Community Education Concentration

community education concentration

Goddard College’s Community Education Concentration is available to students enrolled in the BA in Education Program and the MA in Education Program. Community Education emphasizes service learning in the whole community. It shifts your focus out of the classroom and into urban and suburban neighborhoods and the rural countryside. It teaches educators how to connect and interact with children, adult learners, and teacher-citizens in a powerful way that can lead to the enrichment and transformation of communities.

The concentration is deeply anchored in pedagogy, educational philosophy, and community education theory. It attaches proficiency-based learning standards in a wide range of disciplines – the sciences, humanities, and more – to measurable outcomes achieved by students within their communities.

During your residency and field study, students design and implement a personalized learning plan linked to a specific community organization and project. In this model, each student’s community becomes a learning laboratory. Education is no longer viewed as a preparation for life, but as an active and self-reflective process. The community becomes the classroom, the crucible for learning and for positive change.

As a Goddard community educator, you learn to address the complex realities underlying modern multicultural and multilingual communities, with a strong focus on achieving social justice and equality. As full collaborators, Goddard-trained educators understand the power of partnership and of participatory democracy in creating vibrant, thriving, sustainable communities.

Community Education Field Study

The Community Education Concentration is firmly based in field study. For undergraduates, field study typically involves the seeking out, and participation in, an established community organization. Graduate students are often already in community leadership positions, or in the process of launching vibrant new organizations.

Using the community as a learning laboratory, educators gain new skills and knowledge, which they reflect upon in their field study journal. Five credits per semester are awarded for undergraduate field study, and four credits per semester are awarded for graduate field study.

Community Education students not already working with a community organization are responsible for finding their field study placements. Students use their worksite experience to produce a relevant program of study rooted in theory, expanded through practice, and focused on personal and professional educational goals.

This concentration is not appropriate for students seeking Vermont educator credential, however.

Request more information from an Admissions Counselor.

Sample Areas of Study

Each residency, students develop individualized study plans for the semester with their faculty advisors. The study plan may be individually designed by the student to meet her or his particular interests in Community Education, or the student may include one or more of the following areas of study:

  • Family Involvement and Engagement: Explore policies and practices supporting effective ways to support family involvement in children’s learning and development.
  • Out-of-the-School Day Learning: Students re-search trends, opportunities and challenges in out-of-school day out-of-the-school building learning, and apply and reflect on their learning in field work experiences.
  • Community-based Learning: Powerful learning can happen in community-based environments. Research best practices and applied learning in service learning, place-based learning and other community-based strategies.
  • Partnership and Collaboration: Partnerships are critical for sustainability and development of programs that are authentically rooted in community. Collaborating with partners and stakeholders from across sectors presents its own set of rewards and challenges. Areas of research and practice may include developing advisory boards, working with school/community partnerships, engaging youth in youth/adult led initiatives, and more.
  • Community Education Process and Philosophy: Community Education has historical underpinnings rooted in a philosophy of community empowerment and equitable access to education. From the Danish folk school movement to the Highlander Research Center to the Occupy movement, community education has been an essential strategy for moving forward critical social change.
  • Leadership for Social Justice: Students explore how individuals and groups connect, organize, think systemically, bridge and learn as part of a dynamic leadership process that mobilizes action on the scale needed to address social justice.
  • Creating Space for Social Change: Students learn about leadership strategies for holding community conversations around difficult issues.
  • Restorative Justice: Restorative justice is an approach in which both the offender’s and victim’s needs and looks at the responsibility and involvement of the whole community in supporting restoration. Students research current trends and best practices in restorative justice.
  • Power of Youth Voice: Critical social movements and initiatives around the world are being launched by youth empowered voices.

Concentration Requirements – BA

In addition to the requirements for the BA in Education, students graduating with a Community Education Concentration will successfully complete 45 undergraduate level credits and complete a Field Study and Field Study Journal and a Community Education Portfolio.

Field Study and Field Study Journal

Students conduct study or studies in the field for a minimum of 15 credits over three semesters. Field Studies may be in one particular site or may take place in various sites. The Field Study Journal reflects the skills, knowledge and understanding gained in the field as a practitioner of Community Education. The Field Study Journal can be submitted in one of three ways:

  • As one individual packet for three credits per semester
  • Integrated within the evidence of learning within the packet
  • As an addendum to each packet of the semester

Community Education Portfolio

Students complete a CE Portfolio as documentation of how the criteria of the concentration have been met. The Portfolio consists of a checklist of the criteria and links to documents, products produced including brochures, videos, etc. that demonstrate evidence of learning. The completed Portfolio is presented for review to the faculty advisor before the graduation residency.

Senior Study

Each student is required to produce a culminating project in the form of a Senior Study in an area of Community Education that integrates theory, practice and Field Study. Undergraduate students are awarded 15 credits for the Senior Study.

Concentration Requirements – MA

In addition to the requirements for the MA in Education, students graduating with a Community Education Concentration will successfully complete 36 graduate level credits and complete the following:

Field Study and Field Study Journal

Students conduct study or studies in the field for a minimum of 12 credits over three semesters. Field Studies may be in one particular site or may be in various diverse sites. The Field Study Journal reflects the skills, knowledge and understanding gained in the field as a practitioner of community education. The Field Study Journal can be submitted in one of three ways:

  • As one individual packet for three credits per semester
  • Integrated within the evidence of learning within the packet
  • As an addendum to each packet of the semester

Community Education Portfolio

Students complete a CE Portfolio as documentation of how the criteria of the concentration have been met. The Portfolio consists of a checklist of the criteria and links to documents and products produced including brochures, videos, etc. that demonstrate evidence of learning. The completed Portfolio is presented for review to the faculty advisor before the graduation residency.

Master’s Thesis

Each student is required to produce a master’s thesis, which includes formulation of a significant question/s, application of methods of inquiry, identification and utilization of learning resources, interpretation of ideas, and integration and application of theory and practice.

The Faculty

The Education Program faculty are deeply committed to offering a holistic, interdisciplinary and student-centered approach to learning that is personally and socially relevant.

Our faculty is comprised of national and international scholar practitioners with extensive experience supporting students taking charge of their learning.

Request more information from an Admissions Counselor.