The Giving University and its Pedagogy

Universities represent a large asset in the communities and economies where they are located. Despite recent innovations, in particular cross universities projects, overall most universities have few arrangements in place which explicitly encourage them to give to their communities. This make the realising of assets very traditional (e.g. staff and students time) or fragmented (work with some groups of society or institutions). The challenge is to find ways in which a University can turn its focus outwards into the community and can make giving a core area of its work. The challenge then is how a University’s core functions (for example the curriculum, the social and cultural life, senior management arrangement, capital assets) can be reconceptualised as promoters of giving.

Canterbury Christ Church University has successfully demonstrated how universities can act as change agents in communities and can bridge the gap between community groups and the public sector. The next stage is to demonstrate how the university can work across age groups and other boundaries to bring people together for a common purpose, in this case to raise aspirations and levels of engagement in learning and in the engagement in citizenship learning in particular.