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Language Matters: Reciprocity and Its Multiple Meanings

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Learning Through Community Engagement

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Abstract

There have been strong calls from the higher education community for greater reciprocal, collaborative and mutually enriching relationships between the community and the academy. Underpinning the PACE initiative for example, is the "principle of reciprocity”, a “commitment to mutually beneficial learning and engagement” and an overall aim that students make a “valuable and valued contribution to partners and the communities they serve” (PACE, PACE Strategic Plan 2014 to 2016, 2014). What is it, however, that higher education institutions, practitioners, and scholars mean by such calls and commitments to service, mutual benefit, and reciprocity? The agenda and goals of community engagement in higher education remain somewhat ambiguous, as these guiding concepts are understood and interpreted in diverse and problematic ways by different actors and institutions. This chapter invites the higher education community to deconstruct key terms used to describe community engagement activities and relationships, and encourages critical reflection on our attempts to enact them through our research and practice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Community-based service-learning (CBSL) is used to describe community-engagements activities within the higher education context that integrate experiential learning and academic goals with organized activities designed to meet the objectives of community partners.

  2. 2.

    While the dichotomy of community-university is useful to analyze academic practice and to advance discussion, the author recognizes both groups as heterogeneous, multi-dimensional (politically, socially, economically), complex, overlapping, fluid and dynamic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PACE, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Laura Hammersley

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  1. Laura Hammersley
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Correspondence to Laura Hammersley .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Macquarie University School of Education, Sydney, Australia

    Judyth Sachs

  2. PACE, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Lindie Clark

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Hammersley, L. (2017). Language Matters: Reciprocity and Its Multiple Meanings. In: Sachs, J., Clark, L. (eds) Learning Through Community Engagement. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0999-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0999-0_8

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