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

Kerry Shephard, Kim Brown and Tess Guiney
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Kerry Shephard: Higher Education Development Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
Kim Brown: Higher Education Development Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
Tess Guiney: Higher Education Development Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 7, 1-11

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.

Keywords: community engagement; student placement; education for sustainability; scholarship of engagement; academic roles; functions for higher education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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