Power and participation in and through service learning

Negotiating service learning through community engagement: Adaptive leadership, knowledge, dialogue and power

“…The dialogic process of engagement for community development is an ongoing one of collaboration (Schmied, Mills, Kruske, Kemp, Fowler & Homer 2010), where competing aims are often re-visited and where communication takes time and effort. However, the multi-layered nature of engagement often poses communication challenges and tensions of power relations whereby one layer of the community may have been consulted, but that consultation does not necessarily filter down to other layers (Osman & Attwood 2007;Preece 2013a).…”

“…Other writers have also drawn on Foucault, particularly in relation to service learning. Osman & Attwood (2007), for instance, analyse a service learning project in South Africa in order to critically assess the fluid nature of power relations between the different community and university participants. Lounsbury and Pollack (2001) draw on Foucault to assess the shifting discourses of service learning in an American university.…”

“…However, in two of the case studies, grass-roots community members -as employees or client groups of the NGO -were also involved. Reflexivity (Osman and Attwood 2007) through action research was the process that examined power relations and the effectiveness of the dialogic processes.…”

“…In this study, subjugated knowledges refer to knowledge that is vested in communities. Power and knowledge are associated with authority to know, and circulated through agents of power (university academics, students, community members) (Preece 1999;Osman & Attwood 2007). An act to disrupt the flow and balance of power can be initiated through enhanced awareness by the participants.…”

“…A further concern is that the community voice is less often heard within research analysis (Alperstein 2007;Nduna 2007), and the community-university power relationship is insufficiently analysed in relation to CE (Camacho 2004;Nduna 2006;Osman & Attwood 2007;Parker, Myers, Higgins, Oddson, Price & Gould 2009). More recently Preece (2013) has presented the notion of 'adaptive engagement', which draws on community development theory and organisation management theory as a conceptual framework to facilitate analysis of power dynamics between students and their communities.…”