Toward Community, Connectedness, and Care

Abstract

Alexander’s quote (1977) speaks to the need for attention to connectivity and integration in designing space. This notion of connectedness suggests that no space is a vacuum; rather, it is an extension of the spaces that lead up to it, and that space embodies the experiences of those within it. The last chapter addressed the theoretical frameworks of critical pedagogy and multicultural education in cultivating a sense of place for first-generation (FG) students. This chapter considers redesigning the classroom and draws on learning-community structures and core practices as a means of operationalizing the tenets of these theoretical frameworks. Learning-community design is explored as a means of cultivating a space and place for FG students. The terms space and place refer to how students’ locations or places in the world (Bruch, Jehangir, Lundell, Higbee, & Miskch, 2005) are impacted by their history, demographics, primary language, and their relative proximity to power. In this chapter, I share some history about learning communities and highlight key structures that impact learning-community design. I address research findings that focus on the impact of learning communities on the college experiences of FG students and end with a discussion of learning-community design as a vehicle for the praxis of critical pedagogy and multicultural education.

A good design cannot be piecemeal; multiple patterns of the design of a room must connect to the house, the garden, the neighborhood, the town. This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the work around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole.

—Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, and Construction