions. You got straight into the core, somewhat, somehow. People had had time to think. It was good. (Charlie)

Despite these overall positive sentiments, some participants viewed these collective reflections differently. Sasha sometimes perceived the discussions to be too unstructured and called for more guidance:

It was very scattered and very… We had very much different…, came from different places and maybe also had different perceptions of what the course would contribute, in some way. […] At the same time, I also think that it is always very exciting to meet people from different places and with different thoughts. […] So that’s contradictory. […] maybe that [the lecturers] could also have been a little clearer with thoughts about the layout [for discussions]. Not be so careful to ensure that there are different opinions and that everyone is right.

Ari describes the discussion sessions as less valuable because they tended to be superficial and unsubstantial:

The discussions were… maybe interesting, like, from some perspective. But for me, it was a bit more… yes, almost * Laughter * […] It was very much, like, just talk.

Interestingly, participants questioning the usefulness of collective discussions were all faculty members from the first course occasion, when the group composition was more homogeneous (only faculty members) and the discussions took place face-to-face. Yet other participants from the same occasion stressed that the time for collective reflections was too short, indicating a perceived need for collective reflections.

A Need to Transform Knowledge into Practice

A prominent insight from our data was the perceived importance of using the knowledge acquired during the course to make it part of one’s scholarship. Indeed, participants with few opportunities to apply insights given their current work roles, or who changed roles after course completion, found the knowledge from the course less relevant.

The yield benefit in relation to the time spent… was perhaps not super high. […] But it is not because of the course, but because of my role. (Kyle)

In addition, Cleo highlighted that the course format gave limited opportunities to apply concrete learnings and called for a more practice-oriented pedagogy:

I think you need to do…, you need to use it. […] It may need to be a little more action-oriented. Or where you sort of go between theory and practice in a slightly more seamless way.

Ellis also had few opportunities to apply insights from the course in practice but expressed that they were eager to use the new knowledge and insights in their context:

But it’s knowledge; it’s practice and applications and that. And good books to go back to, and so on. And a little longing too, you could say, [to] have the opportunity to apply this, now with that knowledge.

Thus, there seems to be a need to closely link the course content with current professional practice to absorb insights and make them part of one’s scholarship. A critical part of this need is having a relevant context to return to after course completion. Our analysis reveals that participants had different opportunities to access such a context. One factor was the participants’ occupational role. Another was the freedom, support, and opportunities that the home university offered participants to apply this knowledge and transform insights into organization-wide initiatives. For instance, Max, a faculty member from a large established university, reflected on the limitations that they experienced and compared these to what participants from smaller universities would encounter:

… Those who came from [smaller universities]—it felt like they had, like, much shorter to…, what should I say, university management and collaboration thinking. So, the distance is much, much shorter.

Indeed, our data indicate that participants from larger and older universities experienced that their organizations offered less fruitful conditions for applying their knowledge than the other participants. These participants also highlighted that the management’s lack of incentives and responsiveness created unfavorable conditions for taking advantage of the new knowledge. Ellis elaborated on this, connecting it with the lack of knowledge among university managers:

… It has not been unexpected for me to, like, take this into account, use it and also see the need. But I also notice upwards that they do not understand it. […] It would be great if the deans could take this course.

Other participants, including those from smaller universities, expressed difficulties in establishing institutionalized collaboration initiatives at their universities, which also seemed to prevent participants from using their acquired competencies to make any lasting changes to their organizations. Max, for instance, experienced a lack of support and incentives to work with collaboration as a practice integrated into the everyday work of a faculty member:

What you do must not end up as oil on top of the water, but it must get into the existing structure. […] It kind of needs to mature, so that collaboration becomes part of what is done, in practice. […] So that it just kind of becomes part of one’s everyday activities.

Nevertheless, several participants stated that they used the course to conduct actual initiatives, although these were not always university-wide or integrated. However, the practical use of the course learnings varied slightly between the types of participants. The faculty members used the learnings in tangible ways, as inputs to applications, research, courses, and operational development. Dale accounted for how they developed a course of their own:

We have started our own little course, very much inspired by the course that you gave. [We wanted to] try to widen… or a little like a tipping point. You try to engage more people and raise the general, like, the level of knowledge and commitment.

