Special Section: Service-Learning and Social Entrepreneurship

Call for Abstracts Special Section: Service-Learning and Social Entrepreneurship Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning

The Fall 2017 issue of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (MJCSL) will feature a special section on service-learning and social entrepreneurship guest co-edited by Sandra Enos of Bryant University. Please consider submitting an article to this special section of the MJCSL.

The MJCSL is an international peer-reviewed journal with a faculty and administrator readership all over the world, and publishes articles on: research, theory, pedagogy, and other issues pertinent to (a) curriculum-based service-learning, (b) campus-community partnerships, (c) scholarship of engagement, and (d) scholarship on engagement.

Interestingly, service-learning and social entrepreneurship education share many similarities. Both service-learning and social entrepreneurship seek to work with community partners or in the community to address challenges facing the community. Both have had to make a case for themselves on campuses. Both focus on active learning, experiential education, improving communities, and positive social change.

As practices, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) are well established on campuses. The field is well served by journals, led by national organizations, and supported through conferences at the regional, national and international level. Service-learning is practiced across many disciplines. Recent developments of majors, minors, and certificates have established service-learning as a field of study. For a thirty-year period, a wide variety of practices have been adopted by a wide variety of campuses to connect campuses and classrooms with challenges and opportunities in communities. To recognize excellence in campus practices, the Community Engagement Classification created by the Carnegie Foundation and the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll recognize exemplary SLCE campuses.

We see parallel developments in the emerging field of campus-based social entrepreneurship education. Introduced first at the graduate level and migrating to the undergraduate level, we can trace steady growth of curricular and co-curricular programs focused on social entrepreneurship. While initially found primarily in schools or departments of business, social entrepreneurship is increasingly located in liberal arts, social work, and public policy. In social entrepreneurship, there are important journals, such as the Stanford Social Innovation Review and The Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, significant conferences, such as NYU’s Social Entrepreneurship Conference, and lead organizations, such as The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Ashoka, and others. Ashoka U, the branch of Ashoka focused on higher education, leads the charge on campuses to bring social entrepreneurship education into curricular and co-curricular programming. To recognize leadership in the field, Ashoka U designates Changemaker Campuses in the United States and internationally.

Another similarity is that there are critics of both fields. Critics of service-learning argue that the practice teaches students to volunteer without an orientation to change things or a connection to citizenship. Critics also argue that service-learning has been organized to benefit students and student learning with too little focus on community impact (Stoecker, 2016). On the other hand, critics of social entrepreneurship, such as McBride and Mlyn (2015), contend that the practice ignores the civic dimensions of social change. Its focus on innovation and disruption fails to take into account the multiple tools and approaches to social change. Further, suggesting that individuals make social change neglects the fact that community mobilization and social networks are requisite elements for transformative social change (Arieff, 2016). Applying business principles that may champion disruptive change over-simplifies social transformation that serves multiple stakeholders. Programs that apply business thinking and business metrics to social problems may foster hubris and fail to understand complexity.

It should be noted, for the purposes of this special section, that the term “service-learning” includes community engagement/civic engagement and other terms used on various campuses, and the term “social entrepreneurship” includes social innovation, social enterprise, and other terms used on various campuses.

Given these similarities, one would expect that these practices would find common cause on campuses. However, in many if not most cases, programs operate quite separately and independently with little exchange between them regarding learning goals, curricular content, pedagogical strategies, or relationships with community partners.

Given the state of service-learning and social entrepreneurship on campuses, it is an appropriate time to take inventory of these practices in the context of what higher education institutions are doing to prepare students for active citizenship, community work, and social justice in the twenty-first century. The editors welcome theoretical pieces, research studies, and pedagogical discussions. We welcome articles analyzing the relationship between service-learning and social entrepreneurship on campuses, the pedagogical practices and learning goals inherent and important to each practice, models of successful partnering on campus, the theoretical similarities and differences in each practice, the ways in which community partners understand these practices, whether these practices offer complementary or incommensurate approaches to social change teaching in the university, and practices we need to foster “participatory readiness” (Allen, 2016) on the part of our students?

The first step in the Michigan Journal submission process is to send an abstract/précis of no more than 250 words that adequately conveys the focus/plan for the articles and includes the lead author’s contact information to Sandra Enos ([email protected]) by December 20, 2016. Invitations to submit an article will be made by mid-January, with invited articles due Monday, March 27, 2017. Please consult Michigan Journal submission guidelines for more information (https://ginsberg.umich.edu/mjcsl/) and to review articles from recent issues to gain a feel for the kind of articles we publish. Questions about the special section may be directed to Sandra Enos.

Thank you.

Sandra Enos, Ph.D., Guest Editor Jeff Howard, Editor Associate Professor of Sociology Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning Coordinator of Service-Learning and (a University of Michigan publication) Social Entrepreneurship Bryant University References Allen, D. (2016). The Future of Democracy: The Future of the Humanities. Humanities, 37(2), 6- 7.

Arieff, A. (2016, July 9). Solving all the wrong problems. New York Times, SR6.

McBride. A., & Mlyn, E. (2015, February 2). Innovation alone won’t fix social problems. Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/article/Innovation-Alone-Won-t-Fix/151551

Stoecker, R. (2016). Liberating service learning and the rest of higher education civic engagement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.