Empowering social work students and communitiesthrough community-based group research projects: co-constructingknowledge and building capacity

• Ó Súilleabháin, F. ^[1]
  1. [1] University College Cork

     University College Cork

     Irlanda

     
• Localización: Ikaskuntza-irakaskuntza akademikoaren eremu berriak arakatzen / Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (aut.), 2019, ISBN 978-84-1319-033-4, págs. 348-357
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • The imperative to address societal and community challenges increasingly underpins Higher Educationand social work education strategies. This paper showcases how social work education offers fertileground to develop community-based participatory group research in order to connect universities,academics and students with the communities surrounding them. Using an example of participatory researchundertaken by social work students and a community organisation which sought to explore thesocial needs of young people in a suburb of Cork, Ireland, I illustrate how developing a ‘community oflearning’ consisting of a group of students (three in this case), a community organisation and a socialwork educator, can result in impactful knowledge that can be put to effective use for social change. Thispaper demonstrates how experience-based learning in social work education, and the emancipatory andsocial justice values underpinning the profession, align with the community-based learning that ‘engaged’research affords social work students. Collaborative engagement with community organisationsfosters experiential learning for students, communities and for social work educators. Communitybasedlearning is credited with advancing student skills, personal growth, confidence, and citizenship(Celio et al., 2011). I will describe my methodological approach to teaching and learning which focuseson nurturing a reflective, discursive, formative, collective and collaborative learning space for studentresearchers. I correlate the social work principle of empowerment with Shulman’s (2005) conceptualisationof Signature Pedagogies as an approach which transfers to novice researchers skills of how tothink, perform and act with integrity. The paper celebrates the possibility of developing ‘engaged’ studentsocial work research from individual projects into group-oriented, collaborative exercises in scholarlyresearch activity. In this regard, it offers a methodological development in capacity-building forboth social work students and community organisations, and shows how student research, undertakencollaboratively facilitates the use of knowledge for change (Boyer, 1990).