1 Prospects for Connecting Schools and Communities
This volume intends to provide an articulated overview of the manifestations of community-based learning in school pedagogics. Approaches to community-based learning are geared toward meeting the following educational challenges: How do educators connect learning with the authentic community environments, where learning is linked to life, experiences, and practical problems? How do educators make learning more functional and holistic for students and enable them to work in new situations and analyze the complex world around them?
Putting community-based learning into practice requires that educators expand their professional orientation from a restricted one to an extended one. The extended orientation of teacher professionalism is associated with educators who view their responsibility as something that extends beyond classroom activities to include cooperation with members of the surrounding community (see Hoyle & John, 1996). Hargreaves and Shirley (2009) stated that educators can learn to engage with and benefit from parent activism and community development as a core part of their professional identity. Connecting schools more to their communities increases schools’ influence in the community (pp. 78–79). In such a school culture, educators emphasize professional cooperation and are willing to be engaged at the school and community levels. They must be holistically conscious of the factors influencing school activities and be able to critically analyze their own instruction. Furthermore, they must be aware of both the schools’ and their own roles in developing the community. Consequently, it is important for teacher education to develop forms of instruction which offer prospective teachers an opportunity to build fully functioning thought and action patterns and to adopt the strategies necessary to change school practices.
Approaches to community-based learning have many positive influences on the school culture and the surrounding community. This volume describes how a school curriculum can emphasize life-centered issues in school pedagogics in the United States, India, and China. Many schools encourage community members to participate in realizing the school curriculum. In schoolwork, cooperative activities are essential for effective community-based projects when students are learning to access information from various sources using different methods. These types of experiential activities are based on initiative work, cooperative learning, and service, and give rise to material consequences when combined with the performance of work.
Schoolwork can also create organic relations with interest groups in the surrounding community. These schools help community members to achieve their common goals and solve problems. Moreover, many schools actively work to maintain the school by cooperating with members of the community while, at the same time, breathing life into the neighborhood. This can enhance processes so that education uses all the human, physical, and financial resources of the community’s learning networks. Similarly, various groups within the community can utilize the learning networks to develop different partnerships based on cooperation.
2 Overview
The purpose of this book is to outline the complex character of community-based learning in schools and their communities. This type of learning is observed in the light of research findings regarding innovative approaches and reforms. The process of concept formation proceeds in a contextual manner with the source material aiming to be as close to the original as possible. The book chapters intend to reflect various topics and processes for community-based learning in an approachable and theoretically grounded form.
Part 1 explores the foundations of community-based learning within social change. It interprets the nature of the philosophical views, educational aims, and associated values from an international perspective. The first chapter, “Ideals for Community Engagement from the East and West,” by Eija Kimonen and Raimo Nevalainen, discusses the main philosophical background views as well as the aims of education and the value dimensions of community-based learning, most specifically in the United States, India, and China. It attempts to identify the essence of developmental trends in the history of ideas in the field of education and the value-oriented aims intertwined with them using data from these socially different countries. The focus of interest is on the interplay between changes in educational policy and society in these countries at different times and how this interplay has been reflected as various ideals, aims, and values of community-based learning. Additionally, it attempts to identify possible philosophical connections between the three countries and one former country, the early Soviet Union. The study is based on a research project that examines the interrelationship between education and society during the 20th century and beyond.
Part 2 discusses the evolution of and research about community-based learning. It focuses on how the evolving definition, purpose, and design of community based learning contributed to disparate outcomes and limited use of this learning approach across the United States. Chapter 2, “Community-Based Learning: An Exploration from Philanthropy to Praxis,” by Thomas L. Alsbury, Suzan Kobashigawa, and Mary Ewart, provides a historical overview of the development of community-based learning approaches in the United States, from its philanthropic origins to more pragmatic vocational skills development. It examines current pluralistic definitions and program purposes, ranging from service-learning to social activism. Instructional and classroom applications are reviewed, including second language, newcomer, and place-bound programs. The chapter concludes with remarks on how this reform’s dichotomy of purpose has persisted from its inception to the current day, contributing to the lack of widespread adoption and program clarity.
