scholarly journals Humanities for Humanity

Author(s):  
John Duncan

Since 2007, the Humanities for Humanity (“H4H”) course has brought together student experience beyond the classroom, educational experiences for community members who could not otherwise attend university, discussion of social justice, and studies in the humanities. By discussing a selection of rich and influential primary texts from the humanities, course members are introduced to a rudimentary history of the present, focussing on who we have become as members of a concrete social and political reality intersected by capitalism, bureaucracy, liberalism, socialism, anti-essentialism, and post-colonialism. Both the texts and the student-participant encounters are rich, and the sessions are guided by two central classical ideals: the activity of learning is primarily an end in itself, and the most important thing to learn may be who we are. The core course content of H4H is outlined, and the ways in which H4H connects student mentors and community participants are discussed. Implications are drawn regarding what makes H4H a unique form of community service-learning in which service is virtually eclipsed by learning in a process that subverts barriers between people.

Author(s):  
Masilonyane Mokhele ◽  
Nicholas Pinfold

South Africa faces a multitude of social, economic and environmental challenges, which require well-considered planning efforts. However, the efficacy of the built environment professions to adequately plan for the current and future populations can to some extent be questioned. Factors that are arguably responsible for the failure of the professions to achieve the desired outcomes include the following: (1) the inability of professionals to comprehensively analyse community problems and (2) although the various professions might work on the same issues, they largely fail to transcend disciplinary boundaries. This state of affairs can in part be linked to the role of higher education, which is in a good position to equip future professionals with the skills required for the analysis of diverse societal problems. In spite of the importance of education and training, there is a paucity of literature that explore ways in which the South African higher education sector instils transdisciplinary thinking and, accordingly, imparts the requisite soft skills to students. Using the case study of Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, the aim of this article was to present efforts that are pursued towards instilling transdisciplinarity in students. The efforts revolve around community service-learning pedagogy, which grants students a platform to work in close collaboration with communities. In the process, students and community members develop an in-depth understanding of the community’s problems and how they could be collectively resolved.


Author(s):  
Maxine Holmqvist ◽  
Carole Courtney ◽  
Ryan Meili ◽  
Alixe Dick

Background: Collaborative practice is a necessary component of providing effective, socially responsive, patient-centred care; however, effective teamwork requires training. Canadian student-run clinics are interprofessional community service-learning initiatives where students plan and deliver clinical and health promotion services, with the assistance of licensed healthcare professionals.Methods and Findings: In this article, we use a reflective approach to examine the phenomenon of student-run clinics in Canada. First, we briefly review the history of student-run clinics and then describe one particular clinic in detail. Then, drawing on the experiences of student-run clinics across the country, we identify common themes and challenges that we believe characterize these programs.Conclusion: Student-run clinics in Canada emphasize health equity, interprofessionalism, and student leadership. As more student-run clinics are developed, both nationally and internationally, co-ordinated research efforts are needed to determine their effects on students, institutions, communities, and healthcare systems. If educators can learn to collaborate effectively with student leaders, student-run clinics may be ideal sites for advancing learning around interprofessionalism and social accountability.


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 01030
Author(s):  
Wai Ching Angela Wong

This paper traces the history of United Board‘s engagement with service-learning through higher education in Asia and reflects on the recent discussion about the relevancy of service-learning activities to today‘s higher education system. Through a close review of the experience shared in recent projects sponsored and organized by United Board in the last five years, service learners from colleges and universities around Asia all testified an process that deepens both cognitive and affective learning, generating in service-learning actors-faculty, students and community members-a connection that could inspire and sustain their vision and passion for life. Despite the seemingly still marginalized status of service learning programs and faculty in most higher education institutions, educators believing in whole person education only find service-learning ever more important in the face of higher education that has been increasingly trapped by the ranking race.


Author(s):  
Nancy Van Styvendale ◽  
Jessica McDonald ◽  
Sarah Buhler

 This special issue invites engaged learning practitioners and scholars, both established and emerging, to take stock of the history of CSL, assess current practices, and consider how to move forward in the future. Is CSL the biggest thing to hit Canadian campuses since the late 1990s? With approximately fifty CSL programs or units across the country (Dorow et al., 2013), annual gatherings of scholars and practitioners, and a network of individuals who remain devoted to CSL despite challenges in funding and logistics, CSL in Canada has certainly made its mark, embedded in the context of a larger movement of engaged scholarship on campuses across the country—a movement exemplified in this very Engaged Scholar Journal, the first of its kind in Canada to focus on publishing community-engaged work.


