Sean Geobey
This paper provides an active example of a place-based social innovation lab process embedded in a pedagogical community. Post-secondary institutions house talented people and specialised knowledge that are valuable for advancing progress on wicked problems, yet these capacities are often difficult for those outside academia to access. As a parallel challenge, post-secondary institutions face legitimacy issues from multiple directions, many stemming from their perceived lack of relevance to society as a whole. A place-based social innovation lab embedded within a post-secondary context brings these together using systemic design to change relationships between on-campus leaders, community members, and students. While this builds upon work-integrated learning, community-based research, and knowledge mobilisation to achieve teaching, research, and service goals, it takes an integrated approach to doing so. In this, the paper conceptualises post-secondary institutions as existing within nested systems of communities, economies, and ecologies, while, in turn, containing further nested systems of faculties, programs, and classes. From here, the focus moves to the transformation of a core site for post-secondary activity, the classroom, into a safe-fail site for problem-focused niche developments that span boundaries between students, researchers, and community members. The curriculum for this boundary-spanning, problem-focused approach to classroom engagement will be outlined, as will its role in bringing together teaching, research, and service.
KEYWORDS: pedagogy, systemic design, complexity, community service learning, work-integrated learning, knowledge mobilisation, community-based research
RSD TOPICS: Cases & Practice, Learning & Education