THE SCHOLARSHIP OF ENGAGEMENT

1
THE SCHOLARSHIP OF ENGAGEMENT
I am convinced thatthe academy must become a
more vigorous partner 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 resources of the university
to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical
problemsCampuses 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 climate in which the academic and civic
cultures communicate more continuously and
creatively with each other. Ernest Boyer (1996),
The Journal of Public Service and Outreach
2
Circle of Higher Education Civic Engagement
Initiatives
Economic Development
Shared Resources
Extension Services
Faculty Outreach
Student Volunteerism
Civic Awareness Deliberative Dialogue
Internships Practice
Service-Learning
3

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

4
Civil Society

• To 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 guarda benefit for our
  community school
  Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld

5
Public Engagement
Personal Contact Direct Service
Problem-solving Projects
Research
With (Participatory Action Research)
For (Commissioned by Community)
About (Inclusion of Community)
6
Levels of Reflection
CIVIC Implications Issues
PERSONAL Values Assumptions
Academic Skills and Concepts
7
Service-Learning Spectrum
Experiential Education (Pure Education)
Community Service (Pure Service)
Social Responsibility
Active Learning
Pre-Professional Training
Charity Volunteerism Philanthropy
8
Knowledge Consumption vs. Knowledge Production

• The 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

9

• 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

10
CIVIC COMPETENCIES

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

11
The Kolb Learning Cycle
12

• 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

13

• 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

14
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

15
What We Know About Promoting LearningEffective
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

16
The Four Quadrants of Service-Learning Program
Design
Student-Centered Structured Learning
Common Good Focus
Academic Expertise Focus
Service-Learning
Community-Centered Unstructured Learning
17
Four Quad Typology

• A alone Academic courses
• B alone Student leadership
• C alone Academic culture
• D alone Work of community organizations

B
A
C
D
18
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

19
Unstructured Problems

• 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

20
Pedagogical Uses ofService-Learning

• Field research
• Implementation of theory
• Testing of theory
• Balancing deductive inductive learning
• Reality factor
• Activation of moral imagination

21
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
• Womens Studies

Related Volumes Economics, Mathematics
22
In-class introduction of projects/ student
preparation and pre-service reflection
Faculty and partner(s) discuss/design projects
Possible projects identified
On-site Orientation (possible project contract)
Project implementation and ongoing reflection
Project completion (product delivery)/ presentat
ions and post-service reflection
Project portfolio created and filed
Faculty-partner debriefing and project assessment
23
Next-Century Learning

• today, people worldwide need a whole series of
  new competenciesbut 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 experiencethey 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

24
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