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- Author: Felix M. Bivens x
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This chapter examines the extent to which community-based research (CBR) programmes at four higher education institutions (HEIs) have impacted the curriculum and pedagogies of the institutions themselves. It provides a review of these four programmes, supplying some background on the CBR programmes and their evolution, and detailing some areas where the growth of these programmes has had an impact on aspects of the institution's curricula and/or pedagogy. The four programmes are: the Master's in Participation (MAP) at the UK's Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and the Community University Partnership Programme at the University of Brighton (CUPP). It also includes the outreach programme at Sewanee, University of the South (US), and the Programa de Investigacion Interdisciplinario Desrarrollo Humano en Chiapas (Interdisciplinary Research Programme on Human Development in Chiapas) at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana (UAM), Mexico.
The Interdisciplinary Programme on Human Development was launched in 1995. The work of the Human Development programme is structured along four axes: health, nutrition and quality of life; technology, production and environment; cultural processes of learning and human rights; social strategies, public policies and power relations. Academically, the Human Development group works with a variety of students from undergraduate, postgraduate and professional programmes. Many students at all levels are drawn to Chiapas because of the notoriety of the Zapatista movement. The primary academic course facilitated by the Human Development programme is the two-year MA in rural development. Students who stay in the programme for one year receive a diploma in rural development. Some students are awarded funding to continue their research even further so that they may complete a doctorate with the Human Development programme.
The University of Brighton (UoB) received a grant from the American-based Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation to create an institutional infrastructure for supporting community-based research (CBR) in Brighton and the surrounding counties of East and West Sussex. Community-University Partnership Programme's (CUPP) role was to act as a nexus between academics and community groups, promoting CBR on both sides of the town-gown line. Many of the CUPP staff came from voluntary sector backgrounds rather than from university roles, which helped them to liaise between the two different cultures, establishing trusted, longstanding relationships with community partners. Although initial projects were based on existing relationships, CUPP took lessons from the science shop model and soon created a helpdesk for fielding community inquiries. Community and Personal Development module (CPD) has been a significant force in helping to bridge the gap between student volunteerism and CBR.
The MA in Participation (MAP) had its first intake of students in 2004. MAP is the product of several years of planning and more years of previous work by the Participation, Power and Social Change (PPSC) team at Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. The roots of PPSC connect to the highly influential work of Robert Chambers in the field of participatory development. The curriculum for the first term of MAP has two courses, Foundations of Participation, and Ideas in Development. Foundations of Participation is designed for and open only to MAP students. It is basically two courses in one, divided into two distinct streams: Action Research and Reflective Practice; and Power, Participation and Social Change. The Action Research/ Reflective Practice stream is less conventional in its structure and is key to what makes MAP an innovative programme, curricularly and pedagogically.
The Outreach and Community Service programme at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, was created in 1989. It was part of a wave of many such programmes started by US universities and colleges in the late 1980s and early 1990s, bolstered by Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered report for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University of the South, more commonly referred to as Sewanee, is a small, private liberal-arts college owned by the twenty-six southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church. Since 2003, the outreach programme has been pivotal in enabling a series of new courses which include action learning and community-based research (CBR). The series of new courses includes summer-in-South-Asia programme, documentary photography, human health in the environment, politics of poverty, medical ethics, introduction to anthropology, civil rights, music and social change, and community-engagement minor.
This chapter lays out briefly how the work of the Citizenship Development Research Consortium (CDRC) is impacting university curricula and pedagogy across a global selection of higher education institutions (HEIs). The CDRC formed a teaching and learning group which has been experimenting with various ways in which citizenship can be taught within a formal university curricula and a traditional classroom setting. Not all members of the CRDC are university researchers. The Indian non-governmental organization (NGO) in Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) has been one of the core institutional members of the group. PRIA has been an influential pioneer in participatory action research (PAR) and community-based research (CBR) in the global South. PRIA has designed a two-year MA in participatory development which includes a year of intensive coursework and a year of PAR fieldwork.