Community-based Teaching and Learning: Changing Roles for Faculty, Students, and Community

Abstract ─ Much of the reform in higher education is focused on the teaching and learning process with the goal of improving student outcomes. Specifically, the transformation is moving the higher educa-tion paradigm from a teaching focus to a learning focus. With this paradigm shift emerge new peda-gogical approaches and changing roles for faculty and students. This article describes some possibili-ties for those roles by looking closely at three university classrooms in which service learning pedagogy was implemented. Service learning is an approach aimed at both curricular relevance and students’ learning outcomes by connecting academic content with community service. Service learning has the potential to go beyond the transmission of knowledge to transformation and extension of it as well (Boyer 1990). Service learning conceptualizes the community setting as a site for possible generation of knowledge by tapping “the kinds of knowing already embedded in competent practice ” (Schon 1995). Thus, within service learning experiences, community members often become co-teachers with univer-sity faculty. As a result of their community learning experiences, students begin to take on instructional roles. To provide an in-depth look at service learning classes, observers collected data about three university classes using narrative recordings, interaction tallies, use of time records, and continuums of teaching and learning. Data is reported in the form of faculty profiles and vignettes of classrooms. The profiles and vignettes capture examples of both traditional and changing roles of faculty, students, and community members. They demonstrate the potential for an exchange of roles among faculty, students and community representatives, as well as an expansion of the learning process