A comprehensive university at the heart of its communities: establishing a framework for engagement

[摘要] English: The thesis documents the construction of a coherent conceptual and practical framework in which to locate the quest to establish community engagement as a legitimate, feasible and viable undertaking in higher education alongside its more established and accepted counterparts of teaching and research, with particular focus on the University of Zululand (UNIZULU) �?a rural-based comprehensive university with an urban footprint. The thesis begins with a brief outline of the national context of community engagement before moving on to a more specific description of the context and recent history of UNIZULU. Certain key concepts are then clarified. A statement of the research concern and objectives of the study is followed by an account of the theoretical framework and research perspective underpinning the thesis, and a description of the methodology employed in the research. Ethical considerations are noted. There then follows a brief indication of the scope and intention of each of the papers, and the rationale behind the order in which they appear in the thesis. This brief introductory section concludes with speculation on what the significance of this study might be. Paper 1, Notions of 'community engagement' appropriate to a Community-University Partnership Programme (CUPP) in a South African rural-based comprehensive university �?Siyanibona!, seeks to tease out contested understandings of the notions of 'identity', 'community' and 'engagement'. In so doing it explores three particular ideas, taken up in later papers, namely: the notion of 'relationships of fate' needing to transform into 'partnerships of choice'; the link between the circumstances of a particular university's birth, and its acceptance or otherwise of its responsibility to its locale; and the need for all stakeholders in the community-university engagement endeavour to know more about each other at a level deeper than simply the institutional or organisational. Paper 2, From pillars to people: Reconceptualising the integration of teaching, research and community engagement in higher education, addresses the struggle community engagement has faced in achieving par with higher education's other core activities of teaching-and- learning and research in a way which chooses not to look at teaching, research and community engagement as activities or objects, but from the perspective of the individual stakeholders (staff, students and community members) engaged in those activities. The exploration of this idea picks up on the distinction between 'relationships of fate' and 'partnerships of choice' first articulated in Paper I and expands the concept of 'engagement' to encompass the relationships between staff and students (not just those between the university and community members), and discusses ways in which staff, students and communities might more usefully interact with each other. Paper 3, SMMEs and higher education: Possibilities for partnership? homes in on a particular sector of the business community, to ascertain the extent to which the sector might be able to partner with the University to their mutual benefit. Using data from a questionnaire and interviews the study reveals that opportunities for work experience for students in micro and survivalist enterprises are limited but that the University could be doing more to 'reach out' to its communities by making them aware of who the university is, what it can offer, how it can assist, and perhaps most importantly, how it can be accessed. Paper 4, ProAct: An integrated model of action research and project management for capacitating universities and their communities in the co-production of useful knowledge, tells the story of the evolution of a hybrid model of action research and project management (ProAct) which takes account of the need for research in the university-community context to be accomplished democratically, but within specific parameters of time and other resources by grafting selected project management tools onto the basic action research cycle. The model gives practical and concrete form to the conceptual and theoretical constructs of other researchers who have considered the linking of action research and project management. Paper 5, A comprehensive university and its local communities: Establishing a framework for engagement, addresses the overarching question of how to establish a framework for engagement between a university and its communities. The paper employs the well-used 'building construction' metaphor, identifying the management and governance building blocks (including institutional self-identity, unequivocal support from institutional executive leadership, plans, policies, structures, and funding), and the 'cement' for holding the framework together (including familiarity with communities and knowing how to interact with them, changing mindsets and building capacity). The paper offers the opinion that the necessary foundation for the edifice is the institutional belief that engaging with communities is actually an integral and enhancing enabler of the higher education learning experience, not something which one is empowered to do after having been prepared exclusively in the lecture hall. The paper avers that if an institution does not come close to holding the view that the purpose of higher education is to provide something useful to society, starting with the communities that surround them, community engagement will always struggle to be accepted by the academy.In considering the significance of this whole study the thesis identifies the key 'realisations' which have given food for thought and which other researchers might find worthwhile exploring further too. These are: the significance of how institutional and community identities are established, by choice, fate or fiat; re-thinking the concept of 'engagement' to focus not on the activities per se of teaching, research and community engagement but on all of the stakeholders working as willing partners; the need for institutions and communities to embrace the belief that university-community interaction is one of the purposes of higher education, and the belief that community engagement is a vehicle for staff, student, curriculum and institutional development. In concluding, the thesis additionally notes the significance to the author himself of having taken this research journey. As a consequence he feels he is in a better position to promote a more integrated model of teaching, research and community engagement to his university, community colleagues, students, and community engagement peers in other universities. However, the author indicates that in furthering the cause of community engagement in higher education he will need to explore alternative paradigms, notably complexity science, and systemic action research.

[发布机构] University of the Free State