Conceptualisation and experiences of engaged citizenship as critical consciousness, transformative education and mutual joy: An autoethnography
Abstract
In recent years, higher education institutions globally and in South Africa have begun to focus more on the educational potential of community-university engagement. As a result, many institutions of higher learning have been reimagining and debating the terms used to describe the engagement between students, academic staff and their community partners. At Rhodes University in Makhanda, there has been an active change in terminology, with previous “volunteerism” programmes renamed “engaged citizenship” opportunities. This article’s authors are current staff members and previous students at Rhodes University, whose university experiences were shaped by their involvement in the Rhodes University Community Engagement (RUCE) Division. Using an autoethnographic style, they reflect on their experiences as volunteers/engaged citizens. These stories and reflections serve to highlight how the term engaged citizenship better encapsulates the nature of the involvement of students who are actively involved in their communities: where these community engagement spaces provide mutual benefit and mutual joy, deep learning and platforms for individuals to direct their agency to socially just ends. Ultimately, these narratives aim to illustrate the deeply personal ways in which the practice of engaged citizenship has shaped the authors’ own growth and generated the holistic and transformative educational experience for which higher education institutions strive.
References
Ajaps, Sandra Ogechi and Adaobiagu Nnemdi Obiagu. 2021. “Increasing civic engagement through civic education: A Critical Consciousness Theory Perspective.” Journal of Culture and Values in Education 4(1): 64‒87. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.2020.2.
Bellamy, Richard. 2008. Citizenship: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bickford, Donna M. and Nedra Reynolds. 2002. “Activism and service-learning: Reframing volunteerism as acts of dissent.” Pedagogy 2(2): 229‒252. muse.jhu.edu/article/26395.
Billings, Meredith S. and Dawn Geronimo Terkla. 2011. “Using a structural equation model to describe the infusion of civic engagement in the campus culture.” The Journal of General Education 60(2): 84‒100. https://doi.org/10.5325/jgeneeduc.60.2.0084.
Bode, Leticia. 2017. “Feeling the pressure: Attitudes about volunteering and their effect on civic and political behaviors.” Journal of Adolescence 57(1): 23‒30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2017.03.004.
Clark-Taylor, Angela. 2016. Developing critical consciousness and social justice self-efficacy: Lessons from feminist community engagement student narratives. Rochester: University of Rochester.
Creswell, John W. and J. David Creswell. 2017. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. California: SAGE Publications.
Dalton, Russell J. 2008. “Citizenship norms and the expansion of political participation.” Political studies 56(1): 76‒98. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00718.x.
Dempsey, Sarah. 2010. “Critiquing community engagement.” Management Communication Quarterly 24(3): 359‒390. https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318909352247.
Driscoll, Amy. 2008. “Carnegie’s community-engagement classification: Intentions and insights.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 40(1): 38‒41. https://doi.org/10.3200/CHNG.40.1.38-41.
Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. 2011. “Autoethnography: An overview.” Historical social research/Historische sozialforschung 36(4): 273‒290. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23032294.
Freire, Paulo. 2018. Pedagogy of the oppressed. (Originally published in 1982). London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
GADRA Education. 2021. “GADRA Matric School Celebrating Rhodes 2021 Graduation Triumph.” https://gadraeducation.co.za/news/gadra-matric-school-celebrating-rhodes-2021-graduation-triumph/#:~:text=GADRA%20Matric%20School%20achieved%20the,single%20biggest%20producer%20of%20graduates. (Accessed 11 November 2021).
Hall, Edith. 1997. “The sociology of Athenian tragedy.” The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy. Cambridge.
Hall, Martin. 2010. “Community engagement in South African higher education.” Kagisano No. 6. Johannesburg: Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd.
Hendricks, Fred and Peter Vale. 2005. “The critical tradition at Rhodes University: Retrospect and prospect.” African Sociological Review/Revue Africaine de Sociologie 9(1): 1‒13. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i24486002.
Jones, S. H., T. E. Adams, and C. Ellis. 2013. Handbook of Autoethnography. Routledge.
McCann, Claire, Anna Lindiwe Prest Talbot, and Ashley Westaway. 2021. “Social Capital for Social Change: Nine Tenths Mentoring Programme, a Solution for Education (In)Justice in South Africa?” International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation 16(1): 45‒59.
Ministry of Education. 1997. Education White Paper 3, A programme for higher education transformation. Pretoria: Ministry of Education.
Nomsenge, Sinazo Onela. 2018. “Education NGOs in Makhanda, South Africa: A zero sum of philanthropy and survival.” Africanus 48(2): 1‒16. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC-14b649dde9.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2006. “Education and democratic citizenship: Capabilities and quality education.” Journal of Human Development 7(3): 385‒95. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649880600815974.
