Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

Module Aims
To support students in developing critical understanding of the theories, practices, and politics of community engaged learning, by noting that this can be practised on a continuum of volunteering (a service), advocacy (fundraising or raising awareness), and organizing for social change, in a range of social and environmental justice contexts, and multiple geographical scales.
To gain familiarity with the ethics, public values leadership, and governance of different models of community development and community organising.
To develop students’ skills in developing, designing, delivering, and reporting on a mutually agreed scope of collaborative research and organising activities.
To give students an opportunity to develop graduate employability skills and gain an insight into Geography-related graduate careers with consideration of the non-profit voluntary sector, focussing on community organising and engagement.
To enable students to explore and reflect upon their personal development (self-awareness, and social awareness), using both structured and open evaluation methods to reflect on their learning journey.
To experience student-led, community-led, action-research, and participatory models of learning first-hand, negotiating the terms of engagement with external partner organisations and peers to ensure that the process and outcomes are mutually beneficial.
To develop key skills and capabilities of cooperation, team-working, effective communication, and personal social responsibility.

Outline Of Syllabus

This module replaces Geo2138/3143. It is broadly similar, but expectations previously referenced as ‘volunteering’ ‘placements’ have been removed because it is not sustainable to burden external non-profit partners with the associated workload without adequate resources and support.
This is a ‘community engaged learning’ module that employs critical pedagogy and experiential learning strategies to introduce student to wide-ranging theoretical and first-hand accounts of ‘third’ sector activities and approaches, across multiple geographic scales of place-based civic engagement. Discussion-based workshops explore asymmetric relationships of power and purpose to suggest that ‘organising for change’ can offer mutual benefits to students, universities, and a broad alliance of place-based civic partners. Learning is explicitly conceived as a theory and method of social change so that students feel empowered to advance activist goals. The module engages students directly in theory and methods of Broad-Based Community Organizing (BBCO) drawing on leadership training originally associated with US Civil Rights and the work of Saul Alinsky and subsequently adopted by Citizens UK as a way for ‘people working together to get things done’. Community organizing can tackle a wider variety of issues such as housing, public health, poverty, discrimination, and many others, but in partnership with Tyne and Wear Citizens and following extensive ‘listening campaigns’ in recent years student-led projects typically focus on the climate emergency (‘green, fair, healthy’ local action for change), fighting discrimination for a safer city, and improving mental health services for young people. Students will gain direct experience of community organising via training, field visits, and participatory action research from 31 member organisations of Tyne and Wear Citizens (including Newcastle University and NUSU).

The syllabus is organized around 3 elements and ways of learning.
1.       10 x 2-hour workshops comprising a combination of taught content (theory) and interactive, collaborative learning (practice).
2.       5 x 3-hour timetabled external activity sessions (time allocated for local travel), for training and listening campaigns with local voluntary and community sector members of community organising alliance Tyne and Wear Citizens. Applying theory from workshops to practice as a strategy of ‘learning by doing’ place-based civic engagement and action research.
3.       embedded graduate skills reflection and evaluation strategies that involve keeping a regular diary, contributing feedback to class, and preparing strength-based personal and professional development narrative scenarios (as if for a job interview).

This course aims to give students an opportunity to develop critical understanding of the theories, practices and politics of community organising and voluntary and community sector services, advocacy, and activism. The total number of hours of external engagement is flexible but estimated in the range of 3-5 per teaching week (including timetabled visits with member organisations of Tyne and Wear Citizens) – up to 70 hours max. Direct action might take a blended format of desk-based action research via online collaboration with external non-profit partners alongside participation in large-scale public events.
Community engaged learning combines experience of group-work and the ethics and governance of external engagement with opportunities to reflect independently on first-hand experience of collaboration. The module provides students with the opportunity to develop key transferable skills that are immediately relevant to a geography graduate career.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:
Demonstrate critical understanding of the theories, practices and politics of community-based research practice and community organizing
Have a clear awareness of the processes of knowledge production, and the impacts of knowledge that characterise community organising and mainstream geographical research
Demonstrate critical understanding and ability to reflect on the relationship between people working as/with volunteers and with community organisations in partnerships
Have a sound knowledge and understanding of how skills and knowledge developed during their academic study can translate into civil society and the workplace
Be able to assess the skills they have developed during the placement

Intended Skill Outcomes

On successful completion of the module, students will have developed:
The ability to use reflective learning to identify new skills; self-awareness (strength-based reflective reporting style used in interviews); CONFIDENCE!
The ability to work collaboratively: effective communication, team working, relationship building, leadership and negotiation.
Habits of active learning: pursuing personal interests and occupational awareness
Social responsibility: ethical awareness and social, cultural, and global awareness
Future focus: planning and organising, goal setting and action planning
Engagement strategies that show initiative, independence - ‘deeds not words’
Strategies linked to being resilient through adaptability and problem-solving
Academic knowledge and understanding
Decision making and independence
Practical/professional skills, personal enterprise, innovation, and creative initiative
The ability to use existing and new knowledge to work effectively within a civil society/work situation
The ability to synthesise their degree and work placement environments and to identify the interconnections between the two
The ability to collect, analyse, critically evaluate, and present appropriately, evidence relating to the competence of their skills development and performance

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The teaching methods relate to the different aspects of this module. The workshops will explore key concepts and theory about the voluntary and community sector, combining taught content with interactive learning that is intended to actively cultivate a ‘community of practice’. Critical pedagogy strategies emphasize expectations of collaboration and partnership working. The supervised practical sessions allow staff and/or external partner engagement off-campus, allowing time for all students to travel to local sites of community organising. These sessions involve direct contact with a member of staff and/or external partner and peers. In addition, there are timetabled opportunities for students to meet with the module leader individually or in groups to report on and solve issues relating to their community-based learning and to support their assessment and action research.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The two assessment submissions for this module provide the opportunity for students to demonstrate both their understanding of community organising methods and how they are learning and gaining skills, including self-awareness, from direct experience of community organising and engaged learning ‘in practice’. The Diary of Community Engagement (with skills portfolio) (40%) combines summative assessment of key skills and theory (to check learning from workshops) with a diary (annotated calendar) of external activities. The aim is to reward active participation and the practical skills and commitment (‘effort’) that can get lost in an essay. It is important that ‘soft skills’ are considered in real-world rather than essay-based contexts to ensure that this module remains accessible to non-traditional and diverse learning. The diary is an effective way to do this.
The course essay (60%) assesses the ability of the student to make connections between their first-hand experience of community organising and debates and research foci within academic geography. The essay is assessed via two discrete components. The part 1 essay will report findings and insights from applying methods and training in community organising to place-based direct action, leadership, and social change. The part 2 essay provides the opportunity for students to demonstrate self-awareness and social responsibility through reflective writing (drawing on diary/autoethnography extracts) and accumulated graduate skills that can be articulated via problem solving and personal strengths – along the lines of ‘real life’ interview situations.

Each assessment is 2000-words in length. The same tariff is justified for a 40% reflective log, and a 60% essay by the contrasting nature of the content and skills to be demonstrated. The reflective log requires a generous word count to fully describe and reflect on external engagement in a variety of activities, including scope for diary extracts. The essay will be more sharply focussed and tightly written.

General Notes

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