Partnership in Teaching and Learning:
Combining Critical Pedagogy with Civic Engagement and
Diversity
By José Calderón, professor of
sociology and Chicano studies, Pitzer College
Estoy comenzando en Español para traer enfrente
una tema especial: la importancia de desarollar unidad
entre nuestros colegios y la comunidad. Yo comienzo
muchas de mis presentaciones en Español para
demostrar el poder del lenguaje y para enseñar
como algunas de nuestras comunidades han sido excluidas.
Si no entiende el lenguaje de mi comunidad, como puede
entender todo de lo que soy y lo que a sufrido mi comunidad?
Al mismo tiempo, hay la necesidad de entender el lenguaje
de ustedes y de sus comunidades para entender sus historias
y quien son ustedes. Si no podemos hallar el puente
para quitar lo que nos silencia y la ignorancia, no
podemos unirnos en desarrollar un futuro mejor.
I will stop here, before some of you stop reading and
turn the page. I have actually had some students walk
out of my classes when I have used Spanish to demonstrate
the power of language and to show how the simple denial
of language and culture can be used as a form of oppression.
My message, nevertheless, goes beyond language to the
issue of translation. In order to translate each other’s
worlds, we must first understand each other. The connections
between the classroom and community-based learning are
all about translation. In looking for ways to help my
students understand communities outside of themselves
and to become engaged interpreters, I have been transforming
the pedagogy in my classroom, extending the boundaries
of the classroom, and rethinking the methods and purposes
of undergraduate research. In this process, the academic
world and its relation to its neighboring communities
have become more central to the academic life of the
students.
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Dickinson College |
Students in my classes have been transformed as learners
through community-based participatory research and through
the social responsibility ethos promoted at Pitzer College.
In one of my classes on social movements, for example,
students spend the first half of the semester learning
about Cesar Chavez, the history of farm workers dating
back to the early 1900s, and contemporary efforts to
build unions. During their spring break, the students
travel to the headquarters of the United Farm Workers
to carry out service projects, to work alongside the
historic figures they have read about in their books,
and to listen to stories spoken in the workers’
own language. Throughout the semester, students gather
field notes and write final research papers based on
these experiences. Some of these students have used
their research as foundations for community grant proposals,
as presentations at undergraduate conferences and national
associations, and as thesis papers for honors.
In using hands-on research to find creative solutions
to compelling problems, these kinds of experiences help
students develop as participant translators. By making
connections between the academy and the community, my
students and I have been involved in translating silence
into critical consciousness.
The Pomona Day Labor Center
| Connecting Classroom Pedagogies to Community-Based Service Learning |
| In many of our
institutions, there exists a tendency to separate
the content of the curriculum and the practice
of service learning. Yet the two should build
on each other. As a civic scholar with Campus
Compact, I have been part of a project that has
advanced the idea of the classroom as part of
the civic realm. The Civic Scholar program encourages
pedagogies that develop students’ ability
to think critically about traditional documents,
at the same time reframing civic knowledge to
include documents and segments of history that
traditionally have been excluded.
This approach requires students and educators
to analyze historical documents in the context
of the period in which they were written, and
to connect that analysis to the service-learning
pedagogy that we develop alongside community partners.
It combines various methodologies (such as quantitative
and qualitative analysis, action research, and
reflection) and forms of implementation (such
as role-playing, journals, and essays) to reach
its learning outcomes.
Melissa Kesler Gilbert from Otterbein College
provides an excellent example of this kind of
pedagogy with her “history, civics, and
service epistemological profiles” model.
In this model, students create an alternative
version of a historical document after analyzing
the original and conferring with community partners
about their relationship to the document. In this
exercise, students produce new translations of
the documents and develop the situated historical
knowledge that is necessary for understanding
and participating in the civic realm.
The way we civic educators run our classrooms
and the way we connect those classrooms to our
communities can have a transformative impact on
our colleges and universities. Our teaching and
learning practices can complement the research
and action we implement alongside our community
partners. If we are serious about creating a diverse
and engaged democracy, we have to begin where
we have the most influence—with our own
students.
—José Calderón |
In 1997, the city of Pomona passed an ordinance to
impose a $1,000 fine and six months in jail on day laborers
for seeking employment on street corners. Because of
their experiences, my students understood that the academy
and the community of Pomona were not bifurcated but
interrelated, that the worlds of the day laborers and
their worlds as students were not separate but part
of one whole. Subsequently, the students and day laborers
packed city hall to protest the ordinance, carried out
research on how other cities had dealt with the issue,
and applied for and received $50,000 to start the Pomona
Day Labor Center, a nonprofit organization funded through
city and private funds. The students and I have been
partnering with this community-based organization ever
since.
Presently, the students are continuing with their research
and implementing various projects to empower the day
laborers. In addition to holding language and computer
classes every morning, the students have been instrumental
in ensuring worker representation on the organization’s
board (Calderón, Foster, and Rodriguez 2005).
In response to the city council’s decision to
minimally fund the Center in the future, we have utilized
surveys, questionnaires, and focus groups to establish
the amount of resources that the workers have and to
explore how they can be maximized. Our collaborative
research with the workers has resulted in grants from
area foundations that have sponsored the development
of health referrals, immigration rights programs, language
acquisition, computer training, and job-preparation
programs (Calderón and Cadena 2007). The establishment
of weekly leadership training meetings has also resulted
in worker/employer conflict-resolution sessions and
pickets (led by day laborers) to retrieve wages from
employers who have refused to pay.
Overall, the Center partnership represents the new
kind of hybrid organizational/educational/civic space
that is emerging around the edges of some of our college
campuses today. It promises to be a transformative borderland
where new forms of translation can occur that integrate
the academic world with civic purpose, learning with
action, theory with practice, and reciprocal research
with collective social change.
