David Monk

This article explores the critical role of healthy community-university engagement in fostering transformative development and enhancing institutional vitality. It argues that universities must move beyond transactional outreach to embrace reciprocal, sustained partnerships with communities. Such engagement not only enriches experiential learning and research relevance but also positions universities as co-creators of knowledge and catalysts for inclusive change. The paper conceptualises ‘healthy engagement’ as a dynamic process rooted in mutual respect, shared goals, and epistemic justice, where community voices shape academic inquiry and institutional priorities. The article demonstrates how collaborative models of engagement contribute to community resilience, student empowerment, institutional credibility and the cultivation of humanity.

This article interrogates epistemic injustice in global development discourse, challenging dominant narratives that define progress through a singular lens. Drawing inspiration from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (2009) caution against “the danger of a single story,” we explore how universities—often positioned as knowledge authorities—(re)perpetuate these injustices by privileging Western epistemologies in defining development. We argue for the recognition of diverse aspirations and culturally embedded understandings of the good life, as articulated by scholars such as Catherine Odora Hoppers, who critiques the systemic marginalisation of Indigenous and non-Western knowledge systems. Anchored in the Knowledge for Change (K4C) Global Consortium, a Global South-led initiative in Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), this article presents a conceptual and practical framework for decolonising research through the creation of regional CBPR training centres in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Using narrative inquiry, we reflect on our lived experiences as coordinators of these centres, analysing personal stories to uncover themes of cultural negotiation, institutional challenges, and transformative potential. We aim to demonstrate how these centres can serve as hubs for epistemic justice, fostering methodologies rooted in collaboration, equity, and contextual relevance. By embedding CBPR within higher education institutions in its training and research capacities, we envision a shift toward research led and sustained by the Global South, reframing development through cognitively diverse and participatory knowledge-making processes. Ultimately, we advocate for a pluralistic approach to development—one that honours multiple stories, cosmologies, and pathways to progress.

This chapter examines the unmet education needs of refugees with disabilities in accessing Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Using research conducted in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda, it focuses on education experiences of refugees in Uganda to highlight the significant lack of provision in policy and practice. This situation is particularly alarming in the context of limited education and training opportunities and low school attendance in primary school despite increasing TVET policy and development interventions. The chapter uses critical capabilities theory and lifelong learning to reinforce the dual need to address the compounded barriers faced by refugees with disabilities in TVET and the need to develop learning pathways and educational transitions that support their life goals. In this narrative, we argue that the refugee policy has inherent structural limitations that limit education transition. We propose practical policy adaptations that promote inclusion and lifelong learning.

While there are regular calls for African universities to improve their teaching, finding ways to do this within the resources available in already stretched institutions, and at the scale required, have proven elusive. This chapter is a reflexive exercise, discussing the work of an international partnership, Transforming Employability for Social Change in East Africa (TESCEA), that aimed to reshape habits of teaching and learning in four institutions of higher education. The authors explain how they sought to enable teaching for critical thinking and problem-solving, ensure degree programmes were relevant to social and economic needs by engaging employers and local communities, and learning environments enabled both young women and men to learn effectively. It offers reflections on the change observed, the ways in which this was achieved, and the challenges encountered. The authors hope it adds to understandings of how change can happen in higher education, particularly in resource-constrained settings.

This study focuses on how the use of digital portfolios in teacher education can support teacher candidates to shift their understanding of assessment as they form their assessment identity. The study was in the context of a changing curriculum and assessment practices promoted in British Columbia. We draw on data from a cohort of teacher candidates in the first term of a 16-month post-degree teacher education program, where they created a digital portfolio across multiple courses as part of their final assessment to be used in an exit interview with instructors and teaching professionals from the field. Narratives of teacher candidates’ experiences were collected to shed light on their changing understanding of assessment for learning practices and their emerging teacher identity as assessors promoted by the digital portfolio process. Significance of using digital portfolios to support their process of becoming teachers is focused in conclusion of the paper.

This article calls attention to the responsibility of universities to transform, through partnership, the community in which they are embedded. The authors suggest that, to find solutions to the various community challenges and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), universities need to engage in partnerships of knowledge co-creation with the community in ways that value local knowledge and experience. The article elaborates on the efforts of Gulu University Centre for Community Based Participatory Research and Lifelong Learning, located in Northern Uganda, to show the potential of co-constructing knowledge for community transformation. The centre is part of the Knowledge for Change (K4C) global consortium, which is a growing network for community-based research. The authors share three research stories of community-based research that reflect distinct challenges faced in Northern Uganda and effective community-engaged solutions. Through an exploration of the Acholi ontology and epistemology of interconnection, the authors demonstrate that local communities have the knowledge and experience to define and address local problems.