Abstract
Civic Engagement in higher education needs to involve more than community service experiences in low-income neighborhoods and organizations. It needs to become an integrated part of an overall curriculum aimed at the development of a set of concepts and skills that facilitates a systemic understanding of social problems. This chapter describes one attempt at developing such a curriculum that includes three components: a conceptual model of society, an experiential component, and an opportunity to integrate the two through an analytical project. This project began with the collection of preliminary baseline data regarding the definitions, experiences and understandings of several hundred community college students regarding the idea of community, which served as the basis for the development of the final assignment described below. At the end of the chapter a series of suggestions regarding institutional policy and design are offered to support and expand this model of civic engagement, given the complexity of the work being asked of students, both in terms of the experiential and analytical components.
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Parker, S. (2016). Community Colleges as a Site for Community Organizing: A Model for Facilitating Social Justice Engagement. In: Schnee, E., Better, A., Clark Cummings, M. (eds) Civic Engagement Pedagogy in the Community College: Theory and Practice. Education, Equity, Economy, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22945-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22945-4_2
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