Engaging Citizens and Transforming Designers: Analysis of a Campus Community Partnership Through the Lens of Children's Rights to Participation
While an engaged citizenry is often the goal of community service learning, the rights of children to be active agents in this process are largely considered in a separate academic literature. Yet community service learning and children's participation share much in their goals and approaches to engagement. This paper analyzes a campus community partnership between undergraduate environmental design and middle school applied science students. The partnership began as a way to promote participatory design processes for the redesign of a middle school and evolved to a proactive co design program. We describe the goals and approaches to service learning employed through the partnership, and critique the evolution of the program through the realm of a participation model that has emerged from three decades of children's participation research. By analyzing a campus community partnership through this framework, we hope to deepen the discourse on approaches to and evaluation of successful service learning programs. Introduction Campus community partnerships are typically undertaken to promote meaningful engagement and to enrich traditional pedagogies through experiential learning. Similarly, children's participation research and advocacy promotes engaged learning through the inclusion of children in decision making and transformative education (Malone Hartung, 2010) Both bodies of literature address many of the same topics and goals. Rarely do the two literatures intersect. This paper brings together these two literatures through the analysis of a campus community partnership between university undergraduates and middle school students. We identify the common threads of each literature, describe the goals of each type of initiative, and critique the evolution of a seven year partnership using a Seven Realms of Participation model that emerged from analysis of 30 years of children's participation research (Francis Lorenzo, 2002) This model is used to illustrate a process of growth and to inform awareness about the strengths and shortcomings of campus community partnerships. Common Threads Campus community partnerships that promote service learning and children's participation scholars and advocates share much in their approach and concern for authentic, dialectic partnerships. Both view the relationship as transformative: faculty, university students, community partners, and children all can be deeply affected by exchanges that give voice to and address issues of real concern (Carroll, LaPoint Tyler, 2001; Chawla, 2002; Malone Hartung, 2010) In addition, service learning and children's participation both must address issues of equity and barriers to participation that exist within university community and child adult relationships (Angotti, Doble Horrigan, 2011; Carroll et al. 2001; Derr, Chawla, Mintzer, Cushing van Vliet, 2013; Hou, 2011; Malone Hartung, 2010; Sutton, 2012) Both need to extend beyond descriptions of the types of activities and interactions that occur to also include the degree of influence and types of impacts among those involved (Gelmon, Holland, Seifer, Shinnamon Connors, 1998; Iacofano, 1990; Malone Hartung, 2010) And finally, effective service learning typically involves reflection and reflective practice (Angotti et al. 2011; Carroll et al. 2001; Sandy Holland, 2006) Gauging similar reflections among children participants is sometimes challenging, and identifying impacts perhaps even more so, because "it is within the adult centric structure that all children's participation comes to be recognized" (Malone Hartung, 2010, p. 33) Yet it is these challenges that make children's participation in service learning an area of particular significance. Recent initiatives to reinstate democratic education into schooling (e.g. IDEA, 2012; Westheimer, 2008) further support the need for stronger linkages between service learning and children's rights to participation in meaningful, real world issues (Carroll et al. 2001; Fusco, 2001) 1 Derr et al. Engaging Citizens and Transforming Designers: Analysis of a Campu Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2017 Vol. 9, No. 2 JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND SCHOLARSHIP Page 54 Children's Rights and Engaged Learning Discourse on children's rights to participation began with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes that dignity and equal rights of all people are the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace. The Declaration promotes health and well being, education, and opportunities to participate in government and civic activities (United Nations, 1948) Though the Declaration specifically states that these rights should be extended to all people, child advocates in the 1980s promoted the drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) This led to the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) support of the Growing Up in Cities Initiative (Chawla, 2002; Lynch, 1977) The goal of these projects was to create opportunities for genuine participation of children in development and planning their cities (Chawla, 2002) These projects have provided a framework for the inclusion of children in a variety of projects, primarily focused on planning and urban design. While engaged citizenry is often the goal of community service learning, the rights of children to be active agents in this process is largely considered in a separate academic literature (e.g. Percy Smith Thomas, 2010) Yet the inclusion of children's rights to participate in community life and decision making about the places where children live is a natural ally and potential contributor to the scholarship of community service learning. Children's rights scholars and young people themselves have expressed both the need for and desire to participate in decision making in real world contexts (Chawla, 2002; Derr, Chawla, Mintzer, Cushing van Vliet, 2013; Driskell, 2002; Malone Hartung, 2010; Percy Smith Thomas, 2010; Westheimer, 2008) Focus has been given to young people's heightened awareness and agency around international and environmental issues (Chawla Heft, 2002; Hart, 2001; Malone Hartung, 2010) but can be equally significant at the local level, where issues of disparity or sustainability also exist (Derr et al. 2013; Tolman Pitmann, 2001) For example, this model of participation could readily extend to place based environmental education and environmental justice (e.g. Toman Pitmann, 2001; Gruenewald Smith, 2008) as well as science education (Hulleman Harackiewicz, 2008) or science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs, which promote experiential learning (Thiry, Laursen, Hunter, 2011) Models of Participation The process and authenticity of engagement has been critiqued in the planning profession, with Arnstein (1969) providing a ladder of citizen participation, in which the rungs of the ladder represent levels of engagement, from non participation to consultation to high levels of control and power sharing. This ladder was later adopted for children (Hart, 2001) Though the ladder has been heavily used and referenced in the children's participation literature, Hart himself suggests its time has passed (2008) and that there are multiple models of participation depending on the purpose and intent of a project. Other models and analyses of children's participation both simplify and give detail to types of participatory practice. For example, Lansdown (2010) examines approaches to measuring the extent, quality, and impacts of engagement. She classifies the extent of engagement into three levels: consultative participation, in which adults seek children's views on issues; collaborative participation, in which children and adults have a greater degree of partnership and where there is opportunity for engagement at any stage of decision making, or project implementation; and child led participation, in which children are given the opportunity to initiate activities and advocate for themselves. Chawla and Heft (2002) also describe characteristics of effective participation. Among these are conditions for competence, in which children are given real responsibilities, play a role in establishing goals and decision making, and have opportunities to be heard and to influence the process. They describe this ability to exert control over valued aspects of one's life as a universal contributor to psychological well being. Francis and Lorenzo (2002) describe seven realms of children's participation based on a review of 30 years of participatory practice (Table 1) Among these realms are the Learning Realm, in which projects focus on imparting knowledge and changing perceptions in educational contexts, the Needs Realm, in which children's participation is used to better understand their needs, and the Proactive Realm, in which projects strive for children's empowerment and substantial change through participation. In the Proactive Realm, conditions for competence balance children's empowerment with the need for tangible outcomes. 2 Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, Vol. 9, Iss. 2 [2017] Art. 6 https:/digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/jces/vol9/iss2/6 Vol. 9, No. 2 JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND SCHOLARSHIP Page 55 Though there are notable exceptions, frequently service learning courses with children and youth involve a transference of knowledge rather than with young people serving as co producers of this knowledge, placing them in the Learning Realm rather than a participatory Proactive Realm (Francis Lorenzo, 2002) Not only does this leave little room for engaged and critical thinking that can lead to competence of school children (Chawla Heft, 2002; Westheimer, 2008) it also does not allow university students the opportunity to participate in the transformative educational process that community service learning