Invited Symposia

  Human Wellbeing and the Psychology of Democracy: Insights from

Service-Learning, Civic Science, and Community Engaged Scholarship

Chairs: Bryan W. Sokol (Saint Louis University) and Stuart Hammond (University of Ottawa)

Time: Thursday, May 28th, 2026 | Afternoon

Symposium Abstract

Community-engaged forms of scholarship take their inspiration from a vision of education that simultaneously advances both human knowledge and democratic forms of life (Dewey, 1916).  As laudable as this vision may be, an academic enterprise aimed at the “democratization of knowledge” holds both promise and peril.  Democracy is fraught with tensions and contradictions emerging from a plurality of perspectives.  As Parker Palmer, a well-known educator and social commentator, claimed in his book, Healing the Heart of Democracy, democratic life was “designed not to suppress our differences but to keep the energy of their tension alive so that it [can] animate the body politic” (Palmer, 2011, p. 75). A similar observation was made by Walt Whitman, America’s self-proclaimed “bard of democracy,” in his epic poem, Leaves of Grass. Writing during the U.S. Reconstruction Era, Whitman embraced the tension between individualism and communitarianism, celebrating both the freedom of individuals and the interconnectedness of communities.

The paradox in his position led him to famously assert:  “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”  The democratic impulse underlying civic science and other community-engaged forms of scholarship also carries these tensions and potential contradictions.  As a result, many contributors to the field – from participatory research to service learning – have begun to address the difficulties within their work, recognizing that some of these tensions are generative and stand to animate not only further scholarly progress, but also a more robust and healthier democratic life.  We have invited scholars who offer critical and diverse approaches, all with the hope of keeping a multitude of energies alive in our growing field.

Presentation 1: Daniel Hart

Why is Contemporary American Education So Ineffective in Creating Citizens?

Presentation Abstract

Americans believe that educational institutions are crucial in preparing young people to become responsible citizens.  Schools are imagined to equip students with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills to participate effectively in democratic institutions.  Surprisingly, however, research informed by methods intended to strengthen causal inference—designs utilizing regression discontinuity, difference-in-difference, and genetically informed approaches—suggests that young people pass through years of school with their civic lives barely marked by the experience.   I discuss research suggesting that rates of voting, depth of civic and political knowledge, and political interest are barely affected by years of schooling.  Moreover, the causal effects of classes specifically designed to support civic development—such as service-learning—are also difficult to identify in students’ civic lives. One implication of these findings is that civic life is shaped by numerous processes outside of school that warrant the attention of those concerned with nurturing the next generation of citizens.  A second implication is that the school-based processes intended to promote civic development deserve critical focus in order to improve them.  I conclude with observations on particularly promising practices for transforming civic education in schools that are especially effective in increasing political knowledge, broadening democratic skills, and enhancing civic participation.

Presentation 2: Manuel Riemer

Research For and With People: Insights on Community-Engaged Scholarship from Community Psychology

Presentation Abstract

Communities across the world are increasingly facing complex challenges such as the impacts of climate change, lack of affordable housing, rising costs of living, and high levels of loneliness. While many of these challenges have global causes, there is an increasing realization that resilience to these challenges needs to be developed within the local context. Further, to be locally relevant and sustainable, approaches for achieving this community-based resilience need to be co-designed with people in the community, not just for them. This shifts the role of the researcher from that of an external expert who extracts knowledge for the purpose of theory building to that of a partner and facilitator who co-learns and co-designs with community. In this presentation, I will present key principles and approaches to this type of community-engaged scholarship from the perspective of community-psychology. I will illustrate these with an example of a research project focused on co-developing a grassroots-led climate resilience strategy in Waterloo Region that is grounded in the lived expertise consulting model. Finally, I will conclude with a reflection on my own journey from being trained as a traditional quantitative psychologist to becoming a participatory action and community-engaged researcher and how my understanding of scientific rigour broadened through this developmental process.

