Education Commons^™

Exploring The Role Of Information Literacy Instruction In Student Co-Creation Of Community-Based Research Products, Robyn Hall

Communications in Information Literacy

Supported by institutional commitments to community engagement, undergraduate students at universities across North America are participating in community-based research projects. These experiential learning activities allow students to collaborate with community partners to address issues in their communities, often resulting in co-creating research products that seek to have a real-world impact. This article reports on ways that academic librarians can support students engaged in these activities, informed by interview data gathered from university administrators and faculty members from across Canada with expertise in conducting and overseeing students' participation in research connected to university–community partnerships. This growing area of scholarly activity in …

The Radical Relationality Of Complex Partnerships: Community-Member Experiences In Critical Community-Based Learning, Amie Riley

Dissertations and Theses

Through a radical relationality within the social-ecological systems that sustain us, critical community-based learning (CBL) in higher education offers a praxis for engaging the demanding pedagogical and community challenges we face. When CBL is implemented as both a critical and sustainability pedagogy, as a strategy for social change, the relationships created by CBL partnerships have the potential to generate transformational outcomes for all partnership agents. Using a critical complexity theoretical framework, a bricolage of complexity science and critical theory, this critical qualitative study sought to understand the systemic patterns and behaviors of a community-based learning partnership by elevating community-member voices. …

Re-Engaging Individual Capacities In Service Of Civic Capacity: A Model Of Holistic Civic Engagement Education For The University, Jane Gerald Carr

Dissertations and Theses

A healthy democracy requires active civic engagement. Effective civic involvement can be encouraged by education that helps students learn to respect diverging viewpoints and build skills such as critical thinking about policy frameworks. In higher education, we have seen progress in teaching for civic engagement despite pressures to focus narrowly on career preparation. However, it is important to build on this work in two ways. First, the noncognitive and holistic dimensions of civic engagement have not been thoroughly considered in designing civic education. Second, the field could reach its goals more effectively by adopting teaching strategies that directly help students …

Community-Engaged Teaching: Lessons From A Participatory History Project, Amie Thurber, Sarah V. Suiter

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

How can we create opportunities for students to gain experience in community-engaged scholarship that truly benefits the community given the constraints of the academic calendar, students’ varied capacity to develop reciprocal and responsive community relationships, and the tendency for community-engaged research to instrumentalize community partners in service to academic deliverables? This paper explores one attempt to meet this challenge: an experimental graduate course in community development that linked course content to a participatory history project. Designed as a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) study, instructors studied the instructional process as well as outcomes for students and community partners. We …

In Service Together: University Students And Incarcerated Youth Collaborate For Change, Deborah Smith Arthur, Jamie Valentine

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Through the lens of two courses at Portland State University (PSU), this article addresses critical service learning pedagogy as transformational for both incarcerated youth and university students. In one course, PSU students share a writing/art workshop with youth in juvenile detention though The Beat Within (https://www.thebeatwithin.org). Another course brings together PSU students and young men incarcerated at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in an inside/out course format (https://www.insideoutcenter.org). Working collaboratively, students have developed a variety of service-learning projects. This article explores the impact of critical service learning courses on both incarcerated young people and university students.

Metamorphosis Inside And Out: Transformative Learning At Portland State University, Vicki Reitenauer, Katherine Elaine Draper-Beard, Noah Schultz

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, the authors (a faculty member and two former students) describe the trajectory that Portland State University has taken over its history to institutionalize transformative learning opportunities within its comprehensive general education program, University Studies. Following a description of the institutional changes that resulted in the community-based, experientially focused courses at the heart of University Studies, the authors explore one particular community partnership involving both a state agency and the national Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, dedicated to offering transformative experiences in which incarcerated and non-incarcerated students learn together inside correctional facilities. Finally, each author shares a reflective essay …

"Diversity," Anti-Racism, And Decolonizing Service Learning In The Capstone Experience, W. Tracy Dillon, Judy Bluehorse Skelton, Vicki Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This retrospective on service learning in the development of University Studies Capstones, the senior-level requirement in the University Studies general education program at Portland State University, explores how the original framers of University Studies anticipated the pitfalls of "pedagogies of whiteness" in deploying service learning as the hallmark pedagogical feature of the program; includes a case study of a Capstone course that centers on Indigenous ways of knowing, learning, and teaching through its pedagogy; and identifies the formative presence of Capstone faculty committed to anti-racist and anti-imperialist pedagogies. From a variety of institutional and disciplinary standpoints and through long association …

Sustainability Of Our Planet And All Species As The Organizing Principle For Slce, Kevin Kecskes, Jennifer Joyalle, Erin Elliott, Jacob D. B. Sherman

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

We may define and prioritize them differently, but few would deny that our human community is facing intractable problems at local, national, and global scales. We call on higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world to work collectively and with strategic intent and action to use sustainability as an organizing principle to focus service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) activities on the flourishing of our planet and its diverse species.

