scholarly journals Spaces In-between: Text Poems from Community Practice and Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Gerstenblatt ◽  
Diane Rhodes ◽  
Lida Holst
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Community Practice ◽  
Community Members ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
The Past ◽  
Teacher Researcher ◽  
Fellow Teacher ◽  
Artist Teacher

A commitment on the part of the academy to address social issues has increased over the past three decades, resulting in service learning courses, volunteering opportunities, and community-university partnerships. Faculty, staff, and community practitioners collaborating to lead these efforts often carry enormous responsibility and answer to often competing interests of students, community members, and universities. Using the experience of an scholar/artist/teacher in a university-community partnership founded by the first author in a racially polarized town, this article explores the potential of arts-based methods, specifically poetry and collage, to mitigate the consequence of this work. The format is a dialogue between two engaged teacher/researcher/practitioners and friends to clarify the hidden experience of the researcher with narrative truth to articulate and share not only experiences, but also lessons learned as a contribution to our fellow teacher/researcher/practitioners.

scholarly journals Teaching civic engagement: Evaluating an integrative service-learning program

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed Metzger
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Community Intervention ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Community Practice ◽  
Integrative Learning ◽  
Learning Program ◽  
Community Environments

The demands on successfully teaching intervention skills in macro (community) environments are numerous and extend beyond the confines of any one academic discipline. In particular, when considering community, the compounding of the multiple factors of social economics, diversity, social policy, history and political agendas requires an integrative approach. This mixed-methods retrospective article analyses the use of service-learning in an advanced Master of Social Work community practice course. Special attention is given to the construction of academic and community experience that facilitates learning integration and understanding of the ways in which factors compound on community wellbeing. Specifically this project involved students in efforts constructed to address violence directed by and against inner-city youth in a mid-sized northeastern city in the United States that is beset with gang violence and has led its state in per capita murders for four of the past five years. Recommendations and lessons learned presented in this article are directed at exploring a construction of service-learning that could address integrative learning in community intervention courses. Keywords: Service-learning, teaching, macro practice, violence

Communities, Cartography and GIS

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy L. Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Real World ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Members ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Real World Setting ◽  
Geographic Knowledge ◽  
Community Residents

This paper discusses an introductory cartography and GIS service learning course. The service learning experience, highlighted by a final mapping project and community presentation, resulted in 3,000 student-designed maps being distributed to community residents, a website of downloadable student maps, multiple student speaking engagements, and a sustained community-university collaboration. The course demonstrates the importance of applied geography in local communities and highlights the benefits of community-university partnerships for addressing social change. Such an applied geography experience offers an important twist on the conventional, introductory cartography course where students engage in pre-packaged lectures and labs, and are then asked to complete a final mapping project. Unlike the conventional approach, this service learning class experience allows students to use their creativity to demonstrate knowledge learned in the course and allows students to apply and present their geographic knowledge in a real-world setting to community members.

scholarly journals Healing, Community, and Humanity: How Students and Teachers Want to Reinvent Schools Post-COVID

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Reich ◽  
Jal Mehta
Keyword(s):  
School Leaders ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Classroom Teachers ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Learning Loss ◽  
School Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
School Year ◽  
Healing Community

Understanding the experiences of students and teachers during pandemic schooling is vital to educational recovery and building back better. In the spring of 2021 as the school year was coming to close, we conducted three research exercises: 1) we invited 200 teachers to interview their students about the past year and share their findings, 2) we interviewed 50 classroom teachers, and 3) we conducted ten multistakeholder design charrettes with students, teachers, school leaders, and family members to begin planning for the 2021-2022 recovery year. Rather than a "return to normal" or the targeting of a narrowly-conceived "learning loss," the students and educators in our study emphasized themes of healing, community, and humanity as key learnings from the pandemic year and essential values to rebuilding schools. We recommend that in the 2021-2022 year, schools create structures for community members to reflect on the pandemic year, celebrate resilience, grieve what has been lost, and imagine how the lessons learned from a tumultuous year can inform more equitable, resilient school systems for the future. We provide guidance on four reflection protocols to use in school communities to advance this work.

Communities, Cartography and GIS

2013 ◽  
pp. 1848-1863
Author(s):  
Timothy L. Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Real World ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Members ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Real World Setting ◽  
Geographic Knowledge ◽  
Community Residents

This paper discusses an introductory cartography and GIS service learning course. The service learning experience, highlighted by a final mapping project and community presentation, resulted in 3,000 student-designed maps being distributed to community residents, a website of downloadable student maps, multiple student speaking engagements, and a sustained community-university collaboration. The course demonstrates the importance of applied geography in local communities and highlights the benefits of community-university partnerships for addressing social change. Such an applied geography experience offers an important twist on the conventional, introductory cartography course where students engage in pre-packaged lectures and labs, and are then asked to complete a final mapping project. Unlike the conventional approach, this service learning class experience allows students to use their creativity to demonstrate knowledge learned in the course and allows students to apply and present their geographic knowledge in a real-world setting to community members.

