Community

Student Practicums as Community Engagement: Linking Knowledge with Application Beyond the Classroom

cdtlsd Lighting Talks , , , , ,

Kevin S. Y. Tan
Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Centre (CTPCLC)

*kevintan@nus.edu.sg

 

Tan, K. S. Y. (2023). Student practicums as community engagement: Linking knowledge with application beyond the classroom [Lightning talk]. In Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, 7 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/student-practicums-as-community-engagement-linking-knowledge-with-application-beyond-the-classroom/

 

SUB-THEME

Communities and Education

 

KEYWORDS

Community, practicum, experiential, interpersonal, reflexivity

 

CATEGORY

Lightning Talks

 

ABSTRACT

The teaching of community development is best informed by adopting an interdisciplinary approach in the classroom, due to the multi-layered and complex nature of all societies and the cultures that exist within them. Therefore, in order to prepare students to be competent community developers or even potential community leaders, it is important that their learning is not restricted to didactic and insulated social environments that are removed from interactions with persons beyond the confines of a university’s ‘safe spaces’. This is because the practice of community development often requires one to employ effective interpersonal skills and acquire a reflexive awareness of the lived experiences of persons from diverse social environments. One useful approach is by recognising the parallels between community engagement and the practice of ethnography, a qualitative research method often employed by anthropologists. This is because ethnographic work necessitates a real-world contextualisation of any community that is being studied.

 

When framed as a teaching and learning tool, ethnography can be an effective facilitator of linking knowledge and application, similar to Baker’s (2019, pp. 105-119) insights on how “interactional ethnography” enabled teachers to rethink and expand repertoires for interpreting and teaching literature by examining classroom discourses. Additional examples include the use of reflexive ethnographic writing for the uncovering of hidden issues within childcare settings (Blaisdell, 2015, pp. 83-91); the pragmatic application of “focused ethnography” (Kelly, 2022) among non-profit organisations to explain specific phenomenon; and the employment of “ethnographic sensibility” (Vanhala et al., 2022, 180-193) for uncovering the various dimensions of climate change governance research.

 

In a Singaporean context, student practicums run by the Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Centre (CTPCLC) share similar potential in the use of ethnographic approaches to community-based research. Consequently, this Lightning Talk will highlight the importance and relevance of such student practicums by discussing brief cases of how they provided a form of experiential and reflexive learning that simply cannot be replaced by classroom settings

 

REFERENCES

Baker, W. D. (2019). Transforming classroom discourse as a resource for learning: Adapting interactional ethnography for teaching and learning. In E. Manalo (Ed), Deeper Learning, Dialogic Learning, and Critical Thinking: Research-based Strategies for the Classroom (pp. 105-180). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429323058-7

Blaisdell, C. (2015) Putting reflexivity into practice: experiences from ethnographic fieldwork. Ethics and Social Welfare, 9(1), 83-91. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2015.994977

Kelly, L. M. (2022). Focused ethnography for research on community development non-profit organisations. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 23(2). https://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-22.2.3811

Vanhala, L., Johansson, A., & Butler, A. (2022). Deploying an ethnographic sensibility to understand climate change governance: Hanging out, around, in, and back. Global Environmental Politics, 22(2), 180-93. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00652

 

Constructions Of Community and Diversity in College Applicants’ Admissions Essays

NUS CDTL Paper Presentations , , , , ,

Sixian HAH
Tembusu College
sxhah@nus.edu.sg  

 

Hah, S. (2023). Constructions of community and diversity in college applicants’ admissions essays [Paper presentation]. In Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, 7 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/constructions-of-community-and-diversity-in-college-applicants-admissions-essays/

 

SUB-THEME

Communities and Education 

 

KEYWORDS

Community, diversity, admissions essays, cultural capital, narratives 

 

CATEGORY

Paper Presentation 

 

ABSTRACT

This paper presentation discusses how the notions of ‘community’ and ‘diversity’ are constructed by applicants in their admission essays to residential colleges at NUS. Given that admission essays serve as an avenue for prospective students to demonstrate their suitability for the college they are applying to, most essays reflect applicants’ perceptions of the college. In a textual analysis of 60 admissions essays from successful applicants, a discourse analytic approach is taken to show how these students make attempts to display membership into a perceived community which they aspire to be part of. This study began by asking the question: How do students construct themselves as potential members of a community in which they aspire to join?

   

Scholars have argued that admissions essay prompts may not be as easily interpreted as thought and that such essays may favour students who have a better grasp of the unspoken rules of the academic game or who are more well-versed in “academic acculturation” (Warren, 2013). In other words, successful essays often come from students who have a greater degree of awareness of what assessors are looking for in their applications. 

 

In positioning themselves as potential members of a community which they aspire to join, students engage with institutional expectations and discourses of what are perceived as valued by a particular community (Todorova, 2018). It was found that students in this study perceived diversity as a valued mindset which they aspire towards, or as a valued attribute of the community which they desire to join and contribute to. Thus, the study also asks the questions: How do students express their desire for diversity or embody the ‘diversity’ that they claim to bring to the college? How are the notions of ‘diversity’ and ‘community’ understood and constructed by students in the essays? Another intriguing finding stemmed from the kinds of narratives that applicants chose to construct in their attempts to express their desire for seeking diversity in their college of choice. Through their positioning, students are seen to display certain knowledge or even cultural capital which has been shown to privilege certain groups of students over others. This builds on Bourdieu’s notions of cultural capital  and other studies which have shown that social class and cultural capital can impact on students’ success in attaining admissions into college (Stevens, 2009), or achieving other academic outcomes such as engagement with authority figures in academia (Jack, 2016). 

 

This paper presentation invites educators to reflect on the following implications arising from the study:  

  • How does the task of writing an application essay privilege students with certain levels of academic acculturation? 
  • What implications are there for the kinds of knowledge and cultural capital that are reinforced in new cohorts of entering students? How may this enact certain barriers for students who did not get selected?  

 

The application essay formed only one part of the admissions process at the residential colleges. Successful application essays are selected to enter the second round of selections, i.e. an interview with Fellows at the college. Hence, the essay is not the only determining factor in an applicant’s successful entry into the college. Rather, it posed the first gatekeeping barrier that students need to overcome to get an opportunity for an interview. The essays analysed in this study had come only from students who had given consent. Thus, there are limitations on the sample of essays that could be studied and to an indeterminable degree, limitations in investigating how the data may be affected by certain propensities in students who are more likely to have given consent. Future studies could possibly investigate implicit evaluation criteria by comparing successful applications with unsuccessful ones. 

 

REFERENCES

Jack, A. A. (2016). (No) harm in asking: Class, acquired cultural capital, and academic engagement at an elite university. Sociology of Education, 89(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040715614913  

Stevens, M. L. (2009). A school in a garden. In Creating a Class (pp. 5-30). Harvard University Press.  

Todorova, R. (2018). Institutional expectations and students’ responses to the college application essay. Social Sciences, 7(10), 205. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7100205  

Warren, J. (2013). The rhetoric of college application essays: Removing obstacles for low income and minority students. American Secondary Education, 42(1), 43-56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43694176 

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