Paphitis, Sharli, Joana Bezerra, and Craig Paterson. 2021. “Introduction”. In Challenging the ‘Apartheids’ of Knowledge in Higher Education through Social Innovation, ed. J. Bezerra, C. Paterson, and S.Paphitis. 3‒25. Stellenbosch: SUN Press.
Paull, Megan, Rowena Scott, Judith MacCallum, Gabrielle Walker, Maryam Omari, Susan Young, Debbie Haski-Leventhal, and Kirsten Holmes. 2015. “University student volunteering: What’s in a name?” Third Sector Review 21(2): 49‒74. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/INFORMIT.710442058548381.
Regchand, Sharika. 2020. “Is South Africa the ‘protest capital of the world’?” Witness 20 October 2020. https://www.news24.com/witness/news/is-south-africa-the-protest-capital-of-the-world-20201017.
Rhodes University Community Engagement. 2016. “RUCE: Rhodes University Community Engagement”. https://www.facebook.com/RUengagement. (Accessed 12 October 2022).
Rhodes University Community Engagement. 2018. RUCE: Rhodes University Community Engagement. https://www.facebook.com/RUengagement. (Accessed 11 October 2022).
Rhodes University. 2019. “Reviving Grahamstown Schools Vice Chancellor’s 2020 Plan”. Makhanda: Rhodes University.
Rhodes University. 2021a. “Engaged Citizen Programme (ECP)”. https://www.ru.ac.za/ communityengagement/citizenship/engagedcitizenprogrammeecp/. (Accessed 11 November 2021).
Rhodes University. 2021b. “Nine Tenths Mentoring Programme”. https://www.ru.ac.za/ communityengagement/citizenship/vcseducationinitiative/ninetenths910ths/. (Accessed 11 November 2021).
Rhodes University. 2022. The Vice Chancellor’s Education Initiative. https://www.ru.ac.za/ communityengagement/citizenship/vceducationinitiative/vcprojects/. (Accessed 11 October 2022).
Scotland, James. 2012. “Exploring the philosophical underpinnings of research: Relating ontology and epistemology to the methodology and methods of the scientific, interpretive, and critical research paradigms.” English Language Teaching 5(9): 9‒16.
Shuib, Munir and Yew Lie Koo. 2017. The Role of the University with a Focus on University-Community Engagement. Malaysia: Penerbit Universiti Sains.
Sparkes, Andrew C. 2000. “Autoethnography and narratives of self: Reflections on criteria in action.” Sociology of Sport Journal 17(1): 21‒43. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.17.1.21.
Stierer, Barry. 2008. “Learning to write about teaching: Understanding the writing demands of lecturer development programmes in higher education.” In The scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education, ed. Rowena Murray, 34‒45. Berkshire: Open University Press.
Talbot, Anna and Nora Saneka. 2021. “Engaging children as ‘agents of change’: The Grahamstown Scout Group.” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 77(1): a7000. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v77i1.7000.
Tucker, Andrew, Glenn de Swardt, Helen Struthers, and James McIntyre. 2013. “Understanding the needs of township men who have sex with men (MSM) health outreach workers: Exploring the interplay between volunteer training, social capital and critical consciousness.” AIDS and Behavior 17(1): 33‒42. https://DOI 10.1007/s10461-012-0287-x.
University of Louisville. 2022. “Community Engagement Academy.” https://louisville.edu/graduate/ plan/community-engagement-academy. (Accessed 24 October 2022).
Wall, Sarah. 2008. “Easier Said than Done: Writing an Autoethnography.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 1(1): 38–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690800700103.
Watson, David, Robert Hollister, Susan E. Stroud, and Elizabeth Babcock. 2011. The engaged university: International perspectives on civic engagement. London: Routledge.
Westaway, Ashley. 2019. “Partnership and innovation drive 65% increase in township Bachelors.” Grocott’s Mail 15 January 2019. https://www.grocotts.co.za/2019/01/15/partnership-and-innovation-drive-65-increase-in-township-bachelors/.
World Bank. 2021. “South Africa Overview.” https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/southafrica/overview#1. (Accessed 11 November 2021).
Zaff, Jonathan, Michelle Boyd, Yibing Li, Jacqueline V. Lerner, and Richard M. Lerner. 2010. “Active and engaged citizenship: Multi-group and longitudinal factorial analysis of an integrated construct of civic engagement.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 39(7): 736‒750. https://DOI 10.1007/s10964-010-9541-6.
Copyright (c) 2022 Anna Talbot, Claire McCann
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
This journal is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors, copyright holders, may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors' publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal homepage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: This is an electronic version of an article published in SAJHE, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX “XXX", DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/SAJHE) may be found.
Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University Institutional Repository SUNScholar.
Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.
The following license applies:
Attribution CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
