#465: Cultivating Relational Trust in Community-Engaged Educational Research Partnerships for Environmental Justice

Community-engaged educational research partnerships have the potential to catalyze new approaches to environmental justice teaching and learning by bringing together multiple actors with different lenses, positionalities, epistemologies, and expertise to unsettle normative approaches to educational practice. Such work, however, requires situating relational trust as central to partnership development. In this paper, we examine how relational trust was built across four different educational partnerships working toward environmental justice. We identify five themes that support developing and sustaining relational trust: (a) collectively working toward socio-ecological change, (b) naming and disrupting hierarchies, (c) purposeful processes, (d) centering relationality, and (e) redistributing resources. Theoretically, this paper advances our understanding of relational trust as central to partnership work; methodologically, it deepens our understanding of using partnership artifacts to understand partnership dynamics; and practically, it provides insights and tools for researchers who aspire to cultivate and sustain relational trust in partnership activities.