Conference Agenda

This presentation draws on my doctoral dissertation “Embedding Engaged Education: Creating Knowledge Together”, which investigates how Community Service Learning (CSL) can be structurally embedded within higher education institutions to strengthen democracy education and the “Third Mission” of universities (Tijsma et al., 2024). CSL is understood as an educational approach in which students, faculty, and community partners collaboratively address societal issues through applied learning, sustained reflection, and co-creation of knowledge.

The study addresses the central question: how can engaged education be institutionalised within universities to contribute effectively to complex societal challenges? Using a qualitative research design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with students, teachers, and community partners engaged in CSL initiatives at a European university. The data were analysed thematically to identify structural conditions, tensions, and enabling mechanisms for institutionalisation.

Findings reveal a persistent tension between institutional efficiency logics (e.g., scalability, standardisation, and student throughput) and the open-ended, relational nature of engaged education. Faculty often experience CSL as “working against the system,” particularly when institutional structures do not accommodate flexibility, long-term collaboration, and community responsiveness. At the same time, participants emphasise the transformative potential of CSL when community voices are central and sustained engagement is supported.

Two guiding principles for institutionalisation emerged: 1) continuous faculty, community and student involvement and 2) flexibility and continuity of engaged education activities. Building on these principles, the dissertation proposes two institutional approaches: a thematic, cross-programme model clustering courses around societal challenges, and an inter- and transdisciplinary elective master module enabling sustained co-creation with communities across disciplinary boundaries.

These approaches function as “transition initiatives” that connect fragmented courses and actors while bridging individual teaching practices and organisational structures. They offer concrete pathways for embedding democratic and community-engaged education within universities, thereby strengthening institutional capacity for civic responsibility.

This work contributes to ongoing debates on the institutionalisation of service-learning and democracy education by offering empirically grounded and practice-oriented strategies for sustainable integration within higher education systems. This contribution directly addresses the track on Service-learning institutionalization in higher education, focusing on structural conditions, policy mechanisms, and organisational strategies for embedding democracy education and service-learning as a core institutional practice.

Ref:
Tijsma, G. (2024). Embedding Engaged Education: Creating knowledge together. DOI: 10.5463/thesis.640

For the past three years, the University of Toulouse has implemented a “Science with and for Society” policy that promotes the exchange and dialogue of knowledge between researchers from different disciplines and a wide range of non-academic stakeholders (businesses, associations, local governments, the media, schools, cultural institutions, etc.). Various initiatives have been implemented (calls for collaborative research projects, science shops, public policy labs, etc.). These initiatives focus more on the field of research than on education and student life. Civic engagement and service-learning, however, represent significant opportunities. Since studying these activities in the “student life” sector at the University of Toulouse, we have advocated the idea that generating diverse types of societal impact depends heavily on the diversity of non-academic partners with whom students engage, as well as on the variety of collaboration models between these stakeholders.

Whether we’re talking about civic engagement in the form of individual volunteering, community engagement initiatives, involvement in various organizations, or even voter participation, the more we diversify our academic partners, the more we can work toward a wide range of societal impacts. For example, advocating for a sustainable economy and public policies that incorporate the challenges of ecological transitions requires working with businesses as well as government agencies and local authorities. Combating misinformation requires partnerships with various media actors (journalists, influencers on social media).

Beyond diversifying extra-academic partnerships, it is nevertheless important to understand the nature and dynamics of these collaborations. While there is no single “right” type of interaction between engaged students and extra-academic partners, certain types of relationships should be avoided. Between the partner exploiting the student as free labor and the student being unsupervised or even neglected, a wide variety of relationships—not necessarily symmetrical in terms of “co-construction”—prove to be relevant. Indeed, it is often these asymmetries in knowledge that generate learning exchanges for both groups of participants. By observing the dynamics of these collaborative relationships, we identify the relational and cognitive skills and dynamics necessary for collective learning: the ability to bring people together, spark interest, translate, synthesize, formalize, and disseminate the new knowledge that is constructed. It is precisely through the learning-oriented nature of these collaborations that partnerships capable of making a significant impact on society can develop, driven by the students’ civic engagement.

Topic and focus

This contribution investigates the transformative potential of Service-Learning (SL) in higher education by examining how university faculty members experience and narrate the changes it produces — in their teaching practices, professional identity, and institutional context. A particular focus is placed on the organizational and institutional affordances (Gibson, 1979) that enable or hinder the sustainable integration of SL within academic culture.

Link to the conference theme and track

Strengthening democratic culture in higher education requires not only pedagogical innovation but structural conditions capable of sustaining it. This research speaks directly to Track B by addressing the barriers and facilitators of SL institutionalization, the role of institutional recognition for faculty, and the conditions that allow the university to fulfil its civic and democratic mission through community partnership.

Methodology

The study adopts a qualitative, exploratory design. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 faculty members across nine faculties at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Brescia and Piacenza campuses), all actively engaged in SL project coordination. Verbatim transcripts were analyzed through systematic verb-frequency clustering, identifying recurring verbs organized around three key actors (students, faculty, community) and grouped into six thematic clusters — didactic, organizational/institutional, boundary crossing, professional, relational, and transformative — arranged across two analytical areas: process and transformation.

Results and impact

Findings reveal that SL generates distributed, multi-level transformation. Rather than appearing in explicitly transformative verbs (change, become), change is embedded in more discrete actions: understand, see, enter. This "grammar of transformation" suggests that transformation occurs primarily in situated action and relational encounter rather than as a consciously declared outcome. Reflective practices remain structurally weak across the corpus, pointing to a critical gap that institutional design must address. Organizational affordances — recognition policies, dedicated resources, career evaluation criteria, and structured spaces for collegial reflection — emerge as decisive conditions for SL sustainability. The community partner remains the least systematized actor in the SL ecosystem, signaling an underexplored dimension of university–territory collaboration.

These findings offer concrete implications for universities seeking to move from isolated SL projects to durable institutional commitments: designing SL means designing not only the encounter between academia and community, but also the reflective and organizational infrastructure that makes transformation visible, nameable, and reproducible.