1. Community-Engaged Field Trips: An Accessible Technique for Community-Based Learning in an Era of Education Austerity.
- Author
-
Brown, Sarah McGill
- Subjects
PLACE-based education ,SCHOOL field trips ,COMMUNITY involvement ,HIGHER education ,SOCIAL change ,SOCIOLOGY ,RACE ,ETHNICITY - Abstract
Community-based learning (CBL) is an innovative pedagogical approach that allows students to learn through direct engagement with community partners and participate in social change initiatives. Scholars have documented many transformative benefits of CBL: for students, it promotes critical thinking, self-reflection, and community action, while at the institutional level, it advances epistemic justice. Despite these advantages, many instructors balk at the idea of implementing CBL, especially given the current era of austerity in higher education. Within this context, I propose community-engaged field trips as a tool for instructors to achieve the core benefits of CBL by means of a concrete course activity. In the model I propose, students take part in a preexisting event or opportunity made available by a community-based organization. They then write an analytical reflection paper prompting them to think deeply about systemic inequities, examine their preexisting biases, and develop action ideas. To demonstrate how to implement this model of community-engaged field trips, I provide an exemplar from a course on the sociology of race and ethnicity. I describe the field trip logistics, learning objectives, reflection prompts, and assessment criteria and then conclude with suggestions for ways this model can be applied across a variety of course contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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