Bio-Note:
Andrew Furco is Associate Vice President for Public Engagement at the University of Minnesota, where he also serves as Professor of Education. His scholarly work focuses on examining the role of community engagement and service-learning in primary, secondary, and higher education systems in the U.S. and abroad. From 1994-2007, he worked at the University of California-Berkeley as the founding director of the Service-Learning Research and Development Center and as a faculty member in the Graduate School of Education. His publications include several books and more 80 journal articles and book chapters that explore the study and practice of community engagement in educational systems. He is the past co-editor of the International Journal for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, and currently serves as the associate editor for research for the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement. He has received various national and international acknowledgements for his work, including the 2003 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Service-Learning Research (presented by the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement), the Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Civic Engagement (presented by Campus Compact), and the National Society for Experiential Education’s Researcher of the Year Award (2006) and the John Duley Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to the Study and Practice of Experiential Education (2021). In 2015, he was inducted into the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship.
Abstract:
Expanding Students’ Minds, Talents, and Awareness through Community-Based Learning Pedagogies: Implications for Educational Reform and Teacher Training
Across the globe, there is a current movement to embed more community-based learning experiences into the curriculum through pedagogies such as service-learning, social entrepreneurship, and community-based project-based learning. These pedagogies are challenging students to think and create in new ways by offering them authentic case studies to analyze and problem solve. Through these efforts, students are expanding their ways of knowing, their views toward the value and relevance of the academic curriculum, and their attitudes toward diverse communities and those who reside within them. This lecture explores the current development of community-based learning in educational systems, the state of the research on its effectiveness for student development, and the implications of this growing movement on teacher professional development, teacher practice, and educational reform.