Transcript Slide 1

Getting Engaged
an exploration of universitycommunity engagement
Kristine Mason O’Connor
CeAL Fellow
28 April 2009
Seminar Outline
• Presentation
– A call to engage
– Engagement…meanings, forms, features, examples
– Critical questions
• Example of a community engagement
strategy
• Small group discussion and feedback
• Conclusion
A call to engage
the academy must become a more
vigorous partner in the search for answers
to our most pressing social, civic,
economic and moral problems, and must
affirm its historic commitment to what I call
the scholarship of engagement…..
furthermore….
Campuses would be viewed by both
students and professors not as isolated
islands, but as staging grounds for action
(Boyer 1996)
Some everyday meanings of
engagement…
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betrothal
date
battle
employment
involvement
fitting together
sharing activities
University - Public Engagement
an umbrella term?
• community engagement (volunteering, collaborative
projects with not-for-profit organisations);
• public dissemination of knowledge (public lectures,
activities at festivals, museums etc);
• social enterprise (using knowledge and skills for social
benefit and capacity building) ,
• engaged research-related activity (projects designed
for public benefit, two-way partnerships or collaborative
work with community groups or where funding has been
raised in partnership with charity or voluntary
organisations)
University of Gloucestershire letter to staff September 2008
Taxonomy of five engaged
scholarship practices
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Public scholarship: Problems addressed: complex ‘public’ problems
requiring deliberation.
Methods: face-to-face, open forums
Participatory research: problems addressed: Inclusion of specific groups
Methods: face to face collaboration with specific publics
Community partnership: problems addressed: social change, structural
transformation
Methods: collaboration with intermediary groups
Public information networks: problems addressed; problems of
networking, communication
Methods: databases of public resources
Civic literacy scholarship: problems addressed: enhancing public
discourse
Methods: communication with general public
(Drawn from Barker 2004 p 132)
Three distinctive features of
engagement
1. Engagement is scholarly
A scholarship-based model of
engagement involves both the act of
engaging (bringing universities and
communities together) and the product of
engagement (the spread of discipline
generated, evidence-based practices in
communities)
2. Engagement cuts across the mission of
teaching, research, and service.
It is not a separate activity, but a particular
approach to campus-community
collaboration
3. Engagement is reciprocal and mutually
beneficial.
There is mutual planning, implementation,
and assessment among engagement
partners
(Committee on Institutional Cooperation 2005 p5)
The hallmark of engagement is the
development of partnerships that ensure a
mutually beneficial exchange of
knowledge between the university and the
community
(Holland, B. and Ramaley, J.A. 2008 p 33)
Engaged teaching and research…
make sense in a world where systemic
problems, conflicting demands and radical
advances in communication technologies
require new ways of discovering, integrating and
applying knowledge. And, most important,
university engagement is grounded in a growing
body of scholarly research that demonstrates its
effective impact on teaching, learning and
community-based problem solving
(Wingspread Statement 2004 p3)
Community Engagement
Community engagement describes the
collaboration between institutions of higher
education and their larger communities for the
mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and
resources in a context of partnership and
reciprocity
Carnegie Foundation 2006
Community Engagement is the way in which
organisations and communities connect to improve
the quality of life in neighbourhoods
Community Engagement and Governance Foundation Degree
Course Leaflet University of Gloucestershire 2009
Quality and conduct of community
engagement 3 key principles
• Mutually beneficial for all parties
• Reciprocal in its nature
• Designed to promote learning and the exchange
of knowledge in the search for collaborative
approaches to the solution of real-world
problems and opportunities
(Holland and Ramaly 2008 p 36)
The community as a ‘laboratory’?
higher education practitioners tend to
focus on student development as their primary
goal (hence) there has been criticism and concern
that both community needs and community
participation in decision making get short shrift in
service-learning (Sigmon 1996). Using the
community as a laboratory rather than working
with the community on jointly useful projects may
stunt the development of partnerships that offer
continuous benefits to both parties.
(Eyler and Giles 1999 p 179)
Characteristics of community
based research
• collaborative and change oriented and finds its
research questions in the needs of
communities..
(Strand et al 2003 p xiv)
• its most important characteristic is that the
impetus for and influence over the research
comes from the community, not the academic
(Stoecker 2001 web)
Benefits for student learning
Active learning/Transformational learning
Jack Mezirow an early exponent
find out more at….
UNIVERSITY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE
PRSI and IRIS international conference
Researching Transformational Learning through ESD,
Internationalisation and Citizenship
Wednesday 10th June 2009
International Examples
• The Community-Based Learning Initiative
(Princeton University)
• Community Knowledge Initiative
(National University of Ireland, Galway)
• The Scholarship of Engagement for
Politics
(Oxford Brooks, Warwick, Coventry Universities)
Some critical questions
What about
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epistemology?
quality?
funding?
recognising and supporting staff?
sustainability?
• Most importantly… is it the role of the university
to be a ‘staging ground for action’?
Epistemology?
Discussions of interdisciplinarity raise
questions not only about differences in
areas of expertise or knowledge, but about
the difference in the very nature of what
counts as a claim to knowledge or expertise
example of Kennewick Man
(Rowland 2006 p 90)
Quality ?
(in the UK) there are no national ‘strategic’ quality
and esteem measures for measuring the quality
of third stream activity on a par with those for
research or for learning and teaching…….
Institutions do not have a means of expressing
their excellence in engaging with society through
formalised esteem measures that are published
‘kite marks’ of excellence
(Wedgwood 2006 p145)
‘quality’ is not simply the property of an object but
the relation between object and subject… for
example, the question of assuring quality in a
university would give much more emphasis to an
understanding of the purposes of the university
such as its relation to the society it serves….
UK universities are measured in terms that
produce a plethora of league tables, but any
debate concerning the relationships between
quality and purposes is almost totally absent
(my italics)
(Rowland 2006 p 8)
Academic rigour
Fish (2003) Aim low: confusing democratic
values with academic ones can easily
damage the quality of education.
Quality - USA
The Carnegie Foundation for the advancement
of Teaching announced today that it was
awarding its “community engagement”
classification to 119 colleges as part of an effort
to encourage more higher-education institutions
to reach out to the world around them.
A statement issued by the foundation said 147
institutions had applied for such a designation by
documenting their involvement in their
communities.
(Carnegie Foundation 18 December 2008)
Funding?
HEIs, Community?
Mainstream third stream funding?
Academic staff directly involved in
providing services to business and
community partners (HEFCE 2008)
Academic time spent on social,
community and cultural events (HEFCE 2008)
Academic Staff?
the central focus…the “integrators” who find their
own individual ways of accommodating the
different demands..
(Wedgwood 2006 p 154)
• Allocation of duties
• Recognition and reward (tenure/promotion)
• Professional development
Sustainability?
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Six practices proposed to institutionalise
engagement in sustainable ways
Integrate engagement into the mission
Forge partnerships as the overarching
framework for engagement
Renew and define discovery and scholarship
Integrate engagement into teaching and learning
Recruit and support new champions
Create radical change
(Wingspread Statement 2004)
Conclusion
Engagement is difficult work it gets to the
heart of what higher education is about
and as such it requires institution-wide
effort, deep commitment at all levels, and
leadership by both campus and community
(my emphasis)
(Wingspread Statement 2004 p 2)