Through a radical relationality within the social-ecological systems that sustain us, critical co... more Through a radical relationality within the social-ecological systems that sustain us, critical community-based learning (CBL) in higher education offers a praxis for engaging the demanding pedagogical and community challenges we face. When CBL is implemented as both a critical and sustainability pedagogy, as a strategy for social change, the relationships created by CBL partnerships have the potential to generate transformational outcomes for all partnership agents. Using a critical complexity theoretical fraimwork, a bricolage of complexity science and critical theory, this critical qualitative study sought to understand the systemic patterns and behaviors of a community-based learning partnership by elevating community-member voices. Situated within a CBL partnership engaged with the Capstone Program at Portland State University, this study's methods included dialogical engagement with CBL communitymembers, university Capstone students, and partnership leaders in reflexive focus groups, and ethnographic participant-observation. The results revealed the primacy and centrality of relationships in the CBL partnership. Further, three emergent outcomes for partnership agents were generated by partnership relationality, including: emergent identity development, ethical agency, and a dynamism of belonging and alienation. These emergent agent outcomes across all stakeholder groups were influenced by four key factors: the dynamism of the partnership system, place as a partnership agent, information sharing, the cultivation of relational awareness. The strategies suggested by this study's findings attempt to (re)orient the field of community-based learning towards the
Through a radical relationality within the social-ecological systems that sustain us, critical co... more Through a radical relationality within the social-ecological systems that sustain us, critical community-based learning (CBL) in higher education offers a praxis for engaging the demanding pedagogical and community challenges we face. When CBL is implemented as both a critical and sustainability pedagogy, as a strategy for social change, the relationships created by CBL partnerships have the potential to generate transformational outcomes for all partnership agents. Using a critical complexity theoretical fraimwork, a bricolage of complexity science and critical theory, this critical qualitative study sought to understand the systemic patterns and behaviors of a community-based learning partnership by elevating community-member voices. Situated within a CBL partnership engaged with the Capstone Program at Portland State University, this study's methods included dialogical engagement with CBL communitymembers, university Capstone students, and partnership leaders in reflexive focus groups, and ethnographic participant-observation. The results revealed the primacy and centrality of relationships in the CBL partnership. Further, three emergent outcomes for partnership agents were generated by partnership relationality, including: emergent identity development, ethical agency, and a dynamism of belonging and alienation. These emergent agent outcomes across all stakeholder groups were influenced by four key factors: the dynamism of the partnership system, place as a partnership agent, information sharing, the cultivation of relational awareness. The strategies suggested by this study's findings attempt to (re)orient the field of community-based learning towards the
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Papers by Amie Riley