Re-designing Qualitative Psychology Research through Service-Learning: Insights and Applied Innovations in Community-Engaged Psychological Research

This empirical paper responds to the conference theme, Research Foundations and Paradigms of Qualitative Research, by presenting the  theoretical approach and applied insights generated through a service-learning partnership between postgraduate psychology students and a local high school. This project integrates needs assessments, collaborative intervention design, and student-learner engagement, providing an empirical basis for re-examining foundational qualitative paradigms and advancing innovative methodological practices. This research adopts a mixed-methods, participatory action research design grounded in the principles of Bricolage methodology, which emphasises the creative integration of diverse data sources, methods, and theoretical frameworks. 

The study explores innovative qualitative data collection methods through creative learner-centered techniques designed to facilitate open thoughts and experiences sharing without the pressure of direct personal disclosure. Using narrative inquiry and participatory action research, data will be drawn from reflective fieldnotes, learner focus groups, and analysis and intervention workshops. The expected findings will demonstrate that service-learning contexts actively expose the limitations of classical interpretivist frameworks and require a shift toward critical, community, and decolonial paradigms that prioritise relational ethics, contextual accountability, and power redistribution.

Methodological innovations emerging from this work include youth-led participatory mapping, digital storytelling integrated with thematic analysis, and multimodal data generation that captures learners’ emotional, sensory, and social worlds. These approaches produced actionable insights into real-world school challenges such as safety concerns, learner mental health needs, and barriers to help-seeking and directly informed the design of co-created psychoeducational workshops and school-based support strategies.

The paper argues that service-learning represents a powerful applied setting for testing, refining, and extending qualitative paradigms. It offers a new perspective: community-engaged research not only operationalises foundational values such as reflexivity and reciprocity but also functions as a laboratory for methodological innovation driven by real-world complexity.