Research collaboration as social action: constructing meaning and interrogating relationship-building in an outcomes-based approach

Abstract

In 2009 the Faculty of Education at the University of Southern Queensland began an ambitious agenda to improve both the quality and the quantity of its research outcomes. It encouraged the establishment of small, informal research teams with some financial incentives to support a research agenda. In this chapter, three members of one such team consider their experiences of research collaboration in relation to collective mindfulness, a term that one of the researchers used during a focused conversation. The analysis articulates and then synthesises the authors’ understandings and experiences of the term, which is posited as a useful theoretical and practical device for helping research teams to maximise their outcomes and at the same time to contribute positively to relevant social action.