ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on approaches being championed by next-generation scholars, practitioners, and students in partnership with communities. The authors of the Next Generation Engagement Project sponsored by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education are adding to this research with a new approach for understanding the theory and practice of engagement on college campuses that frames these efforts as collaborative engagement. What makes collaborative engagement distinctive is its focus on community, the recognition that learners are cocreators of knowledge through democratic education, and the involvement of a diverse range of participants in deliberative conversations to address real-world problems. Interest in collaborative engagement is not accidental; it is the result of a confluence of sociocultural factors that require increased collaboration among diverse groups of people and organizations to be successful in resolving complex and nuanced public problems.
