Education for Interdisciplinary Community Collaboration and Development: The Components of a Core Curriculum by Community Practitioners |
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| Authors: | Martha Lucia Garcia Terry Mizrahi Marcia Bayne-Smith |
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| Institution: | 1. The CUNY School of Law , Flushing, New York, USA garcia@mail.law.cuny.edu;3. Hunter College School of Social Work at CUNY , New York, New York, USA;4. Department of Urban Studies, Queens College , City University of New York , Queens, New York, USA |
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| Abstract: | Social workers are actively engaging in the practice of interdisciplinary community collaboration (ICC) with the goal of bringing diverse groups together to improve the conditions of communities and enhance the quality of life of population groups. Yet, collaborations are challenging and require great skill and commitment. The pedagogy and the content of curricula have become a more prominent part of teaching to macro practice students and practitioners the art of effectively convening and moving collaborative efforts forward. This article adds to the literature on the content and methods of teaching students and novice practitioners the competencies embedded in ICC. It provides empirical data from six focus groups of experienced community practitioners (social workers and others) in New York City who identified components of a core curriculum for this work. Eight months later, these 33 community practitioners were asked to reprioritize the topics and concepts that they had collectively identified at the earlier time. Skills such as the ability to share power, manage differences, include the constituency and diplomacy are among those discussed. Core curriculum themes, the pedagogy and process, and the attributes and values necessary for training an ICC practitioner are presented. |
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| Keywords: | teaching collaboration interdisciplinary community collaboration theory and praxis active community engagement collaboration with community practitioners curriculum for collaboration |
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