Presentation 3: Lori Bradford

Engaged Scholarship, Institutional Recognition, and the Democratic Work of Knowledge Co-Creation

Presentation Abstract

The Engaged Scholar Journal was created in 2014-2015 at the University of Saskatchewan to support rigorous, relationship-centred research that crosses academic–community boundaries and to make space for diverse ways of producing and sharing knowledge. As Editor-in-Chief since 2019, I have witnessed how community-engaged scholarship strengthens democratic life by valuing reciprocity, shared authority, and collective problem-solving. Yet the journal’s emergence and its international uptake also highlight a persistent tension:  forms of civic and community-based scholarship that are widely recognized and celebrated beyond one’s institution may remain undervalued, misunderstood, or unsupported within it. My contribution to this symposium examines this tension as a developmental and co-created process, one that shapes researchers, partners, and institutions. Drawing on examples from Indigenous-led collaborations, climate adaptation partnerships, and co-designed educational tools, I discuss how community-engaged scholarship as shared through the journal nurtures competencies central to democratic participation:  curiosity, accountability, relational decision-making, and the capacity to learn across difference. At the same time, I reflect on the personal and institutional implications of being validated by external scholarly communities while encountering limited recognition at home, and how this gap influences the sustainability of community partnerships. These experiences speak to the democratic potential of engaged scholarship, as well as the institutional conditions needed to support it with integrity.

The Esther Thelen Memorial Symposium

From Complex Systems to Civic Science (and Back)

Organizer: John P. Spencer, Professor of Psychology, University of East Anglia

Discussant: Harry C. Boyte, Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy, Augsburg University

Time: Friday, May 29th | 3:15 to 4:45

Symposium Abstract

A key focus of the civic science initiative is to foster the collective capacities of scientists and non-scientists to come together to solve real-world problems in a democratic society. The science of dynamical systems can play a role here as understanding complex real-world problems requires understanding how multiple levels of analysis come together over multiple time scales.

Esther Thelen had a profound impact on developmental science, introducing the now mainstream view of human development as a complex dynamical system. Toward the end of her career, Esther was pursuing ways to bring together her theoretical perspective with real-world practice to positively impact the lives of children. These efforts brought together scientists and practitioners as equal partners empowered to create change. In the Esther Thelen Memorial Symposium, we celebrate this legacy by highlighting work from two of Esther’s former colleagues who have continued to pursue this ‘civic science’ mission.

We will hear reflections from two teams of researchers and practitioners. Presentation Set 1 focuses on early mobility as a causal factor in development and how low-cost mobility tools can positively impact infants with delayed mobility. Presentation Set 2 focuses on how new motor skills exert far-reaching, cascading effects on development including the broader communicative environment. We will then hear from our Discussant, Harry Boyte, who will reflect on civic science, Esther Thelen’s legacy, and the two presentation sets.

Presentation 2

Discussant Presentation: The need for civic science

“We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawaken’d…a great word, whose history remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.”  – Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas

Abstract

A democratic society requires people with democratic habits. Today the challenges our democracy faces are multiplying while democratic capacities to work across differences are diminishing. We need a new way of doing the work of democracy– and claiming the great tradition of science as one method of human emancipation that needs to be integrated with other ways of knowing and acting. Civic science is the key to such work.

As Andrew Jewett has detailed in his book, Science, Democracy and the American University (Cambridge, 2012), science was once widely understood by practitioners and the larger citizenry as a wellspring of democratic energy and a constellation of democratic practices. Today, fields of science are generating an explosive increase in our knowledge about the world. But the democratic energies and catalytic practices of science have receded from view. At the same time, society is beset with “knowledge wars”; politics is bitterly polarized; people feel powerless; skepticism about civic institutions has dramatically increased; and science and scientists are portrayed by some as the oppressor of the people. Scientists are often expected to be (and sometimes see themselves as) experts who instruct amateurs, who in turn are seen as passive, ignorant, and silent recipients. In this view, most people are left with little to do except give thanks or protest if the solutions don’t work.