Almost all support staff participants made use of the course learnings, even though they had less time or opportunity to apply them than faculty since only four months had passed before they were interviewed. They got input to conferences, research communication, introductions to new employees, strategic management support, and organizational development. As an example, Indy explains how experiences from the course contributed to the build-up of a collaboration support structure at their university:

I will enter a new role at the university. […] I will work as a full-time strategic coordinator […] there; collaboration is becomming a very central part because it is our profile. And we have just started a new unit that will take care of collaboration. […] We talked about that on the course as well… […] I think that such knowledge in that role that I will have in our management office—I think that is good […] So I see many possibilities [to apply learnings].

A few faculty participants expressed that they had no or little tangible use for the course learnings. Some were also skeptical of theorizing collaboration and of the course’s pedagogical approach. Others, like Drew, stated that the course still led to a change of mindset and attitude, even though they could not point to tangible outcomes:

It is not the case that I walk around thinking that “this is what I learned in that course and I will apply it now.” But […] if there is something I have taken with me, it’s my way of relating to these things. […] I have become a little more… Oh…, nuanced. Though it’s not really right. But… I reflect a little more on why some external actors really want to collaborate.

Indeed, many interviewees also experienced intangible outcomes from reflexivity linked to aspects of their scholarship, such as the aforementioned changes in beliefs, assumptions, judgment, and accuracy related to collaboration practice. Consequently, some participants stressed that colleagues now considered them experts on societal collaboration and consulted them. Others affirmed that they had strengthened their skills and understanding of collaboration in a way that reinforced their professional identity and confidence. While this applied to less than half of the faculty members, all support staff articulated such experiences. According to our data, support staff tended to need to strengthen their professional identity as they belong to an unestablished profession. As previously mentioned, these individuals highlighted that theoretical perspectives were crucial for developing a sense of professional rigor and legitimacy in academia. In addition, they valued learning terminology and concepts that could be used to explain their profession to others. Nico exemplified such experiences:

I thought it was difficult at the beginning of my employment to answer what it was I really did when people asked. … And yes, those discussions were also raised in the course. And I think it’s very good to talk about it. … It is part of the identity as well, that it… How one is experienced by others. […] So [professional identity] was an important outcome [of the course].

Although two faculty members were given new assignments partly because of competence gained from the course, most did not experience a sense of strengthened professional identity or confidence. This holds true also for participants in a more mature phase of their careers. Kyle reflects on their seniority in relation to what they got out of the course:

So, I think I know collaboration quite well. […] I have quite a lot of experience from collaboration in practice. […] If you come as much, much younger and fresher, then there are many more things that are new.

Concluding Discussion: A Need for Space and Engagement

The aim of this study was to explore how skills and academic rigor for engaging in societal collaboration can be developed toward a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration. From our case study, three main findings emerge, highlighting features that contribute to the development of a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration collaboration.

First, providing participants with a theoretical orientation and framing enabled them to strengthen their “scholarship” by allowing them to capture and explain existing practices and critical aspects of those practices. Through this contribution, we substantiate the importance of increasing the element of theory in courses, which underlines the need to increase elements of this type since previous literature has highlighted that they are underutilized (Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). However, our findings also indicate that participants’ intentions to partake in the course, along with seniority and experience, influenced their need for and benefits from strengthening the scholarship. We found that participants with a need to legitimize their competence and activities benefited most from theorizing. This relates to the importance of targeting the participants in a receptive professional phase.

