Service Learning as a Political Act in Education

Service Learning as a Political Act in Education
Author: Kortney Hernandez
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2017-09-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351730851

Disrupting assumptions and commonsensical ideologies of "service," Service Learning as a Political Act in Education presents a clear and systematic analysis that unveils the rampant contradictions within the service learning field. By providing a careful, critical bicultural examination of the field, this book questions the relentless insertion of service learning programs into working-class, bicultural communities. Through a decolonizing lens, this book offers a radical political confrontation of service learning ideologies and practices.

The Political Classroom

The Political Classroom
Author: Diana E. Hess
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-11-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317575024

WINNER 2016 Grawemeyer Award in Education Helping students develop their ability to deliberate political questions is an essential component of democratic education, but introducing political issues into the classroom is pedagogically challenging and raises ethical dilemmas for teachers. Diana E. Hess and Paula McAvoy argue that teachers will make better professional judgments about these issues if they aim toward creating "political classrooms," which engage students in deliberations about questions that ask, "How should we live together?" Based on the findings from a large, mixed-method study about discussions of political issues within high school classrooms, The Political Classroom presents in-depth and engaging cases of teacher practice. Paying particular attention to how political polarization and social inequality affect classroom dynamics, Hess and McAvoy promote a coherent plan for providing students with a nonpartisan political education and for improving the quality of classroom deliberations.

Teaching Civic Engagement

Teaching Civic Engagement
Author: Alison Rios Millett McCartney
Publisher:
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2013
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781878147400

Teaching Civic Engagement provides an exploration of key theoretical discussions, innovative ideas, and best practices in educating citizens in the 21st century. The book addresses theoretical debates over the place of civic engagement education in Political Science. It offers pedagogical examples in several sub-fields, including evidence of their effectiveness and models of appropriate assessment. Written by political scientists from a range of institutions and subfields, Teaching Civic Engagement makes the case that civic and political engagement should be a central part of our mission as a discipline.

Faculty Service-Learning Guidebook

Faculty Service-Learning Guidebook
Author: Christine M. Cress
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2023-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000972046

This is a practical guide to designing, teaching, and coordinating service-learning courses, and for developing reciprocal community partnerships and community-based research through a lens of equity that addresses the endemic racial, social, economic, and environmental disparities across society. The text provides a comprehensive framework for developing both in-person and on-line service-learning, with a chapter on virtual delivery of courses that integrates the principles and practices described throughout the book. The authors uniquely integrate the how-to of conducting service-learning with the theoretical foundations to enact effective, equitable, and inclusive community engagement.Given this moment of enormous social inequality and divisiveness, the authors offer a new definition and set of educational principles that they characterize as Equity-Centered Community Engagement Excellence. These principles serve to guide academic and community engagement that is democratic, recognizes the voice and expertise of community partners, addresses the power imbalances between communities and academic institutions, and develops an educational experience that is potentially transformative and promotes civic responsibility.Informed by the literature of critical service-learning, critical race theory, intercultural communication theory, and social-constructivism, this book attempts to deconstruct the assumption of the preeminence of academic knowledge to reconstruct a new operational paradigm of equity-centeredness that validates community capacity to guide faculty in their redesign of service-learning curriculum, activities, collaborations, and scholarship. It is based on the principles of:·Student Agency (demonstrated as enhanced skills, knowledge, and motivation)·Community Efficacy (recognition of community assets and capacity-building)·Scholarly Advocacy (leveraging evidence-based research-based for equity-centered learning, serving, and social justice)The authors offer examples of syllabi, lessons and assignments, reflection questions, evaluation rubrics, as well as an array of teaching tips that illustrate strategies for use in the classroom and in the field.The book is addressed to faculty embarking on service-learning and to seasoned scholar practitioners looking for innovative ideas, as well as to campus administrators who coordinate community outreach or college student volunteer services, offering guidance on leveraging resources and fiscal support from external stakeholders. It is also designed to serve as a resource for professional development workshops and faculty scholar learning communities.It offers a rich compendium of ideas and examples from which faculty and practitioners can select exercises and elements to incorporate or adapt for their courses, whether designing short-term engagements or extended service-learning programs.

Reflexivity and Change in Adaptive Physical Activity

Reflexivity and Change in Adaptive Physical Activity
Author: Donna Goodwin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2022-12-05
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1000803112

This provocative and challenging book argues for the vital importance of critical self-reflexion in the field of adaptive physical activity (APA). It makes a powerful case for embracing discussions of the harm caused by ableist assumptions of the ideal body, maximizing capabilities and perfecting normative-based movement that dominate contemporary discourse in APA, and calls for more critical introspection about what APA is, how it is performed, and what might be needed to bring a collaborative relational ethic to this field. The book focuses on two key themes. Firstly, how ableism as a foundational belief system of APA is present in the undergraduate curriculum, professional preparation, professional practice, and organizational policies. Secondly, how to make the comfortable uncomfortable by openly debating the harm that results from non-reflexive (nondisabled) hubris in APA. The goal is to spark an exchange of ideas among scholars, practitioners, and organizational leaders and therefore to shift the paradigm from one of professional expertism to one that centres disability wisdom holders, bringing a fundamental change to how we perform adaptive physical activity. This book is important, progressive reading for anybody with an interest in adaptive physical activity, adapted physical education, disability sport, inclusive education, the philosophy and ethics of disability and sport, or disability in wider society.

