Community Partners’ Perspectives and the Faculty Role in Community-Based Learning

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-135
Author(s):  
Rona J. Karasik
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Faculty Engagement ◽  
Community Partner ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Partners ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Faculty Role ◽  
On Line ◽  
Community Based Learning ◽  
Volunteer Internship

Background: Benefits of community-based learning for students in higher education are well documented. Comparatively less is known about the community partner experience. Purpose: The community partner perspective is explored to (a) confirm and expand recent findings regarding community partners’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of working with colleges and universities and (b) present community partners’ views on how faculty can help improve community–university collaborations. Methodology/Approach: Dual-rater axial and open coding qualitative analysis methods were used to identify key themes in community partners’ responses in an on-line survey. Participants ( n = 201) represented community partners from a broad range of fields, regions, and partnership types (e.g., volunteer, internship, service-learning). Findings/Conclusions: Although community partners identify a number of benefits to their collaborations with academic institutions, they also encounter critical challenges (e.g., faculty engagement, communication, student preparation). Partner recommendations include additional faculty attention to student knowledge of content, skills, and professionalism, as well as increased faculty engagement in all aspects of the collaboration. Implications: From a community perspective, faculty have an important role to play in facilitating true community–university partnerships that are equitable, reciprocal, and mutually beneficial.

Complexities of Coordinating Service-Learning Experiences in Rural Communities

2020 ◽  
pp. 192-210
Author(s):  
Urkovia Andrews ◽  
Yelena Tarasenko ◽  
Kara Holland
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Faculty Member ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Medical Clinic ◽  
Community Partner ◽  
Graduate Level ◽  
Community Partners ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Health Course

Explored from the viewpoint of the faculty member, nonprofit director, and service-learning staff, this chapter provides insight into the complexity of the service-learning relationship in rural communities. Specifically, it provides perspectives that highlight the cultivation and maintenance of a relationship with a local nonprofit, challenges of incorporating and implementing a e-service-learning project in a hybrid format, and the outcome of the e-service-learning project between a graduate level public health course and a free medical clinic that serves the medically uninsured. These highlights will be discussed through sections detailing the geographical location of the area, through an overview of the local nonprofit community partner, which is a free medical clinic, a review of the community partners various university partnerships, an overview of e-service-learning within the graduate level course, the faculty member perspective, the community partner perspective, and the service-learning staff member perspective.

scholarly journals "Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best, but Realistically, Expect a Combination of Both:" Lessons and Best Practices Emerging from Community-engaged Teaching During a Health Crisis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angie Mejia
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Partners ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Institutional Resources ◽  
Community Based Learning ◽  
Learning Projects

AbstractThis article outlines a framework that I implemented when delivering a community-engaged course during the earlier days of COVID-19. I argue that these guiding principles—centering the community partners' needs, assessing, and remaining flexible to students' circumstances, and cautiously mapping and selectively using institutional resources to deliver the course—allowed me to provide a community-engaged experience to undergraduate students despite pandemic restrictions. At the same time, I ensured that the intersectional feminist and critical ethos of the class were not compromised and that the commitment to the community partners' sustainability was not cast aside. Additionally, I share two detailed exemplars of community-based learning projects highlighting the possibilities, challenges, and limitations when applying this framework. I close this piece with several points of departure to stimulate future conversation among educators, researchers, and practitioners on the role of community-based service-learning during times of societal crisis.

1. The Neoliberal Logic of Service-Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Snider Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Community Partnerships ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Community Based ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship

<?page nr="1"?>Abstract This article investigates the ways in which service-learning manifests within our neoliberal clime, suggesting that service-learning amounts to a foil for neoliberalism, allowing neoliberal political and economic changes while masking their damaging effects. Neoliberalism shifts the relationship between the public and the private, structures higher education, and promotes a façade of community-based university partnerships while facilitating a pervasive regime of control. This article demonstrates that service-learning amounts to an enigma of neoliberalism, making possible the privatization of the public and the individualizing of social problems while masking evidence of market-based societal control. Neoliberal service-learning distances service from teaching and learning, allows market forces to shape university-community partnerships, and privatizes the public through dispossession by accumulation.

scholarly journals Considering Power in Community-Based Research: Shifting Toward New Pedagogical Approaches with a 'Public Work for Public Things' Framework

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Haarman ◽  
Patrick M Green
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Power Differential ◽  
Community Based Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Work ◽  
Community Based Learning ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Service Learning Pedagogy ◽  
The Voice

One of the fundamental questions of power in the pedagogy of community-based research (CBR) is who gets to decide what is research worthy and what is the focus of CBR questions? The reality of the power imbalance in community-based research and learning is often reflective of a systemic disengagement with the broader community. Even when instructors and administrators are intentional in how they solicit feedback or think through the impact of their work, they may not know the neighbourhood. Prioritising the voice of community partners does not provide a simple solution, as the individuals we work with to organise community-based learning opportunities may not be residents of the neighbourhood. This article adopts a theory-building approach to this crucial question. Building on the work of Boyte (2014) and Honig (2017), community-based research is reoriented as ‘public work for public things’ (Haarman 2020). After establishing the ‘public work for public things’ framework, the article explores how this new framework impacts collaborative research by addressing the power differential and creating new lines of inquiry – specifically the practice of ‘elicitation of concerns’. Through the lens of critical service-learning pedagogy (Mitchell 2008) and a practitioner-scholar framework (Lytle 2008; Ravitch 2013; Salipante & Aram 2003), we then interrogate two community-based research courses we have recently taught, examining how a ‘public work for public things’ approach would have altered the course and its methods.

scholarly journals Voices of Community Partners: Perspectives Gained from Conversations of Community-Based Participatory Research Experiences

