The Practitioner-Scholar Community (PSC) is a premier educational development program of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE). Since the role of many community engagement professionals (CEPs) includes that of practitioner-scholar, and many faculty and professionals who facilitate community engagement courses and programs find themselves in “third spaces” -- the betwixt and between of theory and practice, of research and administration, of scholarly endeavors alongside program implementation, the PSC was developed to support the scholarly efforts of professionals in such third spaces. The development of practitioner-scholar capacity is an important aspect of IARSLCE, aligned with the organizational commitment to research and scholarship associated with community engagement. 


Goal: The goal of this IARSLCE program is to develop the capacity of IARSLCE members in order to: 1) build their practitioner-scholar identity and 2) develop scholarly projects focused on service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) in order to support the IARSLCE mission to build the field of research and scholarship of SLCE.

Program Overview: The Practitioner-Scholar Community delivers a four (4) module, asynchronous learning opportunity for a cohort of professionals working in service-learning and community engagement that seek to build their practitioner-scholar identity and capacity.      

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this program, participants will be able to:

  • Articulate their professional identity and cross-cultural context of practice within the practitioner-scholar framework;
  • Develop a scholarly project plan with a) research questions derived from inquiry into practice, b) methodological approaches for scholarly project(s) related to their practice, c) an action plan for implementation to scholarly dissemination 
  • Demonstrate evidence of practices and scholarly approaches in their professional context through the development of a professional portfolio

Deliverables

Participants in the Practitioner-Scholar Community will emerge from this educational development opportunity with an articulated practitioner-scholar narrative, a scholarly project plan related to an area of inquiry and scholarship, and the beginning draft of a digital professional portfolio. As part of the cohort, we will partner with the International Journal for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IJRSLCE) for a special focus area in the December 2023 issue. Your participation in the Fall 2022 PSC will allow you to submit your scholarly work for peer review while participating in a mentoring component with reviewers and work toward publication in the December 2023 issue of IJRSLCE.

Roadmap

Participants will move through the different asynchronous modules accomplishing the tasks and assignments in one week (7 days) and then respond to cohort members' work providing feedback in the second week before moving on to the next module.

Module 1: Identifying as a Practitioner-Scholar

Module 2: Developing your Scholarly Approach

Module 3: Feedback on Scholarly Projects - Refining your Inquiry and Building your Network in the Context of Complicated, Complex Community Engagement work

Module 4: Capstone Projects of Practitioner-Scholar Professional Portfolio

About the Instructor

Patrick M. Green, EdD is the Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (CELTS), and a Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Green also serves as the Scholar-in-Residence for IARSLCE. He teaches experiential learning courses, including community-based learning, academic internships, global service-learning, and undergraduate research, and graduate courses in the Higher Education Program. He is coeditor of Crossing Boundaries: Tension and Transformation in International Service-Learning (Stylus Publishing, 2014), Re-conceptualizing Faculty Development in Service-Learning/Community Engagement: Exploring Intersections, Frameworks, and Models of Practice (Stylus Publishing, 2018), Guest Editor of Metropolitan Universities Journal special issue on faith and community engagement (December, 2020), and Guest Editor of Experiential Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ELTHE, November 2021). Examples of his engaged scholarship recently published include: 

In addition to serving as a Scholar-in-Residence with IARSLCE, Dr. Green serves as an Engaged Scholar with the National Society of Experiential Education (NSEE), and an Engaged Scholar with National Campus Compact.