Chapter 3, “Community-Based Learning and Student Outcomes: What Research Reveals,” by Thomas L. Alsbury, Suzan Kobashigawa, and Mary Ewart, provides research findings on the effectiveness of using community-based learning, which are reviewed with a focus on substantive student outcomes, including improved community orientation, cultural capital, social advocacy, work ethic, and classroom achievement. Research found outcomes primarily in student social and cultural competency and sensitivity, although the findings vary based on program purpose and design as well as on the level of relationship development between school and community mentors and students participating in the community experiences.
Part 3 examines pedagogical strategies used with K–16 students and in teacher preparation programs that build community-based relationships in the United States. The strategies contribute to involving students and educators in the community and teaching them to value its resources. Chapter 4, “Community-Based Pedagogical Strategies with Students,” by Lakia M. Scott, Karon N. LeCompte, Suzanne M. Nesmith, and Susan K. Johnsen, presents an overview of community-based learning opportunities for students to increase their community engagement, make curriculum meaningful, and strengthen their connection between learning in schools and in the community. This chapter highlights student-led independent investigations, action civics where students engage civically and behave as citizens, justice-oriented citizenship using the Freedom Schools model, and transdisciplinary learning experiences that bring together university faculty, staff, and students in developing innovative ways to promote human fulfillment. Each pedagogical strategy is clearly defined using characteristics and tangible examples with K–16 students. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of using community-based learning to enhance critical inquiry and civic engagement.
Chapter 5, “Connecting Learning to the Community: Pedagogical Strategies for Educators,” by Suzanne M. Nesmith, Lakia M. Scott, Karon N. LeCompte, and Susan K. Johnsen, presents an overview of community-based pedagogies and the benefits, outcomes, and challenges of community-based learning. Specific to the ways in which community-based pedagogies may be used to confront cultural disconnects, the authors include specific community-based learning pedagogical strategies utilized for and with educators. The authors provide descriptions of four pedagogical strategies, including creative problem solving in community learning, field-based environmental education, action civics, and service-learning, along with depictions of the ways in which the strategies were shared with preservice and in-service educators. The chapter concludes with a comprehensive summary highlighting how community-based pedagogies have the potential to empower students and transform school settings.
Part 4 is devoted to global approaches for community-based learning through a qualitative comparative study. It shows how, using available data, community-based learning in three socially different countries has been theorized and practiced in the 20th and 21st centuries. The final chapter, “Toward Learning in the Community: Insights from the U.S.A., India, and China,” by Eija Kimonen and Raimo Nevalainen, examines the pedagogical procedures and practices of community-based learning at different times. The authors view community-based learning as pedagogical processes taking place in authentic learning environments, such as the natural world, social life, and the world of work. The most significant function of this process is that the various approaches to community-based learning are linked to dimensions of learning environments, such as Naturalistic, Sociocultural, Productive, Economic, Martial, Ecological, or Scientific-Technical Dimensions. The study applies the historico-hermeneutical approach to comparative education and follows the developmental trends of educational policy at different times in the context of social change.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to all those who, in one way or another, contributed to the realization of this book. Our special appreciation is due to our coauthors for their inspiring and creative contributions.
We are grateful to the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, and the Alfred Kordelin Foundation for their financial support. The editing process for this volume was carried out in the RICEI Project at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. We would like to take this opportunity to extend our sincerest thanks in particular to the following colleagues from the University of Jyväskylä for their support and encouragement in this project: Ms. Päivi Seppä, Director of Administration; Ms. Hanna Sahinen, Financial Planning Coordinator; Ms. Tuija Koponen, Head of the International Office; and Dr. Pekka Ruuskanen, Head of the University Teacher Training School.
We express our warmest thanks to the following colleagues for their valuable support and advice over the years: Professor Congman Rao and Associate Professor Xin Chen from Northeast Normal University, Professor Weiping Shi and Associate Professor Meilu Sun from East China Normal University, Professor Emerita Shakuntla Nagpal from the National Council of Educational Research and Training in New Delhi, Professor Dhruv Raina from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Professor Emeritus Robert F. Arnove from Indiana University. We are thankful to the reviewers who kindly commented on this volume’s chapters and provided constructive feedback. We are also indebted to Ms. Lea Galanter for her invaluable contributions in performing the language and copy editing of the entire text. We express our sincerest appreciation to Mr. Joed Elich and Mr. Marti Huetink, Publishing Directors, Ms. Evelien van der Veer, Assistant Editor, and Ms. Jolanda Karada, Production Editor, for making publication of this book possible.