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (14) ◽  
pp. 5245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather J. Williamson ◽  
Carmenlita Chief ◽  
Dulce Jiménez ◽  
Andria Begay ◽  
Trudie F. Milner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Research ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Cultural Humility ◽  
Consensus Method ◽  
Community Partner ◽  
Open Communication ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Partners ◽  
Underserved Communities

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has been documented as an effective approach to research with underserved communities, particularly with racial and ethnic minority groups. However, much of the literature promoting the use of CBPR with underserved communities is written from the perspective of the researchers and not from the perspective of the community partner. The purpose of this article is to capture lessons learned from the community partners’ insight gained through their experiences with CBPR. A multi-investigator consensus method was used to qualitatively code the transcripts of a CBPR story-telling video series. Seven major themes were identified: (1) expectations for engaging in research, (2) cultural humility, (3) respecting the partnership, (4) open communication, (5) genuine commitment, (6) valuing strengths and recognizing capacities, and (7) collaborating to yield meaningful results. The themes drawn from the community partner’s voice align with the tenets of CBPR advanced in the academic literature. More opportunities to include the community voice when promoting CBPR should be undertaken to help introduce the concepts to potential community partners who may be research cautious.

scholarly journals Welcome from the IARSLCE President

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. iii-iii
Author(s):  
Susan Root
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
International Association ◽  
Community Based ◽  
High Quality ◽  
High Quality Research ◽  
Quality Research ◽  
Community Based Learning ◽  
Learning And Collaboration

I am thrilled to introduce the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement (IJRSLCE), the journal of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE). IARSLCE is an association of K-H scholars and practitioners dedicated to the development and dissemination of high quality research on service-learning and other forms of community-based learning and collaboration.

Community-Based Experiential Learning in Teacher Education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Harfitt
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Beginning Teachers ◽  
21St Century ◽  
New Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Community Partners

Institutes of higher education around the world have increasingly adopted community-based experiential learning (EL) programs as pedagogy to equip their students with skills and values that make them more open to an increasingly unpredictable and ill-defined 21st-century world. Values of social justice, empathy, care, collaboration, creativity, and resilience have all been seen as potential benefits of community engagement through EL. In the field of teacher education, the goals of preparing teachers for the 21st century have undergone similar changes with the local community being positioned more and more as a knowledge space that is rich in learning opportunities for both preservice and in-service teachers. It is no longer enough for teacher educators to only focus on the teaching of classroom strategies and methods; beginning teachers’ must now move toward a critical interrogation of their role as a community-based teacher. Boundary-crossing projects established by teacher education institutes and that are embedded in local communities can complement more traditional pedagogies such as classroom-based lectures and teaching practicum. Such an approach to teacher education can allow for new teachers to draw on powerful community knowledge in order to become more inclusive and socially connected educators. In sum, community-based EL in teacher preparation programs can create a hybrid, nonhierarchical platform for academics, practitioners, and community partners who bring together different expertise that are all seen as being beneficial to teacher development in a rapidly changing and uncertain world. While research has shown that community-based EL projects can bring tangible benefits to students, universities, and community members, a number of contentious issues continue to surround the topic and need to be addressed. One concerns the very definition of community-based EL itself. There is still a need to better characterize what community-based EL is and what it involves, because too often it is seen in overly simplistic terms, such as voluntary work, or categorized loosely as another example of service-learning endeavors, including field studies and internship programs. There has also been a paucity of research on the degree to which community-based EL projects in teacher training actually help to promote subject matter teaching skills. Other ongoing issues about the case for community-based learning in teacher education today include the question of who the teacher educators are in today’s rapidly changing world and to what extent noneducation-related community partners should be positioned as co-creators of knowledge alongside teacher educators in the development of new teachers’ personal and professional development.

English at Your Service

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Helene Krauthamer ◽  
Matthew Petti
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
General Education ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Black College ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Historically Black College ◽  
Community Based Learning ◽  
The Impact

This chapter discusses civic engagement and service-learning in higher education at an urban, land-grant, Historically Black College/University, with a particular focus on the challenges and benefits of service-learning for commuter students. After a discussion of service learning and how it exemplifies the Kolb learning model and effective educational practice, the chapter presents illustrations of civic engagement and extracurricular community-based learning in an English BA program through its two student organizations – The Literary Club and Sigma Tau Delta-Alpha Epsilon Rho. The chapter also provides an example of how service-learning has been implemented in a General Education program and specifically in a writing course. The chapter highlights the partnerships with community organizations that have developed, presents reflective testimonials about the impact of these experiences, provides recommendations for strengthening community-based learning, and concludes that service-learning/community-based learning results in a sense of community for all participants.

Imagination Practices and Community-Based Learning

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-223
Author(s):  
Simone Weil Davis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Learning Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
Community Based Learning ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Learning Projects

Informed by my experiences in prison/university co-learning projects, this essay centres two community-based learning practices worth cultivating. First, what can happen when all participants truly prioritize what it means to build community as they address their shared project, co-discovering new ways of being and doing together, listening receptively and speaking authentically? How can project facilitators step beyond prescribed roles embedded in the charity paradigm of service-learning to invite and support egalitarian community and equity-driven decision-making from a project’s inception and development, through its unfolding and its assessment? Second, the sheer fact of a project taking place in the marginal place between two contexts gives all participants—students, faculty, community participants and hosts—the opportunity for meta-reflection on the institutional logics that construct and constrain our perspectives so acutely. What can we do, by way of project-conception and pedagogy, to open up those insights? The vantage that “the space between” provides can bring fresh understanding of the systemic forces at work in the lives of the community participants. And the university’s assumptions about itself and its place in the world can also suddenly appear strange and new, objects of scrutiny for students and community members both.

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