Developing a Model for Culturally Responsive Experiential Education

Developing a Model for Culturally Responsive Experiential Education
Author: Elizabeth Laura Hope Yomantas
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2023-12-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1003816487

This book provides a new, empirically informed framework designed to equip higher education faculty with the tools to help students engage in humanizing, mutually beneficial, and anti-colonial experiential education alongside other students and communities around the world. The author maps the conceptual development of culturally responsive experiential education (CREE) as a novel framework, situated at the nexus of culturally responsive research methodologies, the Indigenous research paradigm, critical service learning, and critical pedagogy in experiential education. The chapters detail qualitative research findings from an undergraduate CREE program in rural Fiji to illustrate the implementation of the novel CREE framework and discuss post-program possibilities based on the research study findings. Situated in narrative inquiry, the book also includes interspersed participant vignettes in order to center student voices and illuminate the research study findings. With attention to themes including emergent critical consciousness, critical allyship, and personal journeys of decolonization as experienced through the CREE framework, it will be of benefit to both education scholars and higher education faculty interested in experiential education and culturally responsive pedagogies.

Decolonizing Interpretive Research

Decolonizing Interpretive Research
Author: Antonia Darder
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2019-05-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351045059

To what extent do Western political and economic interests distort perceptions and affect the Western production of research about the other? The concept of 'colonializing epistemologies' describes how knowledges outside the Western purview are often not only rendered invisible but either absorbed or destroyed. Decolonizing Interpretive Research outlines a form of oppositional study that undertakes a critical analysis of bodies of knowledge in any field that engages with issues related to the lives and survival of those deemed as other. It focuses on creating intellectual spaces that will facilitate new readings of the world and lead toward change, both in theory and practice. The book begins by conceptualizing the various aspects of the decolonizing interpretive research approach for the reader, and the following six chapters each focus on one of these issues, grounded in a specific decolonizing interpretive study. With a foreword by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, this book will allow readers to not only engage with the conceptual framework of this decolonizing methodology but will also give them access to examples of how the methodology has informed decolonizing interpretive studies in practice.

Democratic Dilemmas of Teaching Service-Learning

Democratic Dilemmas of Teaching Service-Learning
Author: Christine M. Cress
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2023-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000976351

A college student wants to lead a campaign to ban a young adult novel from his child’s elementary school as his service-learning project in a children’s literature course. Believing the book is offensive to religious sensibilities, he sees his campaign as a service to children and the community. Viewing such a ban as limiting freedom of speech and access to information, the student’s professor questions whether leading a ban qualifies as a service project. If the goal of service is to promote more vital democratic communities, what should the student do? What should the professor do? How do they untangle competing democratic values? How do they make a decision about action?This book addresses the teaching dilemmas, such as the above, that instructors and students encounter in service-learning courses.Recognizing that teaching, in general, and service-learning, in particular, are inherently political, this book faces up to the resulting predicaments that inevitably arise in the classroom. By framing them as a vital and productive part of the process of teaching and learning for political engagement, this book offers the reader new ways to think about and address seemingly intractable ideological issues.Faculty encounter many challenges when teaching service learning courses. These may arise from students’ resistance to the idea of serving; their lack of responsibility, wasting clients’ and community agencies’ time and money; the misalignment of community partner expectations with academic goals; or faculty uncertainty about when to guide students’ experiences and when direct intervention is necessary.In over twenty chapters of case studies, faculty scholars from disciplines as varied as computer science, engineering, English, history, and sociology take readers on their and their students’ intellectual journeys, sharing their messy, unpredictable and often inspiring accounts of democratic tensions and trials inherent in teaching service-learning. Using real incidents – and describing the resources and classroom activities they employ – they explore the democratic intersections of various political beliefs along with race/ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and other lived differences and likenesses that students and faculty experience in their service-learning classroom and extended community. They share their struggles of how to communicate and interact across the divide of viewpoints and experiences within an egalitarian and inclusive environment all the while managing interpersonal tensions and conflicts among diverse people in complex, value-laden situations. The experienced contributors to this book offer pedagogical strategies for constructing service-learning courses, and non-prescriptive approaches to dilemmas for which there can be no definitive solutions.

Service Learning in Psychology

Service Learning in Psychology
Author: Robert G. Bringle
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781433820793

Service learning is a powerful educational tool that allows undergraduate psychology students -- both majors and nonmajors -- to improve their scholarly, personal, and professional outcomes through civic engagement. Students hone knowledge and skills from the classroom by applying them to volunteer work in collaboration with community organizations and residents. Activities might include tutoring children, developing informational brochures, or conducting research in support of social change initiatives. This book reviews the theory, research, and practice behind service learning, establishing it as an effective pedagogy that can help psychology departments meet each of the five key learning goals -- as well as many learning indicators -- outlined in APA's Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major: Knowledge Base in Psychology Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking Ethical and Social Responsibility in a Diverse World Communication Professional Development Chapters provide clear guidelines for designing service learning courses and integrating them into the undergraduate psychology curriculum. Specific implementation strategies -- including sample project designs and classroom assignments -- are applied to introductory, major, and capstone courses in a wide variety of popular subjects. The authors also examine departmental issues such as faculty development, assessment, and scholarship, providing useful blueprints for department-wide civic engagement.