Impacting+media+portrayals

**Impacting media portrayals of poverty as social change:** **A test of community-based class pedagogy** George Daniels, Associate Professor, University of Alabama bamaproducer@gmail.com]



**Keywords:** Social change, qualitative, media, Contextual Fluidity Partnership Model

**Track:** Student development and learning

**Format:** Poster presentation


 * Date & time: **Friday 9:00


 * Location: **Salon 4 / Salon 9

**Summary:** Social change is one of several distinct community service paradigms that exist on a continuum with charity on one extreme and social change on the other (Morton, 1995). The latter, social change, focuses on the “process” where education or action emerges over time. This research tests the “community-based class” as a pedagogical approach while unearthing students’ perceptions of their empowerment for social change through the media. Finally, this research applies the five dimensions of the contextual fluidity partnership model.

The five dimensions of this model all apply to the community-based class and are as follows: context-based, vision, strange-attractors, fluid process, and web-of-networks. Positioning this study in the context of other service-learning scholarship, we share Nelson and Stroink’s (2010) belief that food security is an appropriate theme and topic for a community-based class.

Data were collected through reflection essays written as part of an upper-level elective course in //Communication and Diversity//. As Strouse (2003) noted, student’s reflections on what they are learning, are intended to help them make connections between their academic curriculum and what they are doing in their service activity. Despite a wide range in the students’ disciplines, they were remarkably consistent in their ideas of what power the media has to change what the public thinks about the poor. This study adds to the research on how to teach while using service-learning pedagogy as well as a broader contribution to the conceptual and theoretical analyses using the contextual fluidity partnership model.

The data were collected in a service-learning course. Implicit in the community-based class-format is the notion of community engagement. Fundamentally, the problem students are charged with solving or at least understanding – hunger in the community and food insecurity – is a community problem in which students are engaging.

**References:** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Keith, M. (1995). The irony of service: Charity, project and social change in service-learning. //Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 2//(1).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Nelson, C. & Stroink (2010). Benefits to students of service-learning through a food security partnership model. In J.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Keshen, B.A. Holland, & B.E. Moely (Eds.), //Research for what?: Making engaged scholarship matter//. (pp. 171-199). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Smith, T.S. ( 2009). Service scholarship: The underutilized component in meeting social needs. //Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship//, //2//(1), 70-72.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">Strouse, J.H. (2003). Reflection as a service-learning assessment strategy. //Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 8//(2), 75-88.

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