The Devil Is in the Details: Defining Civic Engagement

• Published in: Journal of higher education outreach and engagement. 2009, Vol.13 (2), p.59
• Main Authors: Brabant, Margaret, Braid, Donald
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alignment (Education); Citizen Participation; Citizenship; Citizenship Education; Context Effect; Higher Education; Indiana; Institutional Mission; Outreach Programs; Partnerships in Education; Service Learning
• ISSN: 1534-6102

For "civic engagement" work to have meaningful and long-term impact upon students, partners, and postsecondary institutions, each institution must undertake the difficult work of defining civic engagement for itself such that the definition aligns with the institution's educational mission and local context. We argue that civic engagement is inherently political and that definitional dilemmas have arisen from the conflation of the terms "service-learning" and "civic engagement." Here we present lessons we have learned from using service-learning to teach citizenship and applying essentially political definitions about "community" and how "citizens" should behave, and offer insights from an extended community-building project that we analyze for its revelations concerning universities' and communities' limited capacities for undertaking long-term civic engagement projects. We conclude by placing the problem of definition in a broader context of issues regarding cost and other limitations universities still need to consider to achieve and sustain civic engagement. (Contains 13 endnotes.)