University responsibility in tackling service-learning

UTS Shopfront is Australia’s longest running service-learning program. Established in 1996 UTS Shopfront has worked with over 1200 organisations to deliver over 1600 community led projects.

Using a critical pedagogical approach, the program seeks to equip students with the knowledge and skills to work collaboratively with community organisations to tackle specific challenges by highlighting the structural barriers that contribute to these challenges.

As service-learning, community engaged learning and work integrated learning all experience a resurgence in universities across the globe, it is important to consider these experiences as more than just a chance for students to gain real world experience. They are also an important teaching moment in helping students to see the structural barriers communities face in navigating ongoing challenges such as racism, sexism and homophobia.

As UTS Shopfront encourages students to engage with communities, we simultaneously recognise the responsibility we have in ensuring students have a mindset that enables collaboration and learning.

This session will explore the integration of online learning modules into course content to prepare students for community engagement projects. It will focus on the concept of cultural humility and how this mindset of curiosity and respect can assist students in working with communities they themselves do not belong to.

In positioning this learning as an essential component of community engaged teaching and learning, universities ensure that they remain critical and responsible partners, committed to fostering reciprocal relationships within our local ecosystems.

Presenters 

Cale Bain

Cale Bain is a learning facilitator with the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion at UTS, working with subjects and extra curricular student volunteer programs to build an understanding of best practices in working with community.

Dr Elaine Laforteza

Dr Elaine Laforteza has a PhD in Cultural Studies. She is the Equity and Diversity Project Officer (Cultural Diversity) at the UTS Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion. She has held academic positions at Macquarie University, Charles Sturt University, and most recently in the School of Communication and Transdisciplinary Innovation at UTS. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals and community media, and her book ‘The Somatechnics of Whiteness and Race’ is available through Routledge. Elaine hosts SBS’s award-winning podcast, ‘My Bilingual Family’, and is also an emerging playwright, producing plays for various festivals in Sydney.

This session is run as part of the Carnegie Community Engagement Network offerings.  
*Please note that this session is free and will be recorded.

Contact us:

If you have any questions about the session or the Carnegie Community Engagement Network, please contact carnegie@engagementaustralia.org.au