First Advisor

Heather Burns

Term of Graduation

Summer 2023

Date of Publication

8-18-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Educational Leadership: Postsecondary Education

Department

Educational Leadership and Policy

Language

English

Subjects

community-based learning, community-members, complexity, critical, partnership, service learning

DOI

10.15760/etd.3637

Physical Description

1 online resource (xiv, 384 pages)

Abstract

Through a radical relationality within the social-ecological systems that sustain us, critical community-based learning (CBL) in higher education offers a praxis for engaging the demanding pedagogical and community challenges we face. When CBL is implemented as both a critical and sustainability pedagogy, as a strategy for social change, the relationships created by CBL partnerships have the potential to generate transformational outcomes for all partnership agents. Using a critical complexity theoretical framework, a bricolage of complexity science and critical theory, this critical qualitative study sought to understand the systemic patterns and behaviors of a community-based learning partnership by elevating community-member voices. Situated within a CBL partnership engaged with the Capstone Program at Portland State University, this study's methods included dialogical engagement with CBL community-members, university Capstone students, and partnership leaders in reflexive focus groups, and ethnographic participant-observation. The results revealed the primacy and centrality of relationships in the CBL partnership. Further, three emergent outcomes for partnership agents were generated by partnership relationality, including: emergent identity development, ethical agency, and a dynamism of belonging and alienation. These emergent agent outcomes across all stakeholder groups were influenced by four key factors: the dynamism of the partnership system, place as a partnership agent, information sharing, the cultivation of relational awareness. The strategies suggested by this study’s findings attempt to (re)orient the field of community-based learning towards the complexity of our CBL partnerships, encouraging a radical relational paradigm shift in the partnership work happening between universities and their communities.

Rights

© 2023 Amie Riley

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/40820

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