Politics of Social Responsibility Policy and Practice in the Community College System in Ontario, Canada: Multiple Visions, Meanings and Priorities

• In Event: Highlighted Session: The social responsibility of higher education: What do we owe, and to whom?

Proposal

There has been great interest in social responsibility in Ontario’s community college system, defined broadly as policies and activities where social responsibility (SR) is an intended student employability skill and social mindset, a framework for transformative change in the organizational, local and global communities, and a proactive approach to removing barriers to social responsibility within these communities. While there are many definitional similarities across the college system, there are also differences in how individual colleges and their faculty understand and practice SR. The vision of a socially responsible community college and its socially responsible practices will therefore vary (to a smaller or greater degree) across different colleges, depending on the nature, purpose, and boundaries of their SR policy framework. Such frameworks will further vary in terms of the goals that SR shares with the core concepts of human rights, poverty, global citizenship, internationalization, and most recently indigenization, to guide college policies and practices. While these core terms and concepts act as a signpost to other both internal and external documents, there is still little clarity within the college system as to what perspective should guide their institutional vision, policy and practices of SR, as well as a more holistic approach to course and program development. Nor is there clarity on how this SR framework should be incorporated into college courses and programs, without SR issues being reduced to a checklist of concepts for the faculty to cover. The lack of conceptual clarity is further complicated by the ambiguities of discourses, perspectives and narratives of SR shared and used by multiple internal and external actors in the framing of college policy documents, practices, courses and programs, as well as in the enactment of these envisioned practices at the classroom level.

This qualitative case study will examine the interplay between the envisioned and enacted policies and practices of SR at selected community colleges in Ontario, Canada. It will explore the policy discourse of SR in selected colleges and how the language and practices used at the policy level influence the ways in which SR is interpreted and incorporated at the classroom level. The paper will focus on the macropolitical and micropolitical frames that shape the understandings, visions and practices of SR of two different groups of college actors: college leaders involved in policy development at their institution, and college faculty who engage with the SR policy through its interpretation, use and enactment at the classroom level. Drawing upon elements of Schulte’s ‘politics of use’ perspective (2018), this paper will examine how the two groups of college actors mobilize larger political narratives and theoretical perspectives on SR when crafting and implementing the SR policy on the one side (policy leaders), and enacting and interacting with the policy as practiced reality on the other (faculty). Using policy document analysis, the paper will analyze selected college policies as a patchwork of different theoretical perspectives and ideologies shared by different groups of internal and external actors operating in local and global settings. It will look at how, in the absence of the leading perspective, the use of a broad definitional framework of SR affords interpretive flexibility to the process of sense-making of the college SR policy at the institutional and faculty level. At the macropolitical level, this practice also enables colleges to negotiate the meaning of social responsibility and other related concepts with local and international institutions and organizations that may or may not share the same perspective or values. Using qualitative interviews, the analysis of micropolitical sensemaking practices will then focus on the subjective nature of SR policy development and its understandings, enactments and use at the practice level. This will help understand how college policy leaders and college faculty align SR policy goals and practices or undermine and circumvent them. Factors such as the sociocultural frames, values, theoretical perspectives, and ideologies of both college policy leaders and college faculty will be considered.

Schulte, B. (2018). Envisioned and enacted practices: educational policies and the ‘politics of use’ in schools. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50(5), pp. 624-637.

Author

• Ewa Kowalski, Western University