In the United Nations report, Our Common Future, sustainable development (the future-oriented view of “sustainability”) was defined by World Commission on the Environment and Development members as “the kind of development …

A Grateful Recollecting: A Qualitative Study Of The Long-Term Impact Of Service-Learning On Graduates, Ann Fullerton, Vicki L. Reitenauer, Seanna Kerrigan

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Service-learning practitioners design community engagement activities to affect students in powerful and even transformative ways. This qualitative study explores the long-term impacts (3-16 years after graduation) of participation in a senior-level service-learning course. Through interviews with 20 randomly selected participants, the researchers explored whether and in what ways graduates continued to experience impacts from the course, including those that have become interwoven with other life experiences or have catalyzed altered perspectives and/or actions. Graduates were first asked to identify their most significant learning experiences in college in order to gauge the relative importance, if any, of the service-learning course in …

“Contagious Co-Motion”: Student Voices On Being Change Agents, Vicki L. Reitenauer, Tetiana Korzun, Kimberly Lane, Melinda Joy Roberts

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Designed in response to students’ requests for a capstone where they could form their own individual partnerships in the communities of their choosing, Effective Change Agent offers a structure for community-based learning that allows for high levels of student choice-making and agency. In this article, the authors describe the course; connect it to literature on grassroots change-making, integrative learning, and service-learning; and, through the inclusion of student authors, allow the sharing of insights in the students’ own voices.

To This Day: College Graduates On The Lasting Significance Of Relationality And Experiential Learning, Ann Fullerton, Vicki L. Reitenauer

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the past twenty years, much research has been conducted into the effects of community-based learning and service-learning on students, but studies into the long-term impacts that persist after graduation have been fewer in number. In this article, the authors share perspectives from Portland State University alumni on the lasting significance of their participation in a community-based learning course that has been operating continuously for more than two decades and the key features of significant learning experiences more generally.

Transformed Through Relationship: Faculty And Community Partnersgive Voice To The Power Of Partnerships, Seanna M. Kerrigan, Vicki L. Reitenauer

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since the 1990s, hundreds of institutions of higher education have developed community-university partnerships through community-based learning initiatives in order to enhance student learning and strengthen our communities. These partnerships are often built upon ideals of reciprocity and synergy, yet there has been a dearth of rich qualitative assessment to describe the nature of these relationships, the roles played by all of the constituents in these relationships, and the impact that these relationships have on students, faculty, and community partners. This study engaged 10 faculty and their corresponding community partners to document their partnership practices and the impact of these practices …

An Anatomy Of A Community-University Partnership: The Structure Of Community Collaboration, W. Barry Messer, Kevin Kecskes

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Portland State University for the past twelve years has been engaged in a transformation of its general education program and a renewal of its urban mission. A major thrust of this reform has focused on broadening the involvement of students and faculty in community-based learning and scholarship. Curricular and administrative changes have significantly raised the presence of the university in the community and resulted in numerous academic units actively engaging in community collaboration. The collaboration has proven to be an important platform by which the university has expanded its boundaries into the community through actions involving many challenges to the …

Activism Through Music, Cherry Muhanji, Jack C. Straton

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article discuses the pedagogy behind a University Studies freshman inquiry class taught at Portland State University. Portland State University has been engaged in a 10-year revolution in general education (Journal of General Education, 1999) that has inculcated activist education as central to instruction. In addition to the Critical Thinking and Communication instruction that any general education program must provide, Portland State’s University Studies Program promotes Social Responsibility and Diversity as central goals of its efforts.

Connecting Curriculum Content With Community Service: Guidelines For Student Reflection, Dilafruz R. Williams, Amy Driscoll

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

As faculty embrace community service as part of the teaching/learning process, most often they simultaneously adopt reflection as a critical component of that process. In fact, the most commonly accepted and used approach to facilitate the conceptual connections of service learning is reflection (Stanton 1991). In other words, students must be asked to reflect if we want them to connect the academic content of our courses with the community experience in which they are engaged. Reflection is a process of thoughtful self analysis directed to the development of awareness and attitudes. It has been used to describe a cognitive process …