THE SCHOLARSHIP OF ENGAGEMENT

1. THE SCHOLARSHIP OF ENGAGEMENT I am convinced that…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 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 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 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 Extension Services Shared Resources FacultyOutreach 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 guard…a benefit for our community school…Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld

5. Public Engagement Personal Contact & Direct Service Problem-solving Projects Research About (Inclusion of Community) For (Commissioned by Community) With (Participatory Action Research)

6. Levels of Reflection CIVIC Implications & Issues PERSONAL Values & Assumptions Academic Skills and Concepts

7. Service-Learning Service-Learning Spectrum Community Service (Pure Service) Experiential Education (Pure Education) Active Learning Social Responsibility Charity Volunteerism Philanthropy Pre-Professional Training

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. 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 AAHE Service-Learning in the Disciplines Series * 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)/ presentations 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 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”

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