The Practices of Community: Curriculum and New Spaces of Possibility

• In Event: Race, Place, and Power as Curriculum: Redefining Discourses, Communities, and Identities

Abstract

This paper engages with conversations about the role of scholars/academics in communities, and in community-based projects. Drawing on my experience establishing a community organization, Animal Advocates of Greater Lafayette, I reflect on how community engagement can be a vibrant and critical space for curriculum studies scholars to practice education “with” (not “on”) the communities where we live and work, as engaged citizen-scholars. As curricular possibilities within our institutions and K-12 organizations become even more constrained and limited in our current global, neoliberal reality, sharing models of successful community-based education organizations is a critical step towards vibrant social justice education and change.

Author

• Nadine E. Dolby, Purdue University