Differentiating and Assessing Relationships in Service-Learning and Civic Engagement: Exploitative, Transactional, or Transformational

 As a defining aspect of service-learning and civic engagement, relationships can exist among faculty members, students, community organizations, community members, and administrators on campus. This research developed procedures to measure several aspects of these relationships. Investigators collected information from 20 experienced service-learning faculty members about their relationships with representatives of community organizations using the newly-developed Transformational Relationship Evaluation Scale (TRES). Results indicate that transactional and transformational qualities can be differentiated using TRES and are related to other characteristics of relationships (e.g., closeness). Conceptual work underlying this study aims to advance practitioner-scholars' understanding of partnerships as one type of relationship, offering a refinement on and an expansion of the terminology associated with service-learning and civic engagement.