Communities, Cartography and GIS

2012 ◽  
pp. 222-238
Author(s):  
Timothy L. Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Real World ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Members ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Real World Setting ◽  
Geographic Knowledge ◽  
Community Residents

This paper discusses an introductory cartography and GIS service learning course. The service learning experience, highlighted by a final mapping project and community presentation, resulted in 3,000 student-designed maps being distributed to community residents, a website of downloadable student maps, multiple student speaking engagements, and a sustained community-university collaboration. The course demonstrates the importance of applied geography in local communities and highlights the benefits of community-university partnerships for addressing social change. Such an applied geography experience offers an important twist on the conventional, introductory cartography course where students engage in pre-packaged lectures and labs, and are then asked to complete a final mapping project. Unlike the conventional approach, this service learning class experience allows students to use their creativity to demonstrate knowledge learned in the course and allows students to apply and present their geographic knowledge in a real-world setting to community members.

scholarly journals Needs and readiness assessments: Tools for promoting community-university engagement with Aboriginal communities

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fay Fletcher ◽  
Alicia Hibbert ◽  
Fiona Robertson ◽  
Jodie Asselin
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Research ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Readiness Assessment ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Program Content ◽  
Important Means ◽  
University Engagement

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an important means of connecting the perspectives of community members with critical social issues, such as health and wellness. As beneficial as CBPR can be, effective engagement with community members remains a difficult goal to achieve. In this article, we draw on the international literature around needs and readiness assessments to explore their potential for establishing solid foundations for engaged research. We examine the stages and dimensions identified in the literature, and use these as a framework for a needs and readiness assessment project undertaken with a Métis Settlement community in Alberta, Canada. We share how the needs and readiness assessments helped to foster the emergence of community priorities, informing the next steps in research design, program content and evaluation methods, and heightening community-university engagement. It is our hope that our example of engagement, which focuses on the role of needs and readiness assessments in strengthening community-university partnerships, will better inform engagement approaches so that they become relevant, culturally appropriate and community specific. Keywords: Métis, Aboriginal, community-based participatory research, needs assessment, readiness assessment, community-university partnership

scholarly journals The New Color is Green: Social Work Practice and Service-Learning

10.18060/1340 ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma T. Lucas-Darby
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Community Practice ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Human Welfare

Attention to saving the environment is gaining momentum daily. Citizens have a fundamental right to protect the environment from harm due to human activities. The profession of social work has a role to play in greening and sustaining the environment. The inclusion of this content in social work courses is a natural fit given the profession’s person-in-environment perspective which emphasizes the relationship between individuals, their behavior and the environment and advocacy for preservation of human welfare and human rights. Participatory environmentalism considers the role of community members in demonstrating their civic responsibility toward preservation of the natural environment and resources. Social work students must be encouraged to accept vital leadership roles that address environmental concerns in addition to serving client populations. A community practice course which includes a service-learning requirement chose “greening” as a theme. Students worked with communities to identify and implement semester-long “green” projects.

scholarly journals Supporting Independent Living Through Interdisciplinary Service Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76
Author(s):  
Nicole Janich ◽  
Natasha Mendoza ◽  
Cynthia Mackey ◽  
Nidia Hernandez ◽  
Abigail Henderson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Independent Living ◽  
Service Use ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Learning Program ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Clinical Supervisors ◽  
School Of Social Work

Service learning within independent living facilities may be a highly effective means to address the service gaps that challenge older adults and people who are disabled. We present a new approach to service learning by leveraging opportunities for community–university partnerships. The Community Collaborative Model (CCM) represents synergy between organized independent living and higher education at Arizona State University and led by the School of Social Work. The CCM is a unique collaborative service learning program aligned with current thinking about independent living, supportive services, and community-based service learning. We share lessons learned from the challenges of establishing this program, which included institutional hurdles, maintaining adequate physical space, student-focused planning, varying levels of preparedness, and stigma related to service use. In conclusion, we recommend means to (1) build interprofessional teams, (2) seek support and commitment of faculty partners, (3) ensure sustainability via community liaisons and clinical supervisors, and (4) create space for reflective practice.

scholarly journals ISL Programs and Neo-Colonialism: The Response of One Nicaraguan Village

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael O'Sullivan ◽  
Harry Smaller
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Place Making ◽  
International Service Learning ◽  
International Service ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Over the past five years, through interviews and focus groups, the authors have been exploring the impact of international service learning (ISL) programs on host villages and villagers in the south. While most communities express ongoing interest, this paper focuses on one rural Nicaraguan village that decided to end their long-standing involvement in ISL, citing the North’s persistent lack of sensitivity to the interests and needs of their community. Drawing on Basso (1996) and Gruenwald (2003), we explore the concept of place-making - drawing the individual into a collective story and focusing on discovering social meaning in and though the places they inhabit. We argue that the ISL has the potential to challenge and transform both the visitors and the host community members, but for that to happen the host community must exercise agency with respect to defining the behavioural and learning expectations of their visitors.

scholarly journals The LSU Community Playground Project: Reflections on 16 Years of an Engineering Service-Learning Program

2014 ◽  
pp. 492-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marybeth Lima
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Biological Engineering ◽  
Learning Program ◽  
School Students ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Child Play ◽  
Service Activities ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Reading And Math

This article presents a first-year, biological engineering design course in which a placement-project combination service-learning model is used to enable students to meet practice-based and civic-based learning objectives. In this course, college students (1) work individually with elementary school students to practice reading and math skills and to learn about play and the school community, and (2) work in teams to co-create playground designs with the child play experts. Lessons learned and best practices of engineering service-learning are discussed, including the shift in instructional role, the variability and “partially controlled” nature of community-university partnerships, and the importance of language. Outcomes of the program are briefly discussed, with more detail given to five years of alumni survey data regarding the service activities of participants in the service-learning course before and after graduation. Results showed that 68% of respondents participated in service before graduation and 45% participate after graduation. Most service activities performed by graduates are not engineering related. Ideas for encouraging service in the engineering profession are discussed.

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