The modern educational paradigm has now been changed significantly in order to reorganize the process in a way relevant to today’s students’ interests and views on global issues. The students are now encouraged to participate in a variety of projects developed on their own, thus promoting a modern outlook on the current state of events in the world. In theory, learners should have been able to express their concerns and take at least minimal responsibility for becoming the voice of their generation. In practice, however, such an approach has been drastically undermined due to the educators’ inability to acknowledge the fact that students have enough background knowledge for developing an actual community interaction framework. For this reason, while it is crucial for the students to gain practical knowledge from the academic curriculum provided at schools, it is the educators who are to motivate them to be an active part of the community.
When speaking of the basic components used in order to establish a proper communication pattern, it is necessary to outline both interpersonal dialogue and academic foundation for the students’ independent research. To begin with, educators should explain to the learners how to identify quality information for them to formulate their outlook and issue perception. With extensive knowledge of where to find credible scholarly data, students are able to develop a community position. Another key component of community engagement is the establishment of cooperation between learners and educators in order for the latter to be able to ask questions and find support in their teachers.
The completion of these aspects later ensures the implementation of a successful community project, which raises issues that resonate with today’s generation. Thus, the end product of the following endeavor is a ready-made project or report, which consists of both primary and secondary data collection and analysis, formulating the thesis statement for future research. Later, the end product should be successfully presented to the audience.
For the project to be community committed, students are to develop a presentation that draws people’s attention to the issue to the same extent as them. This might be achieved through the frequent practice of delivering the project proposals. Hence, it would be beneficial to organize conferences at a local level, giving students the opportunity to organize every detail, including agenda, venue, and presentations in particular. The promotion of hands-on experience is also of crucial importance for the students when it comes to defining one’s views and social position. It might be explained through the importance of relieving the things of interest for a person in order for them to share the experience based on the story and not on the dehumanized data with plain facts.
Considering the information from the Global Online Academy’s article, there are a few steps that might be successfully implemented when creating a synopsis for the student community engagement program (Hall, 2020). Thus, the agenda steps would look as follows:
- Coming up with the issue relevant for the students through active brainstorming;
- Launching the application forms contest, which would encompass the analysis of the students’ brief essays on the topic;
- Launching a research writing workshop followed by the applicants’ demonstration of the secondary data corpus collection;
- Conducting a hands-on experience relevant to the chosen issue;
- Organization of the final conference through delegating major responsibilities to the student committee;
- The final round of the program, where the presentations are presented.
Taking everything into consideration, it might be concluded that the inability to trust students enough to allow them to become full-scale researchers is, by no means, a successful educational policy. On the contrary, it is the educators’ belief in their students that makes children willing to conduct their own researches and look at things from various perspectives. Hence, active community engagement through presenting authentic social issues project proposals is a great way to increase the learners’ chances to find their true vocation.
Reference
Hall, K. (2020). Mission in action: how designing for student voice can drive school mission. Web.