Civic Engagement Resources: Community Partnerships

Building Partnerships for Service-Learning assembles leading voices in the field to bring their expertise to bear on this crucial topic. Faculty, administrators, student leaders, and community and corporate leaders will find this volume filled with vital information, exemplary models, and practical tools needed to make service-learning succeed. Building Partnerships for Service-Learning is the essential guide to taking service-learning and partnerships to the next level.

In this volume, top researchers present recent work studying aspects of program development, student and community outcomes, and future research directions in the field of service-learning and community engagement. This volume features efforts in research and practice to support and expand service-learning and engaged scholarship in both K-12 and higher education. Models of effective partnerships between institutions of higher education and their community partners are developed in chapters looking at relationships between campus and community in terms of partnership identity or in terms of shared understanding by campus and community partners.

This volume explores the impact of service learning on a community, and considers the unequal relationship between the community and the academy. Using eye-opening interviews with community-organization staff members, The Unheard Voices challenges assumptions about the effectiveness of service learning. Chapters offer strong critiques of service learning practices from the lack of adequate training and supervision, to problems of communication and issues of diversity.

This book reveals how to implement effective service-learning programs and contains myriad examples of successful efforts across multiple disciplines. The book focuses on service-learning with government partners, such as city councils, school districts, and public agencies however the lessons are easily transferable to service-learning courses with businesses and not-for-profit organizations. Taking a unique approach, the book offers comprehensive look at all of the constituencies served by service-learning, including, teachers and students, government agencies as community partners, higher education administrators, and community citizens.