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Common Good Professionals and Citizenship Capabilities: Community Engagement and Service-Learning Approaches

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Human Development and Community Engagement through Service-Learning

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Abstract

Universities contribute to developing common good–oriented professionals and citizenship capabilities. This chapter uses the voices of lecturers, students and community members to understand the kind of professional and citizenship capabilities that are cultivated in and through community engagement and service-learning. Students’ informed vision, awareness of social and collective struggle, reflectivity and recognition of power and privilege are the common good professional capabilities valued by participants. Narrative imagination, critical thinking and local citizenship are three dominant students’ citizenship capabilities appreciated by participants. However, issues of power and privilege that are inherent in community engagement and service-learning influence the cultivation of these capabilities and the meanings attached to them. This is coupled with the dilemma of students attempting to balance between thinking about and acting towards the common good versus instrumental values of doing community engagement and service-learning. Further, the chapter indicates that lecturers are central to creating community engagement– and service-learning–enabling environments where students’ attitudes, thinking and actions are in the direction of promoting the common good.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The strengths perspective demands a different way of looking at individuals, families and communities. All must be seen in the light of their capacities, visions, values and hopes, however dashed and distorted these may have become through circumstance, oppression and trauma (Saleebey 1996).

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  1. University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

    Ntimi Nikusuma Mtawa

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  1. Ntimi Nikusuma Mtawa
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Mtawa, N.N. (2019). Common Good Professionals and Citizenship Capabilities: Community Engagement and Service-Learning Approaches. In: Human Development and Community Engagement through Service-Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34728-4_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34728-4_6

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34727-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34728-4

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