Civic engagement through an activity theory lens: the case of service learning as 'boundary work' in higher education
Janice McMillan (University of Cape Town)
Abstract
This conference has highlighted 4 dimensions of civic engagement worthy of exploring further: the philosophy or philosophies underpinning the role of higher education within civil society; better understanding the different ways in which civic engagement takes hold in practice; the importance of policy in supporting collaborative relationships; and issues of power, ethics and sustainability in higher education-civil society partnerships. My paper will attempt to address a combination of the first two themes, but has implications for the last two. I will be offering a ‘boundary work’ lens to conceptualise service learning practice at the interface of higher education and society, hereby contributing to the philosophy/theory theme of the conference. By looking at service learning as an example of civic engagement, it offers a new way to theorise and thereby even improve a specific practice. Both of these contributions in turn have implications for policy and partnerships.
Michael Gibbons (2005) has spoken about the need to re-imagine the relationship between higher education and society and he calls for the emergence of a ‘new social contract’. In particular he highlights three elements of this new form of engagement: contextualisation, boundary objects, and transaction spaces and boundary zones. It is here that my paper is located – conceptualising the ‘boundary zone’ at the nexus of higher education and society, with a focus on service learning as practice.
There seems to be little evidence in the literature on higher education describing ways of conceptualising and understanding the boundary zone itself. Most of the service learning research literature for instance, looks either at the university side of the relationship or at the impact on the community (albeit in very few cases). The argument I make in this paper is that in order to better understand the ‘push and pull’ of partnerships, we need to better understand what happens in boundary zone in the first instance. In order for this, we need to shift our unit of analysis towards the transaction/boundary zone and develop conceptual tools to illuminate the complex practices that occur at this nexus. It is only through a better understanding of practice that we can work towards sustainability and reciprocity.
In this paper, I draw on my recent PhD study to present a framework for service learning as ‘boundary work’. Drawing on situated learning, post Vygotskian theory and activity theory in particular, I define service learning as complex ‘artefact-mediated interacting activity systems’. What this framework illuminates is that because there are inherent contradictions in these trans-boundary practices, unless we understand them better and in more nuanced ways, we are in no position to improve our practices and therefore our understandings of the very nature of civic engagement. While service learning is the case study in this paper, the tools I develop are equally useful for looking more closely at other forms of civic engagement. Finally, by raising a number of questions about boundary practices at the end of the paper, I provide some ways of taking this conceptualisation project further.
