Participatory Academic Communities (original) (raw)
Related papers
Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement in Higher Education
Socially Responsible Higher Education, 2021
Foreword x i knowledge generation and dissemination. It, in turn, complements the existing procedures and/or processes of community-based research training, in order to capture and incorporate the relevant knowledge. In short, this is an exciting time where higher education is pit against the search for the much-touted 'new normal'. This includes new approaches to health and well-being, as well peace and harmonious living. It is my fervent hope that this amazingly timely book will point to a direction that paves the way to a new thinking in taking community-based research and social responsibility to new heights, in the postpandemic era, based on knowledge democracy. After all, in the words of the authors, "knowledge democracy is understanding that knowledge is a powerful tool for taking action to deepen democracy and to struggle for a fairer and healthier world. Knowledge democracy is about intentionally linking values of democracy and action to the process of using knowledge".
REIMAGINING UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
South African Journal of Higher Education, 2023
Keywords: universities, community engagement, political economy, praxis epistemology, academic capitalism, ratings and rankings regimes, EdTech. The Second Higher Education Conference convened jointly by Universities South Africa (USAf) and the Council on Higher Education (CHE) provided the space to reflect, collectively and critically on the notion of “The Engaged University”. This article is based on a keynote address to this conference in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the environmental and inequality crises confronting South Africa and the world. After an examination of the societal context of universities, the article discusses critical issues in relation to university-community engagement. It attempts to address these issues by firstly providing an overview of the long-standing debates in our country concerning the academy’s responsibilities and accountability to various constituencies beyond the universities gates and the imperative to rethink scholarship to engage communities meaningfully. Secondly, it will provide an appreciation of the overarching political economy of higher education and the corporatisation of universities before drawing conclusions about the processes that impede or allow the university to be responsive to community engagement. The article will provide a few historical and contemporaneous examples of the work of university-based researchers with various communities. It will highlight the research of those who have an orientation toward working class communities and aim to democratise knowledge production. The article argues that the latter’s “praxis epistemology” (Amini 2017) assists us in reimagining university-community relations.
Australasian journal of university community engagement, 2007
This paper demonstrates how community engagement can provide a cornerstone enabling research and learning and teaching to meet the challenges of relativity and uncertainty in a post modern world. In the field of education, the question of relevance is a constant criticism. If relevance is to be achieved, research andlearning and teaching need to be interwoven with community and community concerns, in ways that enhancethe outcomes for all stakeholders. The paper examines an academic's university community engagement practice from a reflexive and cross disciplinary perspective. It seeks to identify the characteristics and qualities that define successful university community engagement practice while identifying that there needs to be recognition and reward for universities to have more academics involved in such successful and sustainable university community engagement practice.
An alternative approach to measuring community engagement in higher education
2021
Universities across the globe are increasingly being called on to contribute to their surrounding communities and regions, especially so as they are mobilised in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflecting on these emerging demands within Europe, Thomas Farnell, presents the TEFCE project and its role in the development of a European framework for community engagement in higher education, based on a qualitative and participatory approach, rather than one driven by metrics. Outlining the aims of the framework and what makes it different to previous approaches, he argues why the time might be right for such a project to embed itself in a European context
Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 2018
This article seeks to address what it means to be an ‘engaged’ university and, in so doing, to contribute to current discourses – in a fast growing field – about how to collaborate with communities for meaningful social transformation. As a group of researchers from the faculty of education in a South African university, we share our thinking and the theoretical notions that underpinned our planning and executing of a 3-year engagement with a rural secondary school. In asking ‘How might dialogic engagement of the university community and the community the university serves, enable agency towards active citizenship in the context of education?’, a collaborative engagement project between and within a school-community and the university was initiated. In this conceptual article, we unpack and discuss a critical university and school-community engagement with, and interpretation of, three key concepts that underpinned it: dialogic engagement, community and active citizenship. We conclu...