Positioning Civic Engagement on the Higher Education Landscape: Insights from a civically engaged pedagogy

Abstract

The significance of competing conceptions of civic engagement is increasingly apparent as efforts are made to respond to the measurement imperative that characterises contemporary higher education. The importance of devising appropriate means of recognising and incentivising civic engagement is asserted in this paper and the potential offered by emerging measurement and mapping methodologies is considered. The empirical basis for the argument derives from a multi‐site case study of the process of embedding community‐based learning within Irish higher education. Analysis of interview data from four cases, drawn from the university and extra‐university sector, yielded, inter alia, a typology of orientations to civic engagement. Findings are discussed, including those relating to orientations, ambivalence, scepticism, and legitimisation strategies. The case is made that these themes and the factors which impact on sustainability are mirrored within the wider domain of civic engagement—hence the opportunity to learn from a civically engaged pedagogy.

Keywords:

• civic engagement
• community‐based learning
• service learning
• third mission
• institutional performance measures
• higher education policy
• Ireland

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on a paper originally presented at the 32nd Annual EAIR Forum, 2010—Linking Society and Universities: New Missions for Universities—in Valencia, Spain, September 1–4. I would like to acknowledge the valuable and constructive contribution of the Forum, its participants and presenters to the development of the paper.

Notes

1. See http://www.nuigalway.ie/education/staff/josephine_boland/index.html

2. See http://www.campusengage.ie

3. See http://www.e3mproject.eu

4. See http://www.campusengage.ie

5. See http://www.bristol.ac.uk/university/vision/engaged.html

6. In Europe, variations on the term “community‐based learning” are often used in preference to “Service learning”, which originated in the US.

7. See http://www.campusengage.ie/site/view/244