This article is an ethnographic case study of the work of two activist groups in Kansas City, Missouri. It discusses how unhoused activists with the Kansas City Homeless Union, through their 13-month on-and-off occupation of city property, worked to reframe access in ways that moved toward what disability justice activists call collective access,…

Employing an institutional case study approach, this manuscript features two high-impact learning opportunities open to Albion College students who seek to contribute to solving real-world problems in collaboration with local and surrounding communities: Albion College Community Collaborative (AC3) and Human Rights Lab. The programmatic approach…

The economic value of education to individuals, families, communities, and nations continues to be one of the key justifications for investments in education globally. Yet, the total value of education should capture the value of both economic and non-economic outcomes that accrue to societies, in addition to all private returns. Unfortunately,…

Local communities are increasingly becoming concerned about what to do about changing climatic conditions and they want to know more about how to best work together to address complicated socioecological issues. This paper addresses this need by presenting findings from four exploratory case studies (two in Maine and two in Oregon). The…

This article builds on the political science literature on the pedagogy of civic engagement by discussing a recent pedagogical experiment that treats community partners as leaders and full participants in the design and implementation of community-engaged learning. The courses discussed here combine democratic theory, community organizing and…

This study present findings related to students' community and political engagement and activism after participation in an action civics institute. The institute, iEngage, is a weeklong summer experience for rising fifth through rising ninth graders that utilizes the action civics inquiry cycle to foster civic skills and cultivate participation…

Young people must systematically learn to become voters, and this is especially the case for those who grow up with little to no access to structured civic opportunities like extracurricular activities and community organizing. With those principles in mind, and based on 2018 research and experience with practitioners and partners, the authors…

Civic leaders who are highly and effectively engaged often have strong relationships with key stakeholders across institutions and communities. The prevalence and nature of these relationships is not known among those with more typical levels of civic engagement. We were interested in the perceptions of likelihood of individual versus community…

Space represented on geographical maps is ordered and navigable, allowing one to "know" features and layouts of places before visiting, and finding landmarks, pathways and spaces of importance that connect you from one point to another, reducing possibilities for disorientation. Maps "work" because they represent a reality…

The National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign, also known as Voting is Social Work, involved social work faculty, field educators, practitioners, and students in a nonpartisan voter engagement drive. Following the 2018 elections, researchers surveyed Campaign participants in social work schools and agencies to document their voter…

Community change approaches have increasingly involved participatory practices in which community members directly impacted by an issue participate in implementing change efforts. However, community participation as a practice and approach does not always include youth participation. Within the field of youth organizing, young people are…

This article invites imaginings of democracy and education with and through "other" knowledges. It argues for the possibilities of working across difference as articulated in the transnational, border, and decolonial perspectives of Chicana/Latina feminisms. Specifically, it explores Gloria Anzaldúa's notions of…

Providing opportunities to foster students' civic engagement during their undergraduate education is a goal of many universities. There are a variety of ways in which students participate in community service and in community change efforts and social change initiatives; capturing how students integrate these experiences into their broader…

This paper identifies an emerging commonality between the professional spheres of planning, education and social or community work constellating around the concept of sustainable development (SD). It explores the contested nature of the concept of SD giving rise to a wide variety of sometimes conflicting "readings". It then goes on to…

Adult English as a second language (ESL) educators have struggled to move beyond skills-based instruction to implement more student-centered, contextualized pedagogy that prepares students to become active citizens and to solve real-world problems, even as the growing number of immigrants make adult education increasingly important for determining…