Getting Engaged an exploration of university-

community engagement

Kristine Mason O’ConnorCeAL Fellow28 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…

• 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

• 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 thecollaboration between institutions of highereducation and their larger communities for themutually beneficial exchange of knowledge andresources in a context of partnership and reciprocity

Carnegie Foundation 2006

Community Engagement is the way in whichorganisations and communities connect to improvethe 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

The community as a ‘laboratory’?

higher education practitioners tend to focus on student development as their primarygoal (hence) there has been criticism and concern

that both community needs and communityparticipation in decision making get short shrift inservice-learning (Sigmon 1996). Using thecommunity as a laboratory rather than workingwith the community on jointly useful projects maystunt the development of partnerships that offercontinuous 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 GLOUCESTERSHIREPRSI 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 – 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 inproviding services to business and

community partners (HEFCE 2008)

Academic staff directly involved inproviding 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?

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)