Review: Scholarship for Sustaining Service Learning and Civic Engagement

Sustaining community-based partnerships is essential to promoting the scholarship of engagement along the K-20 continuum. That’s the basic premise for the eighth edition in the Advances in Service-Learning Research series edited by Melody Bowden, Shelley Billig, and Barbara Holland. This latest volume includes peer-reviewed articles competitively selected from presentations given at 7th International Research Conference on Service-Learning and Community Engagement held in Tampa, Florida during October 2007

An Adventure in Learning about Communication in Partnerships

This article details 7 Tips for Partnership Communication that help, not hurt relationships. Communiation resources and scholarshp are highlighted throughout the article. An overview of the author's Collaborative Communication Framework which can be used to guide community-campus partners throughout their work together is also shared

Book Review

The submitted document offers a detailed book review for  International Service Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Research. Robert Bringle, Julie Hatcher and Steven Jones (Editors.) Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing. 2011.

Building Civic Capacity for College Students: Flexible Thinking and Communicating as Puppeteers, Community Partners, and Citizen-Leaders

College students face a complex world filled with pervasive social problems that require strong knowledge bases, critical thinking abilities, and sustained engagement in civic life. This article details key pedagogical practices for our innovative health puppetry program, in which undergraduate honors students use puppets to share information about healthy eating, diabetes prevention, and active lifestyles with children and their families in community settings. We articulate a notion of “flexible thinking” as the ability to take on and perform new roles within the public/civic arena by seeing complex social problems from multiple perspectives and responding with creative solutions and engaged action. We look to the written reflections of our student puppeteers to share, in their own words, multiple ways their thinking and communication changed as they grew as puppeteers, community partners, and citizen-leaders. We also offer insights about promoting flexible thinking through in-depth service-learning

Building Civic Capacity for College Students: Flexible Thinking and Communicating as Puppeteers, Community Partners, and Citizen-Leaders

College students face a complex world filled with pervasive social problems that require strong knowledge bases, critical thinking abilities, and sustained engagement in civic life. This article details key pedagogical practices for our innovative health puppetry program, in which undergraduate honors students use puppets to share information about healthy eating, diabetes prevention, and active lifestyles with children and their families in community settings. We articulate a notion of “flexible thinking� as the ability to take on and perform new roles within the public/civic arena by seeing complex social problems from multiple perspectives and responding with creative solutions and engaged action. We look to the written reflections of our student puppeteers to share, in their own words, multiple ways their thinking and communication changed as they grew as puppeteers, community partners, and citizen-leaders. We also offer insights about promoting flexible thinking through in-depth service-learning

Core Competencies in Civic Engagement

A review and synthesis of key competencies contained in national-level reports on Civic Engagement, academic programs engaged in community-based models of teaching, learning and research, including a review of the literature and almost 30 academic civic engagement programs around the country

May Measurement Month 2018: a pragmatic global screening campaign to raise awareness of blood pressure by the International Society of Hypertension

Aims Raised blood pressure (BP) is the biggest contributor to mortality and disease burden worldwide and fewer than half of those with hypertension are aware of it. May Measurement Month (MMM) is a global campaign set up in 2017, to raise awareness of high BP and as a pragmatic solution to a lack of formal screening worldwide. The 2018 campaign was expanded, aiming to include more participants and countries. Methods and results Eighty-nine countries participated in MMM 2018. Volunteers (≥18 years) were recruited through opportunistic sampling at a variety of screening sites. Each participant had three BP measurements and completed a questionnaire on demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Hypertension was defined as a systolic BP ≥140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥90 mmHg, or taking antihypertensive medication. In total, 74.9% of screenees provided three BP readings. Multiple imputation using chained equations was used to impute missing readings. 1 504 963 individuals (mean age 45.3 years; 52.4% female) were screened. After multiple imputation, 502 079 (33.4%) individuals had hypertension, of whom 59.5% were aware of their diagnosis and 55.3% were taking antihypertensive medication. Of those on medication, 60.0% were controlled and of all hypertensives, 33.2% were controlled. We detected 224 285 individuals with untreated hypertension and 111 214 individuals with inadequately treated (systolic BP ≥ 140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥ 90 mmHg) hypertension. Conclusion May Measurement Month expanded significantly compared with 2017, including more participants in more countries. The campaign identified over 335 000 adults with untreated or inadequately treated hypertension. In the absence of systematic screening programmes, MMM was effective at raising awareness at least among these individuals at risk

Turning a Disagreement into Collaborative Dialogues

Rationale Partners representing campuses and communities face inherent difference because of their distinct cultures, assumptions, practices and constituencies (Dumlao & Janke, 2012). In addition, people representing varied backgrounds or points of view can readily differ when addressing something the care care. Still, they may find it difficult to carry out needed challenging conversations. Even so, unaddressed differences can harm relationship spelling trouble for the qualities of trust, mutual respect and sharing of resources that are essential to community-based work (Dumlao & Janke, 2012). Bringing previously undiscovered information to light proves to be a vital step in solving problems or, alternately, to dealing with differences that will be an on-going part of the relationship (Baxter and Montgomery, 1996). Holding learning conversations (Stone, Patton, and Heen, 2000) can help partners understand underlying issues and perceptions so they can work better together. Further, building a repertoire of supportive communication practices and establishing nurture norms (Janke, 2009) can create a positive relational climate, a great foundation for future collaborative work. Workshop Goals Review boundary-spanning issues that can create tension in community-campus partnerships. Explore long-term nature of supportive communication and nurture norms and effects on partnerships Share information about proximal and distal influences on conflict in relationships (Cupach & Canary, 2000: Shearman & Dumlao, 2008). Talk briefly about tensions that are on-going in relationships and never fully gone (Dumlao & Janke, 2012; Baxter & Montgomery, 1997). Explain how learning conversations (Stone, Patton, & Heen, 2000) and Principles of Productive Conflict (Dumlao, forthcoming) can build a solid foundation for partnerships. Identify specific ways to deal with reticence and/or fear about engaging fully in challenging conversations. Highlight examples of conflicts addressed successfully and benefits achieved. Encourage participants to offer experiences, suggestions and questions. Offer additional resources for productive dialogues that help, not hurt, the partnership and the partners work together. Participant Engagement Time will be set aside for attendees to work in pairs to address questions like those below. These will be used to generate further discussion. Think of a tension or conflict you\u27ve experienced with a partner and can share with us. What was it like? How as communication handled ahead of time? When the conflict occurred? Was it resolved? What happened to communication later? What thoughts do you have as you think about information presented? What questions or concerns do you have? In sum, the workshop session would offer information about collaborative communication that participants can readily use as they go about their community engagement work

Building Civic Capacity for College Students: Flexible Thinking and Communicating as Puppeteers, Community Partners, and Citizen-Leaders

College students face a complex world filled with pervasive social problems that require strong knowledge bases, critical thinking abilities, and sustained engagement in civic life. This article details key pedagogical practices for our innovative health puppetry program, in which undergraduate honors students use puppets to share information about healthy eating, diabetes prevention, and active lifestyles with children and their families in community settings. We articulate a notion of “flexible thinking” as the ability to take on and perform new roles within the public/civic arena by seeing complex social problems from multiple perspectives and responding with creative solutions and engaged action. We look to the written reflections of our student puppeteers to share, in their own words, multiple ways their thinking and communication changed as they grew as puppeteers, community partners, and citizen-leaders. We also offer insights about promoting flexible thinking through in-depth service-learning