Learning through Community Engagement

The Community Engagement Team Review 2023

The spark for this initiative came from a group of Grad’24 students who posed the question: “How can we rejuvenate our CAT clubs?”. This grew to form the basis of a full review of the now rebranded ‘Community Engagement Teams’, that was to be a true student-teacher collaboration.

The review was set within the wider framework of the secondary schools Global Citizenship development aims, from which three key questions emerged:

• To what extent are we meeting our community engagement aims?
• How effective are we at working in our teams?
• What do we learn from our community engagement experiences?

The aim of the review was to find out where we are now in respect to these questions, in order to establish a baseline, and identify strengths and areas for development.

The Review Process

The review involved a number of data collection strategies (see Figure 1 below), and was carried out between Term 3 2022/23 to Term 2 2023/24.

Figure 1: The Community Engagement Review Process

Service: To what extent are we meeting our community engagement aims?
Our students really care about the issues they engage with. Over 97% of the students surveyed joined a Community Engagement team because they felt that they were passionate about the cause, or because they ‘wanted to give back to the community’ (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Why did you join a Community Engagement team?

How effective are they in bringing about the change they strive for? Most students surveyed, over 70%, feel that they do make a tangible impact, and the majority agree that the biggest strength is raising awareness (see figure 3).

Figure 3: What does your team do well?

Teachers agree that most community engagement activities centre around advocacy (75% of teams focus on this). An example is highlighted in the following comment from a teacher supervisor:

“(The team) raises awareness of human rights issues within the Patana community (e.g. refugee rights)” – Jordan Taylor, Supervisor of Amnesty
However, 57% of students feel that they achieve much more than simply raising awareness through direct and indirect service activities such as fund raising, and teachers agreed that the level of impact is high, supervisors of most teams assessed the outcomes of their teams’ activities as ‘impactful’ or ‘very impactful’. However, direct action service is still lagging behind, only 44% of teams engage in these types of service experiences. This is undoubtedly a response to the restrictions of COVID and we are seeing an increase in direct action service, but this is still an area for development.

So, it is clear from the review that students are passionate and highly motivated and so teams are meeting their aims, with impact, especially when it comes to advocacy. However, there is a need for many teams to expand their service activities to include more action which engages students directly with the communities they aim to help.

Leadership and Student Engagement: How effective are we at working in teams?

There is no doubt that our student leaders are enthusiastic, and the focus group discussions with the Year 13 student leaders confirmed this, as did the supervisor survey: “They are keen and enthusiastic. They care about their cause.” – Andrew Haughton, Supervisor of WeHearU

How effective are these leaders when it comes to engaging students in their activities? Over 60% of students questioned felt fully engaged in their team’s work. One student even commented: “They’re creating a sense of community within school”. Teacher supervisors confirmed this, the majority (over 60%) identified higher than average levels of enthusiasm in their team. When asked what they do well one replied: “Working well with a team. The outcome and successes are really positive, everyone in the team has a role, they perform it and execute it well.” – Jon Yau, Supervisor of Interact

However, many students felt that engagement and communication need to improve (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: What does your team need to improve?

Only 12% strongly agreed that communication was a strength of their team, and 16% of students who had left a team in the last year cited a lack of communication as a reason for leaving the team. Indeed, one key issue, identified by the student focus group was the high numbers of students who leave teams, and the small membership of many groups as a result of this. Why is this happening? The main reason was identified as a “lack of time or clashes with other ECAs”, but 35% felt that “it was a waste of time” or that they did not feel fully included in the activities of the team. Another issue raised was the relatively low numbers of Key Stage 3 students involved in community engagement. In fact, 44% of teams include KS3 students, and these teams confirmed that these younger students engaged highly in the activities.

The question is how can teams engage students more? More communication, especially with youngers students is key, but improved leadership skills may be part of the answer. Only 30% of supervisors rated their student leadership skills as high and so there is clearly a need for leadership training here.

Learning: What do we learn from our community engagement experiences?

Learning about global issues through engagement with a local manifestation is one objective of community engagement, which is reflected in the school’s Guiding Statements. Over half of the teams work with a local charity partner, and supervisors assess that in the case of the majority of these groups, the student leaders have a good understanding of the organisations’ work and make links to the global issue. However, this knowledge is not always communicated to their team, 43% of supervisors highlighted this as an issue.

This is echoed by the findings of the student survey which showed that learning through community engagement is not always a focus for our students. Although they see raising awareness as key, it is clear that deeper critical learning does not always happen. There seems to be a tendency to be “task focused”, as exemplified by this student response:
“They could educate the students so that service is not just about events, it’s about educating students about the issue and what needs to be done.”

Learning, especially about local issues is there, but there is the potential for this to be deeper and more critical in nature, and the need for it to be more effectively communicated within teams. More active engagement in research is key, and a current initiative to engage teams in the 5 Stages of Service Learning (Kaye, 2014) is currently being implemented in order to do just this. Other activities such as reviewing current relevant news stories and engaging in more service visits could also enhance students learning through service.

Conclusions and Looking Forward

Patana students are passionate and motivated to bring about positive change, and when teams are led effectively, student engagement is strong. However, there are clear aims for development; more effective communication, leadership skills and greater learning through service.The outlook is promising as we are already seeing progress in these areas:
“This year there is more enthusiasm. Communication is better and this enables student leaders to learn together and from each other. Year 12 have really stepped up with more service orientated and more direct action.” Tanat (Johnny) Tungsubutra, Grad’24.
So much passion, empathy and creativity, there is no doubt that together Patana students can bring about change. We look forward to seeing what you do.

– Caroline Ferguson, Leader of Global Citizenship and Student Community Engagement and Tanat (Johnny) Tungsubutra, Grad’24.

Bibliography– Kaye, C. B. (2014). The Complete Guide to Service Learning . Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing.