Abstract – for a workshop on Models of Student Community Engagement
for the Global Citizens Conference at the University of Bournemouth,
September 2007.
Title:
‘Student Community Engagement – A model for the 21st
century?’
Theme:
Student community engagement, volunteering within the
curriculum, Co-curricular activities.
Author:
Juliet Millican
Institution: The Community University Partnership Programme, The
University of Brighton.
Contact Details: Cupp, Room 232 Mayfield House, Falmer Campus,
University of Brighton, Brighton, BN1 9PH
01273 644155
J.Millican@brighton.ac.uk
www.cupp.org.uk
Abstract
There has within the past decade been an upsurge of interest in ‘third stream’ activity or
community engagement by higher educational institutions both within the UK and internationally.
The Science shop movement in Europe, active since the 1970s has been reactivated through the
International Science Shop Network (www.livingknowledge.org) and various models of service
learning from the United States have begun to spread to other parts of the world. The aims of
these programmes vary from making science accessible to society to addressing issues of social
justice, sustainable development and problems of marginalisation and deprivation. However there
seems to be a general agreement that ‘engagement’ is a good thing.
This paper looks at the history of student community engagement and ways in which experiential,
community based learning is positive for students and at the contribution it might make to broader
social issues of equality and sustainability. It will compare different models used in community
university partnership programmes and the drivers underlying these. They range from
programmes that aim to make knowledge available to the community (some of the original
science shops, concerned with the democratisation of knowledge), through those who want to
provide a service for the community (such as service learning programmes in the US that take a
welfare approach to development), to ways of working with the community and sharing
knowledge and experience (such as some of the partnership and participation models in the UK),
(Fischer and Wallenstein 2002). It will compare the achievements and the appropriacy of these
different models to different cultural and disciplinary contexts.
The paper and the workshop will draw on experiences within two specific projects in which the
author has been involved. One of these is based in a university in the South of England and
introduced a taught student community engagement module into the Faculty of Science and
Engineering. The aim of the module was to address questions of sustainable development with
students from different courses in the faculty and to look at their values and working priorities in
respect of these. It was also to make a practical contribution to organisations working in
sustainable development within the locality. Decisions around the shape and content of the
module and the range of projects students chose to undertake give an interesting picture of how
students from different discipline areas view sustainable development.
The paper will also draw on a current participatory action research project based in a university in
Bosnia. Working with community and university colleagues the project is trying to develop a
model of student community engagement for undergraduates living and studying in a city divided
through past conflict. The paper will report on the design of the project and early discussions
around the role of Higher Education and how it might contribute to community regeneration and
personal change.
The two projects provide some insight into ways in which student community engagement
programmes can focus or transform the attitudes and values of those participating in them and
the transferability of different models of Student Community Engagement (SCE) to different
cultural contexts.
Introduction
This paper explores the history of student community engagement and looks at
the different models that have evolved over the past 50 years. It traces the
development of science shops in Europe and service learning programmes in the
US and shows how both grew up over a similar historical period but with different
aims. It questions the ethos behind these models and compares their similarities
and differences. It will show how, as a university’s involvement with the
community rises up the policy agenda, institutions are beginning to take it more
seriously and to appreciate its value for teaching and learning as well as
research. Over this period different programme models have begun to merge as
both have begun to stress values of equal participation, mutual benefit and
reciprocity. Using examples from an SCE module based around sustainable
development at the University of Brighton and a new research project to develop
a student engagement programme in Bosnia and Herzegovina it will explore what
might be an appropriate model for the 21st century.
An OED definition of the word engagement includes both ‘a partnership or
agreement’ and ‘a hostile encounter and battle’. Wenger in Communities of
Practice (1998) uses the word engagement to indicate joint or shared activity, as
well as the process through which an individual fully experiences the world, and it
is very possible that student community engagement programmes encompass all
of these (seemingly contradictory) things. With the potential for becoming battle
grounds as well as partnerships, and enhancing individual as well as community
benefit, they need to be understood within a broader framework of
community/campus partnerships and what has become known as Third Stream
work. The latter, (known as third stream to give it a priority alongside a
university’s other functions of teaching and research) encompasses the liaison
between higher education and broader society, including business, industry and
community.
Currently the responsibility of a university towards its community and its
contribution to local community development features in key debates on the role
of Higher Education. (Higher Education Policy Institute January 2006) The
HEFCE Strategic plan (2006) sees the potential of third stream work to ‘enhance
economic development and the strength and vitality of society’. Watson, (2003:1)
cites engagement with its community ‘economically, socially and culturally’ as
one of the key components of a successful university and defines it as
‘strenuous, thoughtful, argumentative interaction with the non-university world in
setting aims, relating teaching and learning to the wider world, dialogue between
researchers and practitioners and taking on wider responsibilities as neighbours
and citizens’. Boothroyd and Fryer (2004;2) also adopt the term engagement.
‘An alternative view of universities, now emerging, locates them more
centrally and directly in the development process. Teachers, researchers
and students are seen as development actors, collaborating with others to
help meet urgent social needs, and in the process enriching their own
learning and that of the diverse people they work with. Community service
by academics moves from the margins of the university, from being
defined as a charitable donation over time and above what academics
really get paid to do, to become an integral part of intellectual discovery. In
short universities become socially engaged’
But can university community engagement really deliver on its promises of social
and personal transformation and what kinds of programmes are most appropriate
to a 21st century context?
This paper tries to address that question using examples from the ‘Personal and
Community Development module’, run for Geography and Environmental
Science students at The University of Brighton, and an international research
project, developing a similar module in the University of Dzemal Bijedic in Bosnia
and Herzegovina.
The first, one of several similar programmes run by the Community University
Partnership programme at the University of Brighton requires students to
undertake a live practical project in the area of Sustainable development for the
benefit of a community group. Students undertake a task on behalf of an
organisation and defined by them, and are assessed through the writing of a
reflective report. A series of focus group discussions were held with them to look
at the impact this had had on their understanding of sustainability and on their
personal learning.
The second, part of a piece of doctoral research, brings together young lecturers
from a range of disciplines areas in one of the two universities in the city of
Mostar. We will work with them over the coming year to set up small engagement
programmes within their own subject areas. Individual interviews undertaken at
the start of the research looked at their perceptions of HE and their reasons for
thinking an experiential programme might help in healing social divisions created
by the former Balkans’ war.
These two programmes between them represent some of the biggest threats
facing society at the beginning of the 21st century, that of environmental
catastrophe and ethnic and civil conflicts. If we as teachers and researchers are
to be seen as ‘development actors’ meeting ‘urgent social needs’ (op cit) they
illustrate some of the crucial issues with which we and our students need to be
concerned.
A history of Student Community Engagement
In an earlier paper prepared for this conference (Millican 2005) I cited
engagement and widening participation as key priorities for HE in the early 21 st
century, (following on from ‘the transmission of knowledge and understanding’ in
the 60s and 70s, ‘personal transferable skills in the 80s, and ‘critical reflection’ in
the 90s, Bourner 1998). While HE has had to expand to incorporate all its earlier
priorities, a responsibility to address the chaotic environmental and conflict ridden
context in which we find ourselves and the need to widen participation and
address social injustices, appears difficult to avoid. While in the UK engagement
is relatively new in policy terms (and seems to emerge from the Green Paper
response to Dearing which claims that ‘learning…helps make ours a civilised
society, develops the spiritual side of our lives and promotes active citizenship.
Learning enables people to play a full part in their community’, DfEE 1998:
forward) it has a longer history in practice both here and internationally.
In the United States colleges and universities established under the Morrill Act in
1862 were supposed to …’plan, execute, and evaluate learning experiences that
(would) help people acquire the understanding and skills essential for solving
farm, home, and community problems’. (Columbia Enclyopedia 2006) from the
1860s to the 1960s universities vacillated between a need to educate a ‘well
rounded intelligentsia or to promote advanced specialized research and
professional training in response to the needs and opportunities of the modern
scientific era’. (Boothroyd and Fryer, 2004:2).
By the middle of the 20th century specialisation predominated, and there was an
increasing focus on the development of research. However as the formation of
welfare states accelerated between the 1950s and the 1970s, universities in
industrialized societies began also to be concerned with workforce and citizen
development. Although the main focus of higher education was teaching and
research, different forms of student community engagement were also emerging,
(Boothroyd et al, op cit) with different drivers throughout Europe and the US.
Some of these programmes were concerned with the dissemination of
knowledge (or the democratising of knowledge with the additional belief that an
informed society is a socially more responsible and aware society), others with
the need to prioritise a sense of local belonging and identity. Some were trying to
promote higher education as an opportunity available to broader members of the
public (with the aim of breaking the cycle of worklessness and poverty and filling
jobs likely to be on stream in the future). Many of these initiatives were framed in
terms of the University giving to Society (in terms of service, where the university
is seen as potential benefactor of knowledge and capacity among a less
privileged local community).
Broadly speaking initiatives can be divided into two: Science shops (which have
a European history and involve students carrying out research for community
organizations) and Service learning (which originated in the US and involve
students carrying out voluntary or service tasks for an organization).
Science Shops
Science shops originated in the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s and in
Canada in the 1980s. They were initially concerned with making scientific
knowledge available for the benefit of groups who could not otherwise pay for
this and influenced by a particular historical context. With a huge increase of
middle class and working class students entering university and a strong post
Vietnam political awareness, students became social activists, concerned to
combat the elitism of universities. Science Shops have since evolved into
something that has been described as ‘not science and not shops’ (Science
shop, University of Dublin) and their development has been characterized in ten
year cycles (Farakas 2002).
The first group emerged from within the university system, formed by progressive
staff members working alongside activists in contemporary student movements.
Centered mainly on the hard sciences in the first instance they would offer to
research, for example the potential impact on air quality of a new factory or the
levels of pollution in local water sources. Many set themselves up as small
informal consultancy shops committed to responding to issues raised by the local
community.
Their ethos was to respond to, rather than generate research problems but
requests for research lagged behind the kinds of issues that they, as scientists
and academics, were interested in, and many began to hand over the research
work to their students. In order to manage this on a larger scale a professional
mediator was necessary to translate a community request into a researchable
question, identify the discipline area best placed to address it, and farm it out to
students working under a supervisor. This brokering role and the ability to
manage both the information needs of the group and the learning needs of
students was, and continues to be crucial to the success of science shop
projects. (Farkas op cit)
In the Netherlands in the 1970s and early 80s the availability of generous student
grants, of combined Bachelors/Masters degrees (that students could complete
over many years graduating as and when they were ready) provided a flexibility
that is now seldom available. Dissertation students were working above
undergraduate level rarely had to worry about earning income and could submit a
thesis when it was ready rather than being bound by an academic timetable. With
the support of staff students were able to design appropriate methodology and
over time identify solutions, mediating these for the group that would be affected
by their outcome. On the whole they acted for, rather than with the community
group, seeking to maintain seeking to maintain an independent scientific voice in
what could become a polarized situation between community and industry or
activist group and government,
A second wave (in the 1980s) was strongly interwoven with the further
institutionalization of alternative movements like the “Bürgerinitiative” in
Germany. These were civil society groups, based outside academia that needed
to develop their knowledge base and sometimes turned to universities for
assistance. Some of these groups also recruited membership among students
and university staff members. The key difference from the University based
science shop was that the request for research was formalized and
commissioned from outside of the University and the power locus was shifted
from it being a university initiative to a university response.
A third wave during the late 1990s was formed more on a partnership model and
concerned with building up longer term relationships between the university and
other civil society groups. The protest movements of the 1970s were in far less
existence across Europe in the 1990s and this model has more in common with
the development of community-based research in the U.K. and Community
University partnerships in Canada (Hall & Hall, 1996, 2004, Vaillancourt Yves
2004). However managing equal relationships between a university and its
community is not easy. The development of community-based research as a
methodology helped in the understanding and interpreting of power relationships,
and the unfamiliar language and culture of the different groups. (Sclove, 1995,
Vaillancourt 2006). In this third wave community stakeholders and academics
have been jointly involved in planning the research, in the various stages of
conducting it, and in the dissemination of its results. Research was being
conducted not just for but also with community stakeholders and involved the coconstruction of knowledge. Sharing knowledge and understanding is becoming
a two way process and hence the nature of what counts as ‘worthwhile’
knowledge is being redefined.
In the UK Science Shop related initiatives (and there are few) tend to be rooted in
social rather than political activism, and stress a co-operative approach (finding
solutions that will suit everyone and therefore work) rather than oppositional
approach (challenging dominant powerful or political groups) (Boothroyd and
Fryer, op cit). However although Dutch Science shops have always led the field
they seem to be less comfortable with a partnership approach to working
(Farakas 2002). For students, the emphasis on performing original research
keeps them from experimenting more with client involvement in research. This
may be more of a perceived than real problem because the partnership model
does not exclude scientific or technical innovation. But as pressure increases for
students to complete their studies in fewer years, they are discouraged from
taking on projects that might prolong the research process and as funding for the
begins to dry up Dutch science shops are now in real danger. Even through the
support network available to students through the science shop can help them
finish their research faster a concern with attaining high grades and a
subsequent tendency to ‘play it safe’ can stifle any attempt at methodological and
theoretical innovation that might come through working in partnership.
A fourth wave can now be identified, existing in parallel with the third, but located
more in emerging societies, in Eastern and Middle Europe, and in post-apartheid
South Africa (Mulder et al., 2001). Groups and organizations in these countries
have been able to take advantage of the third wave model during periods of
national development or reconstruction and fourth wave Science shops are often
being developed in partnership with similar institutions in the West. However
with the knowledge and power imbalances often inherent in international
partnerships, there could be a tendency for these science shops to reflect
western rather than local knowledge practices. If the universities leading these
are committed to interpreting local knowledge rather than importing international
versions such partnerships may be able to influence emerging national
infrastructures. In theory the local academy is in a position to play a significant
role in capturing and developing local knowledge and researching, interpreting
and sharing local solutions. However indigenous views of democracy and
equality and the status given to academics may make such collaborations
difficult.
So what are the implications of this for the shape of the programme we will
design? Fisher et al (2004) identify four interconnected factors influencing the
degree and the form of co-operation between Science Shops and civil society
organizations:
1) The condition of civil society and the NGO community:
2) Political culture and public discourse:
3) Resources
4) Science policy
These could form useful bench marks for assessing the potential of new science
shops in emerging societies. There is a move internationally towards universities
becoming socially useful and knowledge becoming community owned (supported
also by Wikipedia, wikimedia, knowcycle etc). The conference “Science and
Governance in a Knowledge Society” in Brussels in October 2000
(www.jrc.es/sci-gov/; European Commission, 2000) culminated in its recent
“Science and Society Action Plan” (European Commission, 2002),
recommending a “dialogue with the citizen … through conference, fora, and also
via “developing the European network of Science Shops” (European
Commission, 2002, Action 21, page 15). But at the same time the structure of
university curricula across Europe, via the Bologna process has become more
tightly specified and aligned. As a result those students working to European
standards have less time and freedom to respond to local initiatives and to apply
their research to local issues and resources are limited.
Service Learning
Service Learning type activity is first recorded in the United States in 1903,
initially through university corps working on social or environmental tasks. The
term was first cited in 1950 and 1966, and like Science shops, activities
accelerated during the 1970s. First ‘principles of Service learning’ were published
in 1979 and refer to those being served ‘controlling the services and becoming
better able to serve by their own actions’, and those serving also being learners
and having ‘significant control over what is expected to be learned’ (Titlebaum et
al, 2004). There is within this both a sense of ‘service user empowerment’ and
learner participation, notions which have come to the fore in the 21 st century.
Most current programmes aim to create a situation in which students can
contribute meaningfully to local community activity while enhancing their own
learning although some focus more on the learning than the task and others
more on the community and their needs than those of the student group. There
are also a range of other initiatives within universities (internships, volunteering
programmes, practical placements etc) that contain elements of all these things.
However where in volunteering the primary goal is the delivery of assistance, and
in internships the primary goal is the development of the student, engagement
programmes, through the development of partnerships, try to do both these
things in equal measures.
Previously (Millican 2005) I rejected the term ‘service’ because of its indication of
a welfare rather than a rights based approach to development, but many models
of SCE in the UK stem from a history of Service Learning in the USA that involve
students learning while doing something ‘for’. As an approach to learning they
are grounded in earlier theories of experiential education (Dewey (1963), Freire
(1970, 1973), Kolb (1984), Argyris and Schön(1978), where student’s learning
stems from first hand experience followed by reflection on that experience and
further action. The learning is often assessed through completion of practice
diaries or learning logs followed by a more formal personal reflection.
Assessment tends to be based on what a student has gained personally from
completing the task (and tied to personal reflection) rather than on the quality of
their work on the task itself. And this does often not sit well in disciplines such as
engineering or product design where other courses are assessed more on what
they have done or made than their ability to think and write about it.
Heffernan (2001) claims there are six separate categories of Service learning,
but these tend to deliver on different things.
1. Pure,
2. Discipline based,
3. Problem based,
4. Capstone (fundamental or core modules),
5. Internships
6. Undergraduate or Post graduate community based research.
The latter (category 6), involves students in CBR and overlaps with the aims and
activities of science shops and describes some of the Brighton activities. The
first, (category 1), is devoted principally to Service, without a specific learning
content and contradicts the idea of reciprocity or mutual benefit. It would not
appropriately fit an accredited programme. Discipline based models (2) are often
linked to professional courses, such as nursing or midwifery while the learning is
connected specifically to the role a student will play in the future.
Capstone modules (4) often overlap with problem based learning and students
(generally in their final year) work with a group who can benefit from their
previous course learning. University of Brighton models of this include product
design students who, for their fourth year set up an internal consultancy group
within the university talking on a range of projects including those for Remap, an
organization that builds bespoke disability aids around the needs of particular
individuals. Still under the direction of university tutors their work supports their
transition learners to employees. Service internships (5) are primarily American,
and are more intense experiences where a student is often based full time within
an organization for a set period like a traditional internship but with a service
objective and built in opportunities for reflection.
It is problem based modules, which probably best describes the project in
Brighton where students chose their own projects, sometimes working within
organizations but often working for them, as ‘consultants’ or as volunteers. Early
seminars encouraged students to think through their own values, what had
influenced these and what they wanted to achieve or change in the world.
Student projects included carrying out a feasibility study for a wind turbine,
drawing up a spec for a bio-fuels system, acting as drivers and sorters on a
recycling collection team and conducted interviews with pedestrians in a bid to
‘reclaim the streets’. Assessment tasks involved writing an analysis of the
organization they worked with and a longer self reflective piece on what they had
learned. Though students were working very much for an organization there was
a strong realization that what they were learning was at least in equal measure to
what they were able to offer, and their reflective reports provide strong evidence
of this.
Even in its American home service learning practitioners have begun to abandon
the ‘service’ terminology, and replace it with engaged research and engaged
learning (Winona State University Campus contract). Their description of the goal
of engaged scholarship ‘not to define and serve the public good directly on
behalf of society, but to create conditions for the public good to be interpreted
and pursued in a collaborative mode with the community’ reflects many of the
intentions of the two projects in this study. The notion that locally generated
knowledge should be valued alongside academic knowledge, and student benefit
alongside community benefit is beginning to underpin a broad range of
engagement programmes.
The Potential of Engagement
In the past decade Science shop and Service learning projects have become
more concerned with ways in which the university and its community partner can
work together on a more equal footing, and with the contribution that each can
make towards a student’s personal development as a professional and as a
citizen. In the early days of both it would have been difficult to conceive of
education for a university degree as including learning from and with people
without degrees, or of advanced research as involving average citizens and
officials in formulating research questions and being involved in the analysis of
results.
A realisation that students can and do learn from ‘doing’ alongside ‘ordinary
people’ as well as from lectures prepared by ‘experts’ is part of a shift in the way
that knowledge is understood in higher education (which Gibbons describes as
from ‘mode 1’ knowledge generation (pure, disciplinary, homogeneous, expertled, supply-driven, hierarchical, peer-reviewed, and almost exclusively universitybased) to ‘mode 2’ (applied, problem-centred, trans-disciplinary, heterogeneous,
hybrid, demand-driven, entrepreneurial, network-embedded etc.) (Gibbons et al.
1994 in Watson 2003). Bourner (1998) identifies a similar shift in universities in
the 1980s from a focus on the ‘subject of study’ to a focus on ‘the student’. Like
Boyer’s ‘scholarship of teaching’ (1990) and Taylor and Fransen’s learnereducator relations this shift blurs traditional boundaries between teachers,
learners and professionals in favour of a ‘learning community’ of students, tutors
and practitioners involved in the discovery of ‘knowledge that works’ (Taylor and
Fransen 2004).
