the scholarship of engagement

THE SCHOLARSHIP OF ENGAGEMENTI am convinced that…the academy must become a more vigorouspartner in the search for answers to our most pressing social, civic,economic, and moral problems, and must reaffirm its historic commitment to what I call the scholarship of engagement.

The scholarship of engagement means connecting the rich resourcesof the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems…Campuses would be viewed by both students and professors not as isolated islands, but as staging grounds for action.

The scholarship of engagement also means creating a special climatein which the academic and civic cultures communicate more continuously and creatively with each other.

Ernest Boyer (1996), The Journal of Public Service and Outreach

Economic Development

Service-Learning

Student Volunteerism

Faculty Outreach

Shared Resources

Extension Services

Civic Awareness & Deliberative

Dialogue

Internships & Practice

Circle of Higher EducationCivic Engagement Initiatives

Service-Learning Characteristics

• Meets academic learning objectives

• Involves experience with a community-based organization or group suitable for promoting civic learning

• Involves structured reflection or analysis

• Is based upon principles of academy-community partnership and reciprocity

Civil SocietyTo envision a democratic civic entity that empowers citizens to rule themselves is then necessarily to move beyond the two-celled model of government versus private sector we have come to rely on….Civil society, or civic space, occupies the middle ground [between the two]. It is not where we vote and it is not where we buy and sell; it is where we talk with neighbors about a crossing guard…a benefit for our community school…

Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld

Public Engagement

Personal Contact& Direct Service

Problem-solving Projects

Research

With(Participatory

Action Research)

For(Commissione

d by Community)

About(Inclusion of Community)

CIVIC

Implications & Issues

PERSONAL

Values & Assumptions

AcademicSkillsand

Concepts

Pre-ProfessionalTraining

ExperientialEducation

(Pure Education)

CharityVolunteerismPhilanthropy

CommunityService

(Pure Service)

Knowledge Consumption vs. Knowledge ProductionThe nub of the problem, I believe, is that our society encourages a consumer rather than a producer mentality. In school, for example, students spend much of their time reading and listening and taking notes. At all levels they are merely consuming what their teachers and their textbooks tell them, while the only products they learn to produce are usually in the form of tests that measure comprehension rather than intelligence.

Sternberg, Successful Intelligence

Political equality – citizenship – equalizes people who are otherwise unequal in their capacities, and the universalization of citizenship therefore has to be accompanied not only by formal training in the civic arts but by measures designed to assure the broadest distribution of economic and political responsibility…

Lasch, Revolt of the Elites

CIVIC COMPETENCIES

• Eloquent listening• Non-abrasive argumentation• Suspending judgment• Building consensus• Organizing for action

The Kolb Learning Cycle

The method people naturally employ to acquire knowledge is largely unsupported by traditional classroom practice. The human mind is better equipped to gather information about the world by operating within it than by reading about it, hearing lectures on it, or studying abstract models of it.

The Sante Fe Institute, The Mind, the Brain and Complex Adaptive Systems

Colleges and universities today show an increasing disparity between faculty and students… What suffers as a consequence is the learning process itself - an observation that pervades in numerous national reports… Unfortunately, the natural differences in learning patterns exhibited by new students are often interpreted by faculty as deficiencies. What may be happening, then, is a fundamental "mismatch" between the preferred styles of faculty and those of students.

Schroeder, “New Students – New Learning Styles”

What We Know About Learning• The learner creates his or her learning actively & uniquely • Learning is about making meaning for each individual by establishing and reworking patterns & connections• Every student learns all the time, both with us & despite us• Direct experience decisively shapes individual understanding

for each learner• Learning occurs best when people are confronted with a compelling and identifiable problem• Beyond stimulation, learning requires reflection• Effective learning is social and interactive

* Source: Peter Ewell, “Organizing for Learning,” AAHE Bulletin, Dec. 1997

What We Know About Promoting Learning

Effective Approaches:• Emphasize application and experience• Involve faculty who constructively model the learning process• Emphasize linkages between established concepts and new

situations• Emphasize interpersonal collaboration• Involve curricula that develop a clear set of cross-disciplinary

skills publicly held to be important• Emphasize rich and frequent feedback

* Source: Peter Ewell, “Organizing for Learning,” AAHE Bulletin, Dec. 1997

The Four Quadrants of Service-Learning Program Design

Student-Centered Structured Learning

Community-Centered Unstructured Learning

AcademicExpertise

FocusCommon Good

FocusService-Learning

Four Quad Typology• A alone: Academic courses• B alone: Student leadership• C alone: Academic culture• D alone: Work of community organizations

B

C

A

D

Practical Rationality Civic democracy demands the ability to think in

terms of complex balances rather than the maximization of effectiveness as measured by a single objective….The critical step in this direction lies in the rehabilitation of nonformal modes of rationality which do not screen out the practical, the moral, and historical standpoint of both the subject and the object of knowledge. That means the rediscovery and expansion of the idea of practical rationality.

Sullivan, Work and Integrity

An unfortunate feature of much education today, as well as the assessment of educational progress, is its overwhelming emphasis on well-structured problems. It is easier to teach the facts and only the facts, and then to test on these facts.Facts lend themselves to well-structured problems… with a clear, correct solution….The strategies that work in solving well-structured problems, however, often do not work particularly well, or at all, for ill-structured problems.

Sternberg, Successful Intelligence

Unstructured Problems

Pedagogical Uses ofService-Learning

Field research Implementation of theory “Testing” of theory Balancing deductive & inductive learning “Reality” factor Activation of moral imagination

AAHE Service-Learning in the Disciplines Series

• Accounting• Biology• Communication Studies• Composition• Engineering• Environmental Studies• History• Hospitality Management• Management• Medical Education

• Nursing• Peace Studies • Philosophy• Political Science• Psychology• Religious Studies• Sociology• Spanish• Teacher Education• Women’s Studies

* Related Volumes: Economics, Mathematics

Possible projects identified

Faculty and

partner(s)discuss/design

projects

In-classintroduction of projects/

student preparation and

pre-service reflection

On-site Orientation(possible

project contract)

Project implementation

and ongoing reflection

Project completion

(product delivery)/presentations and

post-service reflection

Faculty-partnerdebriefing and

project assessment

Project portfolio created and filed

Next-Century Learning…today, people worldwide need a whole series of new competencies…but I doubt such abilities can be taught solely in the classroom, or be developed solely by teachers. Higher order thinking and problem-solving skills grow out of direct experience…they require more than a classroom activity. They develop through active involvement and real-life experiences in workplaces and the community.

Abbott, “The Search for Next-Century Learning”

Meritocracy vs. Democracy

…the most important choice a democratic society has to make: whether to raise the general level of competence, energy, and devotion – “virtue,” as it was called in an older political tradition – or merely to promote a broader recruitment of elites.

Lasch, Revolt of the Elites