Provoking Change in Researchers' Roles: Using a Community-Based Research Approach to Address Research Needs in the Community

This article is based on a community-based research practicum conducted with a Headstart program in western Canada. The purpose of the text is to describe the progression of one researcher's roles from inception to completion of a year-long research project while working in collaboration with a community partner. Following a brief review of principles of community-based research, a case study is used to show how principles were adhered to in a practicum. A variation of traditional role theory is introduced as a useful framework to navigate burgeoning researcher roles and role multiplicity. These are: (a) researcher as researcher, (b) researcher as collaborator, (c) researcher as relationship builder, (d) researcher as teacher, and (e) researcher as learner. Considerations for ways to promote researchers-students and academics-to develop skills to correspond with changing researcher roles are presented, along with future directions to empirically examine researcher roles in CBR.