It raises the question of what it is about concern for and contact with ordinary and
diverse people living ordinary, and diverse and extraordinary lives that is
transformational in terms of learning and change. Huckle (1983) asks how we
educate students for rather than about or in sustainable development, and it
seems that while we know largely how to equip students with knowledge and
skills, traditionally Higher Education has been less comfortable working with
attitudes and values and long term behaviour change. Many student community
engagement programmes now include elements of participatory research, of
team-work, of increased contact with diverse groups and of reflection, and it may
be this combination that appears to shift students from being knowers to doers.
Since the late 1990’s programmes have begun to stress mutual benefit and
reciprocity, and a concern with developing a sense of civil responsibility and
social connectedness among their students. However in the context of the two
programmes used as examples in this paper, the latter are at an all time low. In
spite of nearly ten years of citizenship programmes within the school curriculum,
a new department for communities and local government and a policy of
increased consultation, investment in the political process and a sense of shared
responsibility in the UK is lower than almost ever before. After ten years of peace
in Bosnia since the Dayton agreement many cities (like Mostar) remain divided,
with ethnic rather than geographical or local allegiances. Strand et al (2003)
agree that ‘despite our best intentions graduates (still) leave our institutions
largely disengaged from political issues, disenchanted with the ability of
government to effect positive change…’ (p5)
The potential to relearn a sense of civil responsibility and connectedness could
be greater for university students than for people at other points in their lives. As
young adults, moving away from their homes to study among groups of their
peers they are able to question their primary socialisation and examine the
cultures and backgrounds they come from. But undergraduates often bring a
learned passivity with them from secondary schools and an expectation that they
will be ‘taught’. This is particularly true in Mostar where they are products of a
very didactic school system. Students in a class in Bosnia when asked to
undertake a role play responded to the lecturer ‘you are paid to teach us, so
teach!’ (MacEntagart 1999).
Even in the UK many young people remain vulnerable and defended, and
unprepared to discuss their values and themselves in an academic space
(Bourner 1998). The current generation of students are known for being apolitical
and socially disengaged, with an increasing interest in self rather than community
(Glazer et al 2001). In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where students have childhood
memories of war, there is a general concern to ‘keep your head down’, co-exist,
weariness with the politics of the 90’s and disillusionment with political change.
But neither student group is uncaring about the rest of the world, nor without
ideas (Ahier et al., 2002, Millican 2005). Some are involved in single issue
politics, others have connections with environmental or faith groups, most have
strong concerns about their own futures and how these will play out. The
challenge of student community engagement programmes is to find ways to
harness these concerns, to create opportunities for students to contribute to the
wider community and to help them realise their own potential to create positive
change.
The Brighton programme attempts to do this by stimulating an exploration of
personal ideals, by comparing different positions on sustainable development, by
giving students choice in the experiential projects they undertake and by teaching
the skills of personal reflection. An evaluation of the CPD module in Brighton
found that:
‘The key learning seems to have been linked to the opportunity to work with
people (other volunteers, CVOs etc) who were passionate about what they
did, rather than driven mainly by commercial concerns. This was felt to be a
contrast to some of the industrial placements they had previously experienced.
They also stressed the benefits and motivating force of engaging in activities
which were ‘real rather than theoretical’, ‘making something happen from
nothing’ or with limited resources, and in learning practical skills. They liked
working with people from different schools or courses (not just those on the
module but other volunteers in some of the projects). More generally they saw
the projects/organisations as reflecting a different culture or ‘different vibe’ and
enjoyed seeing ‘how other people do things’.
(HE academy GEES Evaluation Report, 2007, University of Brighton).
Currently we are exploring with our colleagues in Mostar which elements of these
programmes would fit with the expectations of students and faculty members in
Dzemal Bijedic. Eight tutors were interviewed individually about the role of
Higher education and from departments of English, German, Drama, Fine Art,
Engineering, Law, IT and Engineering. All spoke of the responsibility of HE to its
local community, its potential to contribute to new laws, new infrastructures, new
ways of doing things, and of the difficulty in getting government to recognize this.