2020 ◽  
pp. 174619792097180
Author(s):  
Ntimi N Mtawa ◽  
Samuel N Fongwa

Service–learning has, arguably, gained significant currency as a pedagogical and engagement mechanism within the broader discourse of universities and their role in community development. However, less emphasis has been placed on the human development dimensions of service–learning for community members, with the focus largely being on students’ experiential learning and other academic outcomes for the university. Though usually conceived as an integral part in university–community partnerships, community members’ role in the conception and implementation of service–learning initiatives is from a peripheral position. In this paper, we interrogate this lacuna by applying core tenets of the human development approach to document the experiences and perceptions of community members within a university–community service learning partnerships. From the analysis of qualitative data n = 22, we demonstrate that while service–learning enhances agency, it continues to operate within a historical context and contemporary political economy of South Africa, which obscure community members’ active participation and empowerment towards inclusive and sustainable valued outcomes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 554-554
Author(s):  
Tamar Shovali

Abstract The intergenerational reflective service-learning program titled Mentor Up is intentionally integrated within gerontology education. Mentor Up, a series of one-on-one technology training workshops, connects younger with older learners in the community while building on course content. Groups of students are paired with the Academy of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College (ASPEC) members, a continuing education organization whose 300+ members are committed to lifelong learning. Members are fully integrated into the course, serving as mentors for students. These class sessions support students in planning for Mentor Up service at a local CCRC and promote positive contact between students and retired community members. ASPEC members also participate with students in a significant reflective component concluding the course – in which students and older learners work together to write a script, record, and present a video essay addressing aging stereotypes. Considerations for planning, classroom integration, community connection, and project reflections will be discussed.


Author(s):  
Murali Venkatesh ◽  
Ruth V. Small

In this chapter, we present lessons learned from 10 years’ instructional experience with active learning through our classes at Syracuse University. As reflective practitioners of active learning, we have refined our instruction over the years, in the process conceptually extending and augmenting extant theories of experiential learning and related approaches. Our model is built around four principles: client-centered work in natural settings, task design that is attentive to the motivational properties of the active learning stimulus, learning as social participation, and community service learning. Learning through prototyping, with its emphasis on design and the making of artifacts, functions as a background to the extended model and informs each of its principles. We then present a brief history of the Center for Active Learning and the Community and Information Technology Institute, both of which, in slightly different ways, implement our active learning method.


2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-28
Author(s):  
Lyndall Ellingson

Current adolescent HIV infection rates support the need for early HIV/AIDS prevention education. This article describes a successful service-learning project in which undergraduate health education students developed and taught an elementaryschool HIV/AIDS prevention education curriculum that included a compassion component involving donation of teddy bears to community members affected with HIV/AIDS.


Author(s):  
Didier Debaise

Process and Reality ends with a warning: ‘[t]he chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence’ (PR, 337). Although this danger of narrowness might emerge from the ‘idiosyncrasies and timidities of particular authors, of particular social groups, of particular schools of thought, of particular epochs in the history of civilization’ (PR, 337), we should not be mistaken: it occurs within philosophy, in its activity, its method. And the fact that this issue arises at the end of Process and Reality reveals the ambition that has accompanied its composition: Whitehead has resisted this danger through the form and ambition of his speculative construction. The temptation of a narrowness in selection attempts to expel speculative philosophy at the same time as it haunts each part of its system.


Author(s):  
Sara Awartani

In late September 2018, multiple generations of Chicago’s storied social movements marched through Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood as part of the sold-out, three-day Young Lords Fiftieth Anniversary Symposium hosted by DePaul University—an institution that, alongside Mayor Richard J. Daley’s administration, had played a sizeable role in transforming Lincoln Park into a neighborhood “primed for development.” Students, activists, and community members—from throughout Chicago, the Midwest, the East Coast, and even as far as Texas—converged to celebrate the history of Puerto Ricans in Chicago, the legacies of the Young Lords, and the promises and possibilities of resistance. As Elaine Brown, former chairwoman and minister of information for the Black Panther Party, told participants in the second day’s opening plenary, the struggle against racism, poverty, and gentrification and for self-determination and the general empowerment of marginalized people is a protracted one. “You have living legends among you,” Brown insisted, inviting us to associate as equals with the Young Lords members in our midst. Her plea encapsulated the ethos of that weekend’s celebrations: “If we want to be free, let us live the light of the Lords.”


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