Not Just Service Learning
The formation of the Pomona Day Labor Center is not
an isolated example at Pitzer College; it reflects the
ethos of many programs that have emerged and taken off
in the last few years. This ethos is rooted in the advancement
of intercultural and interdisciplinary understanding
as well as in the ideal of democracy translated as social
responsibility. It is rooted in the idea that, through
campus-community partnering, our students and faculty
can engage in acts of collaboration that go beyond just
charity or one-way service projects. Keith Morton (1995)
characterizes this as going beyond the charity model,
with the provider in control of services, to a model
of social change that builds partnerships of equality
between all the participants, that gets at the root
causes of problems, and that focuses directly or indirectly
on political empowerment.
Further, this ethos is rooted in the concept of “community-based
partnering,” according to which research and action
are carried out not merely for the benefit of academia
but for the benefit of the community-based organization
and its members in both the short and the long term.
It joins the idea of service learning with the long-term
goal of reciprocity. That is, service learning is part
of a larger program meant eventually to empower the
participants, to develop their leadership, and to develop
the foundations that will allow them to function as
active participants in the larger world of policymaking.
The Center for California Cultural and Social
Issues
This kind of community-based partnering is a cornerstone
of the Center for California Cultural and Social Issues
(CCCSI). Created in 1999, CCCSI supports research and
education initiatives that contribute to the understanding
of critical community issues and enhance the resources
of community organizations. As part of its mission to
be a genuine partner in communities rather than to dispense
so-called “expert” solutions to predefined
needs, the Center supports numerous innovative community-based
projects by offering research awards and technical training
to faculty and students at Pitzer College. In addition,
the Center has developed a small number of core partnerships
with community-based organizations that last no fewer
than four years.
The CCCSI also is linked to an external studies program
that is based on participatory learning and on understanding
different cultural perspectives. It is involved in cooperative
projects with local community-based organizations in
Nepal, China, Venezuela, Turkey, Italy, and Zimbabwe.
Some of the students from this program return to use
their newfound language skills through external-internal
programs. The community-based Spanish program, for example,
develops partnerships between students and their Spanish-speaking
host families and the Pitzer in Ontario program (based
in Ontario, California). Students immerse themselves
in a multiethnic community that is undergoing dramatic
demographic transformations. Through classes, fieldwork,
internships, field trips, and participatory action research,
students learn firsthand the processes of everyday life
in suburban communities like Ontario and the effects
of globalization and technological development on them.
Through partnerships with local community-based organizations,
students learn the principles of asset-based development
and gain an awareness of sustainable development practices.
An Equal Relationship
In bringing students and faculty together with community-based
organizations, all of these partnerships use the strengths
of diversity, critical pedagogy, participatory action
research, and service learning to work on common issues
and to create social change. These collaborative efforts
are examples of community-based models that require
faculty and students to immerse themselves alongside
community participants to collectively develop theories
and strategies and to achieve common outcomes.
An essential component of this style of learning and
research is its commitment to promoting an equal relationship
between the interests of the academics and the community
participants. Traditionally, academics have had a tendency
to “parachute” into a community or workplace
for their own research interests without developing
the kind of long-term relationship and collaboration
that it takes to create concrete change. In working
to move beyond traditional research models, participating
students and faculty collaborate in what Kenneth Reardon
(1998) has described as “intentionally promoting
social learning processes that can develop the organizational,
analytical, and communication skills of local leaders
and their community-based organizations.” We have
found that it is essential for faculty members to make
a long-term commitment to the sites and communities
where they have placed their students. Although students
can only commit for a semester or until graduation,
faculty participants are in a better position to sustain
campus-community partnerships.
As these long-term partnerships are developed, students
and faculty become a political force in their communities.
They no longer are placed in the role of travelers passing
by. Instead, they see themselves as participants with
a stake in the decisions being made.
Conclusion
This type of civic engagement takes into consideration
the meaning of community—which, as a whole, is
made up of many competing interests. Those who are corporate
growers, developers, and polluters call themselves part
of the “community,” although their profit-making
interests often place them in conflict with “quality
of life” initiatives. The “communities”
to which I refer are very diverse geographical, political,
and spiritual places. They have different power relations,
backgrounds, ideologies, and levels of stratification.
These communities are facing inequality or are trying
to improve their quality of life. Hence, the research
and learning described above focuses on the sources
of inequalities and on what can be done about them.
While the dominant understanding of inequality tends
to blame the “individual” for his or her
“inadequacies,” other theories and explanations
focus on the historical and systemic foundations of
inequality. The practices I have described in this article
stand with the latter. They challenge students and faculty
to find common grounds of collaboration with community
institutions, unions, organizations, and neighborhood
leaders to invoke social consciousness and long-term
structural change.
REFERENCES
Calderón, J. and G. Cadena. 2007. Linking critical
democratic pedagogy, multiculturalism, and service learning
to a project-based approach. Race, Poverty, and
Social Justice. Calderón (Ed.). Herndon,
VA: Stylus Publishing, 63-80.
Calderón, J., S. Foster, and S. Rodriguez. 2004.
Organizing immigrant workers: Action research and strategies
in the Pomona Day Labor Center. Latino Los Angeles:
Transformations, Communities, and Activism. Enrique
C. Ochoa and Gilda Laura Ochoa (ed.), Arizona State
University Press.
Morton, K. 1995. The irony of service: Charity, project,
and social change in service learning. Michigan
Journal of Community Service Learning 2, 19-32.
Reardon, K. M. 1998. Participatory action research
as service learning. New Directions for Teaching
and Learning 73, 57-64.
Editor’s Note: A version of this article
originally appeared in Peer Review 5:3 (Spring
2003).