All eight saw their role as ‘combating the passivity of students’ and the learned
helplessness that has followed the war. They mentioned their main task as
‘helping students to develop self awareness’ ‘to understand who they are and
what they can do’, ‘to help make people active’, ‘to make them think’, ‘to help
students to ‘become better people’ ‘to recognize values as important’, ‘to realize
that they can make a difference and that they need to try’. One mentioned their
‘responsibility to a global world’ another, the importance of international
experience in making students ‘more open’ and to help them co-exist within the
city, within the state, within Europe’. While most referred to the importance of
preparation for employment, (and this is crucial in a city of 30% unemployment),
this appeared to be secondary to issues of citizenship, co-existence and a
challenge to passivity and skepticism. ‘War is good for no-one’ said one lecturer
who was old enough to have taught students before and during their six week
periods of fighting on the front, ‘that alone is a basis for joint understanding and
collaboration’. (Individual interviews with author).
In Bosnia and Herzegovinia MacEntagart (1999) suggests that curricula ‘that
teach students to think’ (p30) are needed if we are to prevent a return to former
ethnic conflicts, and there is at least the potential in a student community
engagement programme for motivating young people to try to think about doing
things differently from their parents generation. However there are real dangers
in exporting a ‘fourth wave science shop programme’ that open up many of the
dilemmas in any partnership arrangement, including those between international
project partners and national community/university arrangements. The temptation
in a project-bound (and therefore time-bound) initiative is to go for what works
and learn from the (superior?) knowledge of the experienced partner.
A model for the 21st Century?
The principles of participatory and of community based research (CBR), often
also important elements of university community engagement, can help to ensure
that new programmes are properly responsive to the needs of the local
environment. As a discipline, emerging at a similar time to engagement
programmes, CBR stresses collaboration, partnership and values experiential,
local and community knowledge alongside scholarship. Strand et al (2003) see
community based research as ‘the next important stage of service learning and
engaged scholarship’ (p6) and differing from ‘charity oriented service learning’
currently practiced in some universities (p5). Boser (2006) suggests participatory
research principles can help build new social relations between stakeholders,
that are ‘respectful of the needs and interests of all constituents’. (p19)
We have tried to implement some of these principles to help manage
relationships between Brighton and Dzemal Bijedic and between Dzemal Bijedic
and its local community in Bosnia. As a cross-border partnership in a multi-ethnic
context there are invariably power imbalances and equal participation is often
difficult. In an earlier research paper (Millican 2006) I questioned whether
participatory approaches to learning were appropriate to cultures with a history of
didacticism, or whether these were just one more imposition of the west.
Although the research was conducted in relation to literacy programmes I
concluded that if we are ‘truly to confront issues of disengagement and
marginalization participants cannot but be actively engaged’ (p38) and that
participation and collaboration are essential in any programme linked to social
change. CBR and participatory research methodologies have developed
strategies for trying to ensure equal participation, such as listening and
suspending judgement and ‘handing over the stick’ (Chambers 1997). A
programme properly dedicated to mutual benefit must be concerned with
changing attitudes of students and community partners in the longer term. For
this to happen both sides must be fully and equally engaged and a service-type
model, directed by either side, cannot deliver on this.
Dewey’s prioritization of democracy, experience, social service and reflective
enquiry in education still seems an appropriate model for the 21st century. For
Dewey the purpose of education was a social process, for connecting the ‘I’ to
the ‘we’, and this entails a shift in attitudes and priorities above and beyond the
development of knowledge and skills. If sustainable development is to have any
impact there needs to be a significantly greater concern with the ‘we’ above the ‘I’
(Glaser et al 2001, Putnam 2000 ), and if there is to be a re-emergence of
citizenship in divided societies that ‘we’ needs to transcend ethnic divides.
Models of student community engagement based on reciprocity and mutual
benefit could help to provide those connections. In discussing the development of
Social capital, i.e. ‘the connections between individuals that support economic
growth, social inclusion, improved health and better response to governance’,
Puttnam cites both reciprocity and mutual benefit as crucial principles(1993). But
he draws attention to the differences between bridging and bonding social
capital. Bonding social capital, based on specific reciprocity, entails giving to
those that give to you on the basis of barter or exchange. Such reciprocity can
add to social and ethnic divisions, creating a sense of insiders and outsiders,
including some and excluding others. Bridging social capital, based on
generalised reciprocity, (contributing to society, national or global, on the belief
that society will return the favour) is inclusive, and based on trustworthiness, on
the notion that the more we give to the more there is to receive. In these times of
late capitalism, of environmental chaos and ethnic strife, a realisation of these
broader allegiances may become crucial for our survival.
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