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