Researching the Professional-Development Needs of Community-Engaged Scholars in a New Zealand University

Abstract

Abstract:We explored the processes adopted by university teachers who engage with communities with a focus on asking how and why they became community-engaged, and an interest in what promotes and limits their engagement and how limitations may be addressed. As part of year-long research project we interviewed 25 community-engaged colleagues and used a general inductive approach to identify recurring themes within interview transcripts. We found three coexisting and re-occurring themes within our interviews. Community-engaged scholars in our institution tended to emphasise the importance of building enduring relationships between our institution and the wider community; have personal ambitions to change aspects of our institution, our communities, or the interactions between them and identified community engagement as a fruitful process to achieve these changes; and identified the powerful nature of the learning that comes from community engagement in comparison with other more traditional means of teaching. Underlying these themes was a sense that community engagement requires those involved to take risks. Our three themes and this underlying sense of risk-taking suggest potential support processes for the professional development of community-engaged colleagues institutionally.

Higher Education for Professional and Civic Values: A Critical Review and Analysis

“…The literature included in Box 2 suggests that much depends on which particular values are being modelled. Shephard [3], for example, suggests that most of his academic colleagues do not plagiarise or fabricate research data and that where they teach professional values such as honesty, integrity and respect within professional schools, they role model these same professional values themselves. These values are widely accepted and role modelled by most professionals outside of academia so that when graduates leave the institution these values are reinforced.…”

“…These values are widely accepted and role modelled by most professionals outside of academia so that when graduates leave the institution these values are reinforced. Problems arise when professions change their values (as described by Borgstrom et al [30]), when university teachers profess values that they do not share themselves, such as, in some cases, sustainability values, or when graduates move from universities to wider society and discover that the values taught in the university are not shared more widely [3].…”

“…Our teachers, lawyers and medical practitioners all identify particular values as outcomes of professional education and make considerable effort to assess or evaluate their attainment. Also, although historically many professions have developed lists of values, nowadays it is more common for professional groups to specify the kinds of behaviours that stem from particular value-bases [3]. One approach widely used by medical schools to assess individual behaviours is the OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) where, typically, students are exposed to actors pretending to be patients, and university teachers, as assessors, watch and listen as the student performs the required tasks.…”

“…Although the paragraphs above, in general, promote the idea that learning in higher education can contribute to values-education in the context of social good, it is also the situation that some academics wish to teach values that are not necessarily endorsed by their colleagues, departments or institutions (see for example [66] in the context of sustainability). There is, in particular, an expanding discourse on the hidden curriculum that suggests that some academics may teach values without realising it, or deliberately hide the values that they hold dear (and therefore teach) but that may not be seen as acceptable by their peers [3].…”

“…Any broad-brush description of the roles of higher education is likely to include research (solving problems and contributing to the wealth and health of sponsoring societies), teaching (supporting the development of the next generation of creative, economically active and influential citizens, and the next generation of academics) and service (incorporating diverse functions in support of society) [2]. In some cases, service, or the third mission, specifically includes the role of 'critic and conscience of society' within which universities are expected to guide their sponsoring societies and to comment if these societies deviate from what the university, and its academics, think acceptable behaviour [3]. This third mission introduces complexity to the roles of higher education, as all of its functions are to a degree in service of society, and all no doubt interact, but only the third mission specifically emphasises some element of directing or correcting society.…”