Published In

Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2006

Subjects

College-school cooperation -- United States, Educational leadership -- United States

Abstract

The nature of engagement between American campuses and communities is contested. This article is an invitation to reconsider why community-campus partnerships often look so different and have diverse and sometimes negative outcomes. Using a cultural theory approach (Thompson, Ellis, & Wildavsky, 1990) to elucidate the four main cultural frames that inform human behavior--hierarchist, individualistic, fatalistic, and egalitarian--this treatment maps these frames onto the broad terrain of community-campus partnerships. This exploration enables service-learning and other partnership building practitioners to more clearly recognize and understand the preconceptions that influence partners' approaches. Because service-learning rhetoric is heavily biased toward egalitarian (reciprocal, mutual) relationship building, it does not necessarily ensure that all entities on and off campus understand or accept this approach. This application suggests several areas for future research as service-learning practitioners "unlearn a belief system" and work to build a new system in its place.

Description

This is the publisher's final PDF. Originally published in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning and can be found online at: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3239521.0012.201

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/16672

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