Community-Engaged Scholarship: An Interpartner Approach for Collaborative Practice

Abstract The need to prepare future behavior analysts to become effective, collaborative professionals is increasingly evident. The social importance of goals, procedures, and effects has always been a critical part of our applied science; yet too often it is superseded in priority by considerations of procedural integrity. Disciplinary centrism, often cultivated through traditional training models, can be counterbalanced through intentional promotion of cultural and professional humility. We argue that community-engaged scholarship (CES) offers a behaviorally compatible framework for collaboration training and emphasizes the same collaboration skills should extend beyond interprofessional collaborations to include nonprofessionals (e.g., clients, families, communities). Because CES emphasizes reciprocal learning “about, from, and with” all potential partners—including those receiving services—and naturally positions students alongside nonbehavioral collaborators with varied lived experiences and professional perspectives, we use the term interpartner as an alternative to interprofessional. When CES is paired with the Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice (IPECP) competencies—values and ethics, roles and responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and teams and teamwork—it creates a powerful, inclusive model for cultivating collaboration skills in behavior analytic trainees. This blended approach aligns with the core aims of applied behavior analysis while advancing its relevance and responsiveness in diverse service contexts. In this paper, we first provide an overview of key concepts from IPECP and CES. We then illustrate the application of the Participatory Action Cycle for Community Engagement through two case examples that highlight how CES can serve as a foundational context for interpartner education within behavior analytic training.