The Power of Community Engagement for Educational Change

The Power of Community Engagement for Educational Change
Author: Michael P. Evans
Publisher: Information Age Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781681231891

A volume in Family School Community Partnership Issues Series Editors: Diana B. Hiatt‐Michael, Pepperdine University Effective schools engage a wide range of families and community members to support their award‐winning programs. This monograph highlights exemplary examples of communities, including foundations, community organizers, non‐profit organizations, community agencies, as well as school districts, that lead successful group, school, district and state level initiatives to improve educational outcomes. Practitioners and scholars join hands to share promising practices and research‐based examples of community initiatives that have had positive impacts on families, schools, and communities. This monograph is vital to educational leadership preparation programs; education policymakers at the local, state, and national levels; school and district level administrators; and a broad range of community leaders.

The Power of Community Engagement for Educational Change

The Power of Community Engagement for Educational Change
Author: Diana Hiatt-Michael
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2015-09-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1681231905

Effective schools engage a wide range of families and community members to support their award?winning programs. This monograph highlights exemplary examples of communities, including foundations, community organizers, non?profit organizations, community agencies, as well as school districts, that lead successful group, school, district and state level initiatives to improve educational outcomes. Practitioners and scholars join hands to share promising practices and research?based examples of community initiatives that have had positive impacts on families, schools, and communities. This monograph is vital to educational leadership preparation programs; education policymakers at the local, state, and national levels; school and district level administrators; and a broad range of community leaders.

Human Development and Community Engagement through Service-Learning

Human Development and Community Engagement through Service-Learning
Author: Ntimi Nikusuma Mtawa
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2019-12-16
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030347281

This book establishes community engagement and service-learning as pathways to advancing human development and common good. Using the human development and capability approach as normative frameworks, with South Africa as a frame of reference, the author investigates the theoretical contributions and ultimate benefits of university-community partnerships. In doing so, this book demonstrates that three interrelated capabilities – affiliation, common good professionals and local citizenship – are developed through community engagement and service-learning. Subsequently, the notion of transformative change through community engagement and service-learning is illuminated, particularly when operating within the context of power differentials, inequality and extreme poverty. This book will be of interest and value to students and scholars of service-learning, and its implications for partnerships between universities and external communities.

The Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning

The Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning
Author: David M. Donahue
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 99
Release: 2023-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 100098110X

This compact, accessibly written text prepares students for their experience of community-based learning. It is designed for students to read and reflect on independently or to foster discussion in class on their motivations and dispositions toward community engagement and service learning. It prepares students to work with diverse individuals, groups, and organizations that may be outside their prior experience. Faculty can use the book as a tool to deepen the educational experience of the course and enrich community engagement. This text is a guide to what’s involved in community-engaged learning, from understanding the pervasiveness of social, economic and environmental problems, to learning about how individuals and organizations in communities work to overcome them. Students will discover through a process of reflection how service connects to personal development and the content of their courses, builds their ability to engage with people different from themselves, and develops new life skills, all in the context of working with communities to overcome systemic injustice.Critical questions woven into each chapter prompt students to reflect on ideas and perspectives about social justice, community development, and their role in fostering them.The book concludes with case studies of students who have experienced the transformative power of community-engaged learning. The stories illustrate common themes inherent in the student experience, including listening to understand, challenging stereotypes, learning the nature of their role, and seeing the world through a new lens.A special feature of this book is the embedded QR codes that provide access, as students read the text, to online resources, and original and public videos that explore particular themes or perspectives more deeply. The authors also include text directed to faculty to provide ideas about framing their community-engaged course and integrating the book.

Community Engagement in Higher Education

Community Engagement in Higher Education
Author: W. James Jacob
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2015-06-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9463000070

There seems to be renewed interest in having universities and other higher education institutions engage with their communities at the local, national, and international levels. But what is community engagement? Even if this interest is genuine and widespread, there are many different concepts of community service, outreach, and engagement. The wide range of activity encompassed by community engagement suggests that a precise definition of the “community mission” is difficult and organizing and coordinating such activities is a complex task. This edited volume includes 18 chapters that explore conceptual understandings of community engagement and higher education reforms and initiatives intended to foster it. Contributors provide empirical research findings, including several case study examples that respond to the following higher educaiton community engagement issues. What is “the community” and what does it need and expect from higher education institutions? Is community engagement a mission of all types of higher education institutions or should it be the mission of specific institutions such as regional or metropolitan universities, technical universities, community colleges, or indigenous institutions while other institutions such as major research universities should concentrate on national and global research agendas and on educating internationally-competent researchers and professionals? How can a university be global and at the same time locally relevant? Is it, or should it be, left to the institutions to determine the scope and mode of their community engagement, or is a state mandate preferable and feasible? If community engagement or “community service” are mandatory, what are the consequences of not complying with the mandate? How effective are policy mandates and university engagement for regional and local economic development? What are the principal features and relationships of regionally-engaged universities? Is community engagement to be left to faculty members and students who are particularly socially engaged and locally embedded or is it, or should it be, made mandatory for both faculty and students? How can community engagement be (better) integrated with the (other) two traditional missions of the university—research and teaching? Cover image: The Towering Four-fold Mission of Higher Education, by Natalie Jacob

Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities

Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities
Author: Sue Winton
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-03-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1641138815

Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities offers scholars, students, and practitioners important new knowledge about how current policies impact families, schools, and community partnerships. The book’s authors share a critical orientation towards policy and policy research and invite readers to think differently about what policy is, who policymakers are, and what policy can achieve. Their chapters discuss findings from research grounded in diverse theories, including institutional ethnography, critical disability theory, and critical race theory. The authors encourage scholars of family, school, and community partnerships to ask who benefits from policies (and who loses) and how proposed reforms maintain or disrupt existing relations of power. The chapters present original research on a broad range of policies at the local, state/provincial, and national levels in Canada and the USA. Some authors look closely at the enactment of specific district policies, including a school district’s language translation policy and a policy to create local advisory bodies as part of decentralization efforts. Other chapters reveal the often unacknowledged yet necessary work parents do to meet their children’s needs and enable schools to operate. A few chapters focus on challenges and paradoxes of including families and community members in policymaking processes, including a case where parents demonstrated a preference for a policy that research demonstrates can be detrimental to their children’s future education opportunities. Another set of chapters emphasizes the centrality of policy texts and how language influences the educational experiences and engagement of students and their families. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of implications of the research for educators, families, and other community partners.

Handbook on Family and Community Engagement

Handbook on Family and Community Engagement
Author: Sam Redding
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2011-12-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1617356700

Thirty-six of the best thinkers on family and community engagement were assembled to produce this Handbook, and they come to the task with varied backgrounds and lines of endeavor. Each could write volumes on the topics they address in the Handbook, and quite a few have. The authors tell us what they know in plain language, succinctly presented in short chapters with practical suggestions for states, districts, and schools. The vignettes in the Handbook give us vivid pictures of the real life of parents, teachers, and kids. In all, their portrayal is one of optimism and celebration of the goodness that encompasses the diversity of families, schools, and communities across our nation.

The Heart of Community Engagement

The Heart of Community Engagement
Author: Patricia Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2019-06-06
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0429614446

Drawing on first-hand accounts of action research in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, The Heart of Community Engagement illustrates the transformative learning journeys of exemplary catalysts for community-based change. Practitioners’ stories of community engagement for social justice in the Global South elucidate the moments of insight and transformation that deepened their practice: how to deal with uncertainty, recognize their own blind spots, become aware of what is emergent and possible in the moment, and weave an inclusive bond of love, respect, and purpose. Each successive narrative adds a deeper level of understanding of the inner practice of community engagement. The stories illuminate the reflective, or inner, practice of the outside change agent, whether a planner, designer, participatory action researcher, or community development practitioner. From a shantytown in South Africa, to a rural community in India, or an informal settlement in peri-urban Mexico, the stories focus attention on the greatest leverage point for change that we, as engaged practitioners, have: our own self-awareness. By the end of the book, the practitioners are not only aware of their own conditioned beliefs and assumptions, but have opened their minds and hearts to the complex and dynamic patterns of emergent change that is possible. This book serves as a much-needed reader of practice stories to help instructors and students find the words, concepts, and examples to talk about their own subjective experience of community engagement practice. The book applies some of the leading-edge concepts from organizational development and leadership studies to the fields of planning, design, and community engagement practice. Key concepts include the deep dive of sensing the social field, seeing the whole, and presencing the emergent future. The book also provides a creative bridge between participatory action research and design thinking: user-based design, rapid prototyping, and learning from doing.

Research Anthology on Service Learning and Community Engagement Teaching Practices

Research Anthology on Service Learning and Community Engagement Teaching Practices
Author: Information Resources Management Association
Publisher: Information Science Reference
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-12-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9781668438770

The need for more empathetic and community-focused students must begin with educators, as service-learning has begun to grow in popularity throughout the years. By implementing service and community aspects into the classroom at an early age, educators have a greater chance of influencing students and creating a new generation of service-minded individuals who care about their communities. Teachers must have the necessary skills and current information available to them to provide students with quality service learning and community engagement curricula. The Research Anthology on Service Learning and Community Engagement Teaching Practices provides a thorough investigation of the current trends, best practices, and challenges of teaching practices for service learning and community engagement. Using innovative research, it outlines the struggles, frameworks, and recommendations necessary for educators to engage students and provide them with a comprehensive education in service learning. Covering topics such as lesson planning, teacher education, and cultural humility, it is a crucial reference for educators, administrators, universities, lesson planners, researchers, academicians, and students.

Just Schools

Just Schools
Author: Ann M. Ishimaru
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2020
Genre: Education
ISBN: 080777815X

Just Schools examines the challenges and possibilities for building more equitable forms of collaboration among non-dominant families, communities, and schools. The text explores how equitable collaboration entails ongoing processes that begin with families and communities, transform power, build reciprocity and agency, and foster collective capacity through collective inquiry. These processes offer promising possibilities for improving student learning, transforming educational systems, and developing robust partnerships that build on the resources, expertise, and cultural practices of non-dominant families. Based on empirical research and inquiry-driven practice, this book describes core concepts and provides multiple examples of effective practices. “This is the most compelling work to date on school and community engagement. It will be required reading for all my future classes.” —Muhammad Khalifa, University of Minnesota “Full of practical steps that educators and administrators can and must take to build strong collaborations with families.” —Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts Boston “This important publication provides a way forward for educators, families, students and community members to co-create “Just Schools” by honoring, validating, and celebrating each other’s knowledge, skills, power and resources.” —Karen Mapp, Harvard Graduate School of Education