Research in teacher education suggests that field experiences in community settings can offer pre-service teachers a context for understanding the link between theory and practice. This paper documents the experiences of pre-service educators participating in a service-learning experience at a Children's Defense Fund Freedom School in the…

This article first examines the dynamic role business education must play in a flat world economy. Second, it explains how legal courses in the business curricula already equip students with portable twenty-first-century skills and relevant academic content. The article then advocates the acceptance of the Boyer Model of Scholarship, which defines…

Early childhood educators often make assumptions about the nature of families' understandings and what they do at home to support their young children's literacy and numeracy development and learning. Sometimes educator's have a limited understanding of children's every day experiences at home or in their community and the potential for these to…

At a time when the OECD (2007) is advocating more local engagement for higher education institutions, this study looks at a number of community initiatives in Australia where local universities have played a key role. All were studied as part of the PASCAL Universities and Regional Engagement (PURE) project, which involves a total of 19 regions…

This study explored how graduate coursework can impact urban teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions regarding family and community involvement. (Note: California requires graduate work for teacher certification.) Specifically, the research investigated how teacher attitudes toward family and community involvement changed after taking a…

Process evaluation is a component of intervention research that evaluates whether interventions are delivered and received as intended. Here, we describe the process evaluation results for the Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls (TAAG) intervention. The intervention consisted of four synergistic components designed to provide supportive school-…

The primary role of continuing education (CE) is to connect the university and the community. Historically, many CE units have looked to the business world for guidance. As changes in society increase the range and diversity of links between the university and the community, CE leaders are working increasingly within the mainstream of their…

Community engagement was a relatively unknown concept in South African higher education until the late 1990s. In response to the call of the White Paper on the Transformation of Higher Education (1997) for "feasibility studies and pilot programmes which explore the potential of community service in higher education" the Joint Education…

The idea of "taking art education to the streets" is important for making art education more visible in the community. Such arts-based events demonstrate the value of the arts in the community. As education moves from the classroom into the streets through the media of art, music, and performance, participants build solidarity and…

The author's career experiences--as an impartial observer of community building, as an advocate working from within urban communities, and as a catalyst working from the outside--have given him a unique perspective into the dynamics of institutional/community engagement. "Basically, they have left me with three overriding convictions. First,…

The paper presents the social capital as the essential element of success of the Reggio Emilia preschools known for their unique approach to the early childhood education. The collaborative effort is introduced through examples of the currently ongoing "Reggio Narrates" project of Reggio preschools, the "Dialogue with the…

Over one million students who enter ninth grade each year fail to graduate with their peers four years later because they drop out of school. Seven thousand students drop out of school every day, and each year roughly 1.2 million students fail to graduate from high school. More than half of these students are from minority groups. Afterschool …

This dissertation is a qualitative case study of the factors of collaboration between faculty and community partners in sustained community-university engagement partnerships at a public research university in the Midwest. Based on secondary data from an annual, online, mixed-method survey of faculty-reported engagement activity, parallel yet…

Switching rural primary students on to local science was a project centred on a cluster of seven Tasmanian primary schools over a full school year. The project had as its aims a mix of professional development outcomes for participant teachers and an enhancement of science experiences for their students. In order to achieve these aims programs…

Wicked problems are multifactorial in nature and possess no clear resolution due to numerous community stakeholder involvement. We demonstrate childhood lead poisoning as a wicked problem and illustrate how understanding a community's ecology can build community capacity to affect local environmental management by (1) forming an academic-community…