Igniting Community Through Engaged Teaching

Abstract

Much of what we consider to be traditional teaching practices has been formed within the limits of a classroom setting, buried within a disciplinary focus. Yet our students face great societal, economic, and environmental challenges. We must ask what are we educating our students for? Do traditional models prepare our undergraduate and graduate students for a dynamic and changing world? Service-learning gets students involved in thinking in the context of real-world issues about how to address pressing community needs in partnership with community organizations. In this paper, community-engaged teaching and service-learning will be illuminated by highlighting four diverse pedagogical approaches. This paper will provide new considerations for how to integrate or advance service-learning through courses: (1) learn by designing and making; (2) learn by cross-disciplinary engagement; (3) learn by engaging in other fields and cultures; and (4) learn by serving in the pipeline.