In fact, science has much more to offer than detached expertise and also clear limits in what science and scientists can accomplish in addressing our mounting challenges by themselves. Scientists need the real world of rich, diverse experiences to provide grounding, testing, and challenge to all its propositions. Scientists develop a larger perspective on science and the human condition when they leave the laboratory and inhabit roles as parents, neighbors, co-workers in civic projects, and as human beings. Scientists discover the thrill, and the challenge, of finding that people very different from themselves have similar needs, hopes and fears, and also ways of knowing and acting that expand their own views and ways of knowing. Scientists gain from hearing about the struggles people are going through, the wisdom they have gained through life experiences, their own and through cultures and traditions.

Civic science is a way to work together to address the challenges we face, to reverse civic decay, and to build and rebuild a thriving world for ourselves and future generations.

Civic Science Research in the Global South

Chair:  John P. Spencer (University of East Anglia)

Time: Friday, May 29th, 2026 | Afternoon

Abstract

There is a growing recognition that developmental science needs to diversify its focus, using culturally relevant methods, and acknowledging that different sociocultural ecologies lead to varied developmental trajectories. A civic science perspective also acknowledges that understanding and enhancing developmental outcomes requires reciprocal partnerships that bring together researchers, communities, and policymakers. This symposium brings together an outstanding collection of scientists doing research in the Global South with foci at different levels of this complex developmental system. The goal of the symposium is to explore how to harness the energies and talents of researchers, communities, and policymakers to optimize developmental outcomes in the Global South.

Civic Science in Action

Time: Saturday, May 30th, 2026 | Afternoon

Presentation 1: Jaime de Loma-Osorio Ricon

Presentation 2: Kristin Elaine Reimer

“It’s like you don’t have to leave the classroom to solve a problem”: Restorative Justice Education in Action

Presentation Abstract

Restorative justice in education (RJE) is a philosophical framework that centers relationships in schools, calls attention to issues of justice and equity, and provides processes to heal harm and transform conflict. As a holistic approach, students and teachers engage in daily and ongoing inquiry into their relationships, their individual and collective needs, and site-specific relevant solutions to their classroom problems. Schooling can sometimes become an endeavour that is seen as top-down, with teachers implementing mandated curricula and students attempting to meet pre-determined learning outcomes. Yet, RJE ensures that students and teachers are fully involved in the educational process, with the co-creation of their classroom culture, knowledge and practices. Studies that I have conducted show that RJE helps students to develop a sense of coherence (Antonovsky, 1979) and to see their school lives as manageable, comprehensible and meaningful.

Presentation 3: Isabelle Morris

RADAR: Using Civic Science to Study Autistic Stimming

Presentation Abstract

Research on Autism, Driven by Autistic Researchers (RADAR) is an example of an autistic-led Civic Science project. This talk will cover the process of RADAR and share insights into how to conduct participatory research in the context of intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Infrastructure, critical questions to ask prior to beginning, potential constraints and setbacks will be discussed. In the second half of the talk, I will describe how research is conducted by RADAR collaborators. I will also share findings from a mixed-methods study on autistic experiences and perceptions of stimming (repetitive, self-stimulatory behaviors). The talk will conclude by highlighting specific ways in which the participatory approach we chose provides added value to research.

The Individual and Society: Civic Science and the Future of the Field

Closing Discussion Panel

Saturday, May 30th, 2026: Afternoon

Chairs

Panelists: Roberta Michnick Golinkoff (University of Delaware), Stuart Hammond (University of Ottawa), Velma McBride Murry (Vanderbilt University), Bryan W. Sokol (Saint Louis University), Jaime de Loma-Osorio Ricon (Banksia Gardens), and Philip Fisher (Stanford University)