Partnering with a community organization for service-learning is a meaningful approach to higher education curriculum. Service-learning is a pedagogy centered on service, combining structured opportunities that link the course content to critical self-reflection for the acquisition of values and skills that lead to enhanced citizenry in addition…

For six years the Food Security Research Network at Lakehead University, Canada, has been engaged in an interdisciplinary theme-based service-learning initiative focusing on food security. Informed by complexity theory, the contextual fluidity partnership model brings community partners, students, and faculty into a nexus through which new…

Background: For decades, scholars have argued that teaching and learning depend fundamentally on the quality of relationships between teachers and students, yet there is little research about how teachers develop relationships with students or how teacher education prepares teachers to do this work. Arguably, articulating the relational practices…

Research points to the pedagogical value of an engaged and community service-learning approach to developing understanding of course content (Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda, & Yee, 2000). To help students achieve a better understanding of how the discipline of psychology contributes to the discipline of law, some students in a second year…

This article provides a description of service learning implemented in an introductory special education course focused on the culture of disability. Collaborating with liaisons from five community service organizations, students provided services to individuals with disabilities in a variety of projects across two semesters. Communication and…

Until recently, youth practitioners learned how to support team building, maximize the participation of diverse groups of youth, and measure the desired effects of new strategies through experience, ingenuity, mentoring, and an occasional workshop. As research amasses about the critical role of staff quality in predicting positive outcomes for…

The nation's 1,200 community colleges are well positioned to strengthen the workforce of one of America's most critical sectors--health care. They can provide training and credentialing for incumbent workers in health care and to prepare new workers to succeed in and meet the workforce demands for this sector--expanding individual opportunity and…

A college degree is widely accepted as a basic goal in education, and the United States labor market reinforces that expectation with substantial financial rewards. Today, Latinos are enrolling in colleges and universities at astronomical rates. As educators, we must provide this growing student population with the adequate programs and resources…

The benefits of community-based research (CBR) in the sociology classroom go beyond those associated with traditional service learning. Here, students use their sociological skills to examine and propose solutions to local social problems addressed by community organizations. Through analyzing students' course reflection journals and the results…

In recent years, leaders of American cities have become progressively concerned about increasing the college-going and completion rate of their residents. Mayors and other community leaders in Memphis, Boston, Louisville, San Francisco and other cities have launched initiatives to increase college completion rates, mobilizing stakeholders from the…

The Downtown Education Collaborative (DEC) is an innovative collaborative which includes public and private colleges working with community organizations in interdisciplinary community service learning. This article reviews DEC's development, from its inception as a shared vision aspired to by its partners, to a functioning collaborative. We…

This paper discusses a fieldwork exercise in development geography undertaken by students in the UK. Based on community engagement in partnership with refugee and black minority communities in Liverpool, it explores how such fieldwork can deepen understanding of development geography, contribute to global citizenship and nurture personal skills.…

This mixed method, single case study describes a university-community partnership between a small, suburban liberal arts college and an inner-city neighborhood located over eight miles away. The ultimate goal of the study was to improve the partnership for community and campus partners. The study does this by focusing on partnership members'…

The authors assert that higher education has a significant role to play in the reinvigoration of American democracy, and that narrow specialization of academic interests, technocratic practices and assumptions, and privatizing values throughout colleges and universities limit the ability of higher education to play this role. These dynamics also…

Attention to preparing social workers for our aging society has increased with concern that there may be insufficient professionals to meet the need. Interest in training gerontologically-savvy social work students had led to the development of models to achieve this end. This article reports on a collaboration among a university's school of…