community engagement and service learning in a south african university: the challenges of adaptive leadership

Conceptualizing community engagement as intertwined with teaching and long-established approaches to research requires a consideration of the epistemology of knowledge itself. What is accepted as legitimate knowledge? And what is the scope of the university’s role in recognizing and validating forms of knowledge and defining curriculum boundaries, understood as the ways in which the university disseminates knowledge that it has validated as authentic? A working understanding of community engagement would include service learning, problem-based teaching and research that addresses specific wants and needs, the pursuit of alternative forms of knowledge and challenges to established authorities that control and direct research systems and the allocation of qualifications. This article considers why this kind of engagement has remained on the margins of the traditional university in South Africa – via a case study of community engagement at the University of Cape Town – despite a decade of clear public policy and asks: why does there appear to be resistance to its inclusion despite a number of incentives that include moral affirmation for contributing to social and economic justice.

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT, SERVICE LEARNING AND STUDENT SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION AT SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES: A CASE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FORT HARE

Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk ◽

10.15270/48-2-95 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Margie Maistry

Keyword(s):

Social Work ◽

Service Learning ◽

Social Responsibility ◽

Community Engagement ◽

South African ◽

South African Universities ◽

University Of Fort Hare ◽

Work Education ◽

The University

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Partnerships and Power: Community Partners’ Experiences of Service-Learning

Africanus Journal of Development Studies ◽

10.25159/2663-6522/5641 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 49 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Sally Matthews

Keyword(s):

Service Learning ◽

Community Engagement ◽

South African ◽

Community Members ◽

Community Partners ◽

Learning Partnerships ◽

Advance Student ◽

Growing Body ◽

Set Up ◽

The University

Service-learning is a form of community engagement deemed beneficial to both students and community members. However, while there is a large and growing body of research investigating whether service-learning does indeed advance student learning, there has been paucity of research on whether service-learning benefits community partners, and in what way. This study is based on interviews with community partners at a South African university, to explore how community partners experience service-learning. The findings suggest that community partners value service-learning partnerships and believe that the presence of students does, for the most part, meet a need in the community. However, the findings also show that service-learning partners long for greater commitment and attention from the university partner, and that few partners feel empowered to initiate and drive service-learning partnerships, which are instead typically set up by the university. These findings also suggest that service-learning partnerships are of value to partners, but that more needs to be done to address the power relations inherent in partnerships between universities and community partners.

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Teaching Interreligious Encounter

10.1093/oso/9780190677565.003.0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Hans Gustafson

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Service Learning ◽

Community Engagement ◽

Case Studies ◽

Course Design ◽

Comparative Theology ◽

Guest Speakers

This chapter offers instructors in higher education some basic tools and elements of course design for interreligious encounter in the undergraduate classroom. Aiming at practice over theory, it provides practical suggestions for fostering interreligious understanding from the first day of class through the end of the semester. These suggestions include the use of guest speakers, interdisciplinary case studies, in-class reflections, and interreligious community engagement (i.e., “service learning”), among others. Further, it provides a concise bibliography of basic introductory texts for both students and instructors in the areas of comparative theology, theologies of religions and religious pluralisms, and interreligious studies and dialogue.

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What makes or breaks higher education community engagement in the South African rural school context: A multiple-partner perspective

Education Citizenship and Social Justice ◽

10.1177/1746197917731353 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 177-196 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Eugene Gabriel Machimana ◽

Maximus Monaheng Sefotho ◽

Liesel Ebersöhn

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Service Learning ◽

Community Engagement ◽

School Context ◽

Secondary Analysis ◽

Rural School ◽

Multiple Partner ◽

Social Challenges ◽

Education Community ◽

Wide Range

The purpose of this study is to inform global citizenship practice as a higher education agenda by comparing the retrospective experiences of a range of community engagement partners and including often silent voices of non-researcher partners. Higher education–community engagement aims to contribute to social justice as it constructs and transfers new knowledge from the perspectives of a wide range of community engagement partners. This qualitative secondary analysis study was framed theoretically by the transformative–emancipatory paradigm. Existing case data, generated on retrospective experiences of community engagement partners in a long-term community engagement partnership, were conveniently sampled to analyse and compare a range of community engagement experiences ( parents of student clients ( n = 12: females 10, males 2), teachers from the partner rural school ( n = 18: females 12, males 6), student-educational psychology clients ( n = 31: females 14, males 17), Academic Service-Learning ( ASL) students ( n = 20: females 17, males 3) and researchers ( n = 12: females 11, males 1). Following thematic in-case and cross-case analysis, it emerged that all higher education–community engagement partners experienced that socio-economic challenges (defined as rural school adversities, include financial, geographic and social challenges) are addressed when an higher education–community engagement partnership exists, but that particular operational challenges (communication barriers, time constraints, workload and unclear scope, inconsistent feedback, as well as conflicting expectations) hamper higher education–community engagement partnership. A significant insight from this study is that a range of community engagement partners experience similar challenges when a university and rural school partner. All community engagement partners experienced that higher education–community engagement is challenged by the structural disparity between the rural context and operational miscommunication.

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