Collaborative Service-Learning: Understanding the Partnership Approach to Community Educational Change with Dr. Rand Quinn

Posted by on April 02, 2014

Dr. Rand Quinn came to University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education from the UC Berkley Graduate School of Education where he was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow. Since his appointment in 2012, he has quickly jumped into the Philadelphia educational landscape. Most recently, Dr. Quinn has combined his interests in community organizing and public education policy to teach an Academically Based Service Learning (ABCS) course for undergrads and graduate students. This course, entitled “Reforming Philadelphia Schools: A Research Practicum on Community Engagement,” places teams of students either in schools or with community-based political coalitions to develop actionable research that addresses unique education policy issues.

Each community partner has particular site-specific goals they would like to accomplish and broader educational reform strategies they are addressing.  The teams are then tasked with developing a “problem-solving effort” and a research focus with their school or organization in response to these goals. At the end of the semester students will present their research to their host program communities. These events will look different at each site and will be open to the public and attended by their respective organizations.

The night I visited Dr. Quinn’s class, students were analyzing their project proposals using a framework presented by Dr. Harris Sokoloff, “Thinking and Rethinking Community Engagement,” that supports school districts nationwide in improving school and community relations through the Center for School Study Councils. The projects partnered with Dr. Quinn’s course support both individual schools and city-wide coalitions. Dr. Sokoloff asked the class to pose their most imminent challenge in progressing on their project. The issues brought up by students centered on relationship building with their community partner and balancing the desired outcomes of the organization with their research objectives. Students also questioned the social and political situations their community partners are in. A student questioned the validity of interviewing teachers under their current working conditions, “how do you work with a group that is repressing their engagement due to fear?”

Dr. Sokoloff utilized Heifetz and Sindor’s Types of Situations, shown below, to aid students in understanding these competing priorities using the metaphor of patient and doctor.  He explained that many times a community partner may want a “Type I” solution but that many of the problems they would like help with are actually “Type II” or “Type III” situations. These require as much or more work from the community partner as from the student team.

For example, the principal of a high school site wishes to use this project to improve parent engagement. The Principal would like for the Penn team to diagnose the factors behind this issue and present potential solutions. However, the project team believes they need to explore “engagement” more broadly across all constituencies in the school before determining the specific challenges with parent engagement. Though this broad research may be helpful in gaining a full understanding of the situation, it may not meet the direct desire or need of the Principal. The outcomes of this project will be multifaceted but are not yet fully known. Ultimately, this is not a “type 1” problem and will most likely require a broad, “type III” solution.

Rand Quinn Q&A

After this visit, I am excited to see the conclusions and implications for each of these unique research partnerships. This course provides a model for combining service-learning and participatory research. I asked Dr. Quinn about his thoughts on this first semester and his vision for the course moving forward.

Q: What is the student composition of your class?

A: I have a majority of students who are in the Masters Education Policy and Teaching, Learning, & Leadership program at GSE. Most have a few years of teaching experience or other direct service backgrounds. There are also several undergraduate students, one Wharton student and one Social Policy and Practice (SP2) student. The goal is to have a variety of perspectives and backgrounds in the class. Interestingly, most are not coming with a background in community organizing.

Q: How is the design of the course affecting the outcomes of each project?

A: Overall, students are experiencing about the level of challenge I was expecting. This is the first semester of this course so I conveyed to them that this was a learning semester and that we weren’t certain about how things might turn out.

When designing this course, I could have created defined, discreet projects with our school partners that would provide a more concrete sense of accomplishment. Instead, I found school communities that were working on a particular challenge or goal and encouraged students to help push those efforts forward.

The benefit to this approach is that the process is more authentic. For example, one of our groups is learning that the coalition they have been working with in Southwest may be shifting their focus to North Philly due to various constraints and opportunities. My students have had to be extremely flexible especially when working with school leaders and coalitions. What students thought was a “plan of action” and a timeline in January is rapidly shifting. What we thought even a month ago is changing. Each group has to manage this reality and gain a deeper understanding of the challenges of community based research.

Q: How did they develop their research and project goals?

A: Students defined a problem solving effort and a research focus using the framework develop in Democracy as Problem Solving (De Souza Briggs, 2008)

Site	Problem-solving effort	Research focus
Sayre	College/career pathways	Parental engagement
POWER	School financing	Faith-based engagement
PCAPS	Community schools	Labor/community engagement
Carver	Environmental Sustainability	Student engagement
Southwark	Out-of-school enrichment	Community/parent engagement

For example, at Carver High School for Engineering and Science, the problem solving effort is how to incorporate environmental sustainability into all aspects of the school. There is interest among students and teachers to do this. The research question centers on the outcomes of engaging the school in a whole community project. Could engagement in environmental sustainability work help unify Carver students and provide deeper community connections?

Beyond this research question, transforming the school leadership’s understanding of youth engagement in to youth empowerment would be the ideal outcome from this project.

Q: What are the ideal learning outcomes for your students?

A:  There are several components which will continue to push students in this course. First, completing these projects as a team helps students to truly understand how to complete an interdisciplinary research effort. Second, students have to work through how to be a useful source of support for their partner organization. There is always a disconnect between what students want to get out of a class and what’s possible in the field. It is easy to lose sight of what is actually happening in the school. The course is crafted and clear on paper; what’s happening out in the world it’s not that easy.