The student learning section emphasizes learning outcomes for students who participate in civic engagement projects, such as community-based research and service-learning. Included are pieces on curricular developments, strategies for getting students involved in local communities, and assessments of community-based work on students’ short- and long-term development. The focus here is on curricular and co-curricular experiences that will help students become active and effective citizens within our diverse democracy.

Banks, J.A. (2008). Diversity, group identity, and citizenship education in a global age. Educational Researcher, 37 (3), pp. 129-139.

(Scholarly; persuasive)

Banks argues that citizenship education should be expanded to include the cultural heritage of diverse groups. Because traditional, or “assimilationist,” conceptions of citizenship education are based on a dominant ideological framework, Banks’ believes minority groups are being forced to relinquish their own culture. He cites Drachsler (1920) and Kallen (1924) in noting that cultural democracy should coincide with political and economic democracy. In essence, individuals should have the right to maintain their cultural identity as long as it does not conflict with the shared democratic values of the nation-state. In addition, multicultural scholars indicate that identities are multiple, changing, and overlapping, and that “clarified cultural identifications will enable people to be better citizens of the nation-state” (p. 133). Thus, proper citizenship education today should teach students to be global citizens, forming human connections to others around the world. Accordingly, students should receive a transformative citizenship education that will allow them to better understand how their cultural, national, regional, and global identifications are interrelated. With this in mind, Banks offers a typology of citizenship in an effort to help educators help their students construct a “deeper” citizenship awareness. The four levels in his typology are: 1) legal citizenship, 2) minimal citizenship, 3) active citizenship, and 4) transformative citizenship. By reaching the fourth stage of citizenship, students are able “to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote social justice in communities, nations, and the world” (p. 137).

Boyte, H.C. (May/June 2008). Against the current: Developing the civic agency of students. Change, 40 (3). Retrieved [May 5, 2008] from http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/change/sub.asp?key=98&subkey=2581.

(Scholarly; persuasive)

The purpose of this article is to argue for the development of students’ “civic agency” while in college. Boyte uses Emirbayer’s and Mishe’s (1998) definition of civic agency as “the ability to negotiate and transform a world that is understood to be fluid and open.” For example, Boyte criticizes service learning for not focusing students’ attention on power dynamics or politics. The benefit of a focus on civic agency, on the other hand, is that it “emphasizes not only individual action but also the collective capacity to act on common challenges across differences.” Therefore, he calls for a return to the tradition of treating scholarship and teaching as crafts, in which knowledge production was a social process that included students in apprenticeships and placed learning within contextual practice. This model has been lost as a result of research universities too often being detached from the outside world, neglecting students opportunities to learn how to work in communities. Boyte describes the Public Achievement program at his Center for Democracy and Citizenship, in which young people learn how to engage their local communities and take action on public issues that concern them. In this model, college students act as coaches for the youth, helping the younger students develop their civic agency and allowing them to change their sense of self within the world community. But in order for civic agency to become a focus of student learning, the culture within higher education will need to change toward one of an engaged identity, not just engagement in certain activities. This will be the challenge educators face throughout this new century.

Cunningham, D. & Kingma-Kiekhofer, C. (July 2004). Comparative collective community-based learning: The “Possibilities for Change in American Communities” program. Teaching Sociology, 32 (3), pp. 276-290.

(Qualitative/case study/reflection; description)

The article describes a unique year-long service-learning course at Brandeis University that includes a month-long summer bus trip in which students and faculty tour the eastern half of the United States and participate in civic efforts in different contexts. The authors refer to their model as “comparative collective community-based learning.” As opposed to an approach where students are immersed in the daily workings of a social movement organization, this model utilizes a comparative approach by having students work with various organizations in different locations. Thus, students gain an understanding of how civic action is tied to the social context. In other words, the faculty members want students to see how models followed by activist organizations are dependent upon the make-up of the community. Because a key aspect of the course is its emphasis on comparative analysis, faculty members and program coordinators seek opportunities to work with wide-ranging organizations.

