Critical Community Building: Beyond Belonging

2018

Chapter 4, “Critical, contemplative community engagement,” explores how to enact community engagement efforts so that student learning and community impacts embody a critical examination and interruption of the root causes and conditions of injustice, while promoting contemplative practices that fortify the wellbeing of individuals and collectives. This chapter discusses social justice-oriented frameworks for developing reciprocal social change partnerships that recognize the assets of the community while also addressing what the community has identified as problems and injustices. This form of engagement links personal development with social change by examining teaching and learning theories, partnership development factors, and social justice aims of the Critical, Contemplative, Community Engagement model.

Undergraduate Journal of Service Learning & Community-Based Research

An experience is not necessarily inherently valuable in and of itself, but becomes so because of the meaning the individual involved in that experience is able to make from it. The Community Engaged Learning (CEL) program at the University of Toronto gives students the unique opportunity to implement and build upon the theoretical knowledge learned in class through practical experiences. Students intern with various community-based organizations on social justice initiatives. These internships are complemented with bi-weekly seminars where students develop theoretical grounding in social justice concepts and are given a space to discuss, decompress, and reflect on what they have learned through their experiences.

Latino Studies, 2008

Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2009

Over my 35 years of being a teacher, professor, speaker, cultural worker, and researcher, I've been asked many times: ''where did you come up with the perspective on schools or media that you used in your article or speech-I've never heard such a point of view before?'' Oftentimes my answer involves telling the inquisitor that I simply listened to people who had been deemed failures by the larger society or by the schools they attended. Such individuals, I have learned over the years, often possess some of the most compelling insights into what is actually happening, into how people are seriously harmed by institutions ostensibly constructed to help them improve their lives. Such an emphasis on the power of difference, on gaining new perspectives from individuals who come from a different locale in the social web of reality is central to my purpose here. This power of difference-or as Paulo Freire (1997) articulated it, ''a viable novelty''-is key to an ever-expanding sense of criticality. This evolving criticality is dedicated to a neverending search for new ways of seeing, for new social and cultural experiences that provide novel concepts that we can use to better understand the world in a progressive way. (Kincheloe 2008, p. viii) Joe Kincheloe's greatest attribute is that he lived his life in ways that cohered with the critical edge that he brought to his writing. For example, Joe wrote about the salience of radical listening, which is to understand others' texts in terms of their standpoints and axiological commitments. Joe is one of few people I know who could listen to what a speaker was saying without projecting his own ideas and identity into the conversation. He was rare in hearing the kernel of an idea, and encouraging the speaker to grow that idea in his or her own way. When Joe spoke he not only addressed what others had said, but showed an understanding of its value. That is, his talk contained evidence that he understood what had been said, its associated standpoints, and its potential. Rarely, if ever,

About Campus: Enriching the Student Learning Experience, 2020

Community Literacy Journal, 2018

2015

The author argues that the current conjuncture is a kairotic moment for their own learning community program as well as the national movement to support the development of learning communities in universities and colleges and the array of pedagogical approaches associated with them. With Barbara Leigh Smith (2013), they recognize a link between the social justice movements of the 1960s and the learning community movement both in their commitments to democracy and their organizing strategies. Through relating the story of their own experience as co-directors of the LIU Brooklyn Learning Community program, specifying different inventions, audiences, and purposes driving that initiative, they further suggest that learning communities have the potential not only to reinvigorate teaching and learning but also to contribute to struggles for a more democratic, compassionate society.

Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 2019

Community engagement professionals (CEPs) often must develop and maintain equitable, high-quality relationships with community partners while supporting student learning and civic development through cocurricular community engagement or for-credit community-based learning programs. Lack of alignment between campus goals and values and those of communities creates challenges for CEPs. Our community partners have expressed the feeling that students were not adequately prepared for community engagement and that it is the university’s job to prepare them. To support partnerships in inclusive and equitable ways, CEPs need to be skilled and comfortable with some critical, complex topics before they can train students or provide professional development to instructors. This reflective essay examines specific strategies for CEPs doing this work, informed by the literature, feedback from community partners and social justice training professionals, and classroom experience. Topics addressed ...

This paper examines ways that a critical education helps students identify, understand, and address inequalities based on race, class, and gender. Using data collected in our Sociology and Ethnic Studies classes, we analyze how we utilize community engagement in our classrooms to work towards a curriculum that dismantles systems of oppression. We analyze student reflection papers from service-learning projects and argue that an applied critical pedagogy must provide students with systematic, grassroots oriented engagement with communities of color. We argue that deliberate and strategic community based organization partnerships can guide students towards deeper understanding of course curriculum. We conclude that a praxis-oriented education prepares students for successful engagement in working to change systems of oppression.