Second, long-term collective reflections among diverse participants play an important role in developing the scholarship of societal collaboration. The continuous process of moving back and forth between the description of diverse experiences, individual reflections, and group reflection paved the way for self-awareness and questioning assumptions related to one’s and others’ practical experiences. It provided opportunities for reflexive learning (Cunliffe & Jun, 2005) and means of strengthening the scholarship of societal collaboration. Disciplinary diversity was a welcomed feature in the course and offered valuable opportunities for increasing self-awareness and mutual recognition. This points to the benefit for faculty development of socializing not only within one’s academic home (Sandmann et al., 2008) but also outside. Yet our observations also highlight the challenges of collective reflexivity among participants with different perspectives from various professions, disciplines, and universities.

Third, transforming gained knowledge into abilities and integrating these into the scholarship requires applying knowledge in real-world contexts. From our interviews, we learned that the participants who lacked opportunities to practice learnings experienced fewer benefits. This echoes previous studies that underline the importance of connecting gained insights and practice for fruitful and sustained faculty development (Blanchard et al., 2009; Welch & Plaxton-Moore, 2017). Our findings emphasize that the organization’s incentives and support are essential for enabling the application of gained knowledge. In this way, our study furthers understanding of the importance of the institutional context for societal engagement and collaboration, not only from an incentivizing perspective (Giles, 2008; Sandmann et al., 2008) but also as a space where learnings can be applied. Nevertheless, we found diverse examples of tangible use of course learnings and intangible outcomes related to a strengthened professional identity and confidence. However, this was more frequently experienced by support staff than by faculty members, particularly senior faculty. This result reflects that the professional support staff often experience disempowerment and lack of status and thus seek more recognition from faculty (Watermeyer & Rowe, 2021).

Due to the time limits of our research project, we could only conduct interviews with the participants within 4–18 months after the end of the course. Thus, we could not capture the long-term consequences of participation nor patterns related to which outcomes persisted or disappeared with time. Consequently, future research could target tracing long-term sequences of the impact of this type of initiative over a more extended period. Further, the study is conditioned by the particularities of the Swedish higher education system. Hence, our study joins many single case studies of similar initiatives in particular institutional contexts that present challenges for translating insights into new settings. Future research should therefore focus on comparative case studies across different institutional contexts to foster increased knowledge of the role that institutional conditions play in enabling fruitful educational initiatives for engaged scholarship development. Also, our study did not aim to capture the effects of the courses in terms of whether the participants’ perceived benefits and experiences of the course led to higher excellence or quality in their actual societal engagement and collaborative activities. This would have required interviewing additional informants from both within and outside academia. This limitation offers an intriguing arena for future research that includes exploring the relationship between the perceived development of scholarship and practical engagement endeavors.

With this study, we answer Boyer’s (1990, 1996) call to reconsider scholarship and support the need for making societal collaboration an integral part of academic scholarship by revealing how this can be done in practice. In terms of practical implications, this study is relevant to scholars, managers, and policymakers interested in making universities matter by fostering a long-term and integrated societal collaboration capacity in HEIs. We demonstrate that a course that brings together participants from many professions and disciplines is a beneficial instrument for promoting the development of abilities that pave the way for a rigorous social collaboration practice, improving universities’ ability to matter more. Strengthening the academic rigor of societal collaboration requires collective reflexivity and boundary-spanning conversations. This not only improves the competence of individuals but enables the collaborative work of HEIs to function in a more integrated way by connecting the perspectives and practices of faculty and support functions. Further, faculty and support staff need to be allowed to apply newly gained insights, and the development of societal collaboration abilities and skills of individuals need to be noticed and utilized in the organization. This suggests that managers and policy actors face the imperative of designing and implementing efficient incentive systems that encourage the application of knowledge to cultivate a sustained and integrated capacity for societal collaboration within higher education institutions. Establishing such incentive systems demands that managers and policymakers possess a comprehensive understanding of the academic intricacies surrounding social collaboration as a pivotal mechanism through which universities can establish their relevance and impact in society. In other words, they must recognize and value the mechanism that allows universities to matter in society, not just in the short term but also in the long run. Consequently, a robust and well-informed academic knowledge base becomes indispensable for these decision-makers as they navigate the complexities and develop strategic approaches to foster enduring and meaningful collaborations between academia and stakeholders in society at large.