Students who participate in the course unanimously believe that firsthand experience with various communities was key to their broadening their perspectives and helping them engage more fully with the reading associated with the course. In fact, a number of students reported that the theories they learned were brought to life through their community experiences, noting that the class does a good job of creating a symbiotic relationship between in-class and experiential learning. In addition, the authors point out that peer learning emerged as a positive outcome from the course, causing a growth in individual student’s intellectual agency. Coupled with the egalitarian atmosphere of the course (due to the fact that faculty and students were together sharing new experiences that initiated discussion), the authors contend that students who participated attained a sense of civic empowerment that is unique to this particular effort.

Kowalewski, B.K. (2004). Service-learning taken to a new level through community-based research: A win-win for campus and community. In M. Welch & S.H. Billig (Eds.), New perspectives in service-learning: Research to advance the field.
Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, pp. 127-147.

(Mixed methods/case study; service-learning/community-based research)

The purpose of the chapter is to describe a community-based research (CBR) project within an upper-division sociology course, to evaluate the use of CBR within a research methods course, and to explore the impact of CBR on student learning. Given the fact that, as the authors note, some scholars view CBR as the preeminent service-learning pedagogy because it provides opportunities for collaboration and direct application of course content, an evaluation of CBR used in this format is especially worthwhile. In particular, they cite Strand et al. [Strand, K., Marullo, S., Cutforth, N., Stoecker, R., & Donohue, P. (2003). Community-based research and higher education: Principles and practices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.] in noting that the central reason for engaging in CBR is to produce information that can lead to social change. In this case, the service-learning project, in which students evaluated a federally-funded program to increase self-sufficiency among low-income families eligible for public housing assistance, was assessed based on Strand et al.’s three goals for critical pedagogy: (1) a focus on collective or collaborative learning that deemphasizes hierarchy; (2) a demystification of conventional knowledge; and (3) teaching for social change.

The findings reveal that the students in the course believed the CBR project helped them understand that the research process is an art as much as a science, and thought the project was particularly useful in giving them the opportunity to practice doing research. In fact, the students rated the project as significantly more effective than the textbook in teaching research methods. In addition, the social change goal of the project (although not implemented) was important to all constituencies (faculty, students, & community partners). The authors contend that the student evaluations of the course present evidence that CBR can increase students’ belief in their abilities to positively impact another’s life. Therefore, the conclusion reached is that CBR is a generally valuable format for service-learning.

Warchal, J. & Ruiz, A. (2004). The long-term effects of undergraduate service-learning programs on postgraduate employment choices, community engagement, and civic leadership. In M. Welch & S.H. Billig (eds.), New perspectives in service-learning: Research to advance the field (pp. 87-106). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

(Quantitative; service-learning)

This study set out to compare the post-graduation civic activities of students who had taken service-learning courses versus those who had participated in a community service requirement or who had no service requirement. The authors conducted a quantitative study of students who had attended a small Catholic college in Pennsylvania and had graduated between 1961 and 2002; the total sample consisted of 124 alumni. Upon conducting the analysis, Warchal & Ruiz found a correlation between having participated in service-learning and being offered postgraduate employment related to their experience. Not surprisingly, the quality of the experience had an impact on the acceptance of job offers related to that experience. The data also revealed that first jobs after college, as well as current jobs, were more tied to service-learning than any other type of service. In fact, many of those who had participated in service-learning activities in Pennsylvania took jobs within the state. As the authors note, this finding is especially important for those concerned about brain drain in their state. The findings also indicate that alumni do more service work the further from graduation they get. The authors suggest a number of explanations for this, including the fact that those more established in their jobs may have more time to dedicate to service activities, and that recent graduates may be enrolled in graduate school (a factor not controlled for in the study). Supportive of their hypothesis that service-learning would have a more lasting impact, the authors found that service-learning combined with a service requirement has a stronger effect on postgraduate community service than the service requirement alone. The authors also note that participation rates in community service activities are higher for alumni than they are for the general population.