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The purpose of this Editorial is to introduce key themes in the area of student‐community engagement (SCE) and the papers included in this special issue.

The paper discusses dominant trends in the current context.

The selection of papers in this issue represent the range of programmes that have been developed over the past five or so years and indicate what they have, and have not been able to achieve. However, the recent context indicates an acceleration of the expectations placed on higher education to develop socially responsible citizens and to create graduates who will be able to solve the complex problems of an increasingly complex world.

The paper provides a background to SCE and the changing role and context of higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to present the current state of student volunteering in English universities, and show how it contributes to some of the core activities of higher education, including teaching and learning, employability, and public engagement. The paper goes on to describe challenges currently faced by student volunteering, and opportunities for its future development.

This viewpoint article utilises the experiences and observations of two former higher education community engagement practitioners who are now working at a national level to raise the profile of student volunteering, and reviews recent policy and practice related to this subject area.

Although student volunteering has a long tradition in English universities and there has been investment in the provision over the last decade, student volunteering is currently at a critical point. Without stronger evidence of impact, continued funding and an integrated approach to its development, student volunteering will not meet its full potential for higher education.

The paper has implications for higher education senior management, employers, community and employer engagement practitioners within higher education, and students. It advocates that integrated approaches are needed at national and institutional level to support the development of student volunteering.

The paper utilises the unique experience of former practitioners who now work in national roles, exploring a wide range of contemporary sources.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of rising fees and the increasing privatisation of higher education on the expectations of its students. It compares experiences in Canada, Australia and the US with conversations carried out in a UK university in 2012 (after the UK fee rise).

The research was informed by Burns Systemic Action research (2007), following emerging lines of enquiry and responding to resonance in these. It brings together conversations held with new undergraduates, second and third year students and staff tasked with introducing engagement into the curriculum.

Findings indicate that student expectations are heavily influenced by secondary schooling and a target-driven consumer culture but that change has been gradual over a number of years. Alongside wanting “value for money” and “a good social life and a good degree” students are heavily motivated by experience and keen to be challenged.

Because of the research approach, the research results may lack generalisability.

By comparing banking or transactional approaches to teaching and learning with critical pedagogy this paper hopes to highlight the importance of opening up rather than closing down opportunities for social engagement and experiential learning.

This paper makes a plea for social engagement that properly responds to the needs of communities resisting market-driven forces that treat students as consumers and expecting more rather than less from them in return.

Lecturers are encouraged to rethink the pressures placed upon them by the current economic era and the tensions between competing agendas of employability and engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of student‐community engagement in ensuring relevance of higher education to civil, social, economic and moral issues. It reviews the literature around three inter‐related themes: calls for higher education institutions to engage with their communities; the kinds of attributes university graduates should possess for employability and citizenship; and the pedagogies of experiential learning and reflection informing student and community engagement.

This paper evaluates and draws together international literature related to three areas: calls for universities to engage with their communities, attributes which students engaged in co‐generative community relations might develop, and pedagogies which inform and develop such engagement.

The paper draws a number of conclusions related to pedagogy, citizenship and the need to develop quality indicators of engagement and impact. The overarching conclusion is that student‐community engagement founded on principles of mutual reciprocity enhances student attributes and is an important aspect of the modern university. Higher education needs to both retrieve the traditional civic role of the university, and also look forward to creating new approaches, so that universities are “of” the community and developing graduates as citizens.

The paper includes policy implications for curriculum development in relation to fostering graduate attributes and citizenship.

Through an exploration and integration of literature related to themes of university community engagement, graduate attributes and pedagogies of experiential reflective learning the paper signposts an agenda of change for universities in the twenty‐first century.

The purpose of this paper is to chart developments in a community engagement scheme run by two Universities in the North East, offering students academic credit in return for work within the local community. The particular focus is on how learning has been assessed from this work experience, within the requirements of higher education courses, and the introduction of a new and innovative practice of assessing students by interview.

This paper provides a critical reflection on the practice and the rationale behind changes and developments that have been made to this. It includes some of the theoretical background in relation to the benefits of undertaking work experience, and to assessment methods within higher education.

Using an assessed interview for all students taking work experience modules has compared favourably with other assessment methods used in the past. Although there have been some adjustments to the process in the three years since its introduction, it has been successful in providing greater authenticity of experience for students, without significantly increasing investment of staff time in the assessment process.

This paper will be of value to practitioners involved with, or wishing to set up, community engagement or work experience schemes offering students or pupils academic accreditation in exchange for this experience, as well as those interested in novel practice within higher education assessment.

This paper aims to explore student learning within a local service‐learning initiative that forms part of an Education Studies undergraduate programme at an HEI in the UK with a history of international service‐learning programmes.

This paper outlines the context for this form of community engagement in the UK and reflects on the experiences of student participants and the nature of their learning. Ethnographic research into the student experience of international service‐learning (ISL) provides a useful framework for this study.

This research draws on transformational learning theory to describe how students experience a shifting of their world‐view through service‐learning locally. It reveals that challenges to stereotypes and personal values, as well as other previously accepted presuppositions, in a domestic context, are not dissimilar from those experienced by students involved in international service‐learning initiatives.

The framework presented here is used to explore the dynamic relationship between local and international volunteering and student learning. This particular case study has the potential to add to our understanding of critical pedagogy theory in practice.

This article presents evidence of the complexity of identifying transformative learning. In order to elevate the outcomes of service‐learning towards their transformative potential, the opportunities for learning that are afforded by such ventures must be pursued with vigour. The authors advocate a model of community engagement that embeds local service‐learning within the curriculum.

This paper aims to focus on the process of critically evaluating Dublin Institute of Technology's Programme for Students Learning With Communities after its first year of operation. The programme supports and promotes community‐based learning/service‐learning across DIT.

The paper is presented in the form of a case study, wherein the context for the work is outlined, addressing both strengths and weaknesses of the practice to date, and comment briefly on wider implications.

After nine months an evaluation of the programme was carried out. It identified four main areas where it was felt there was potential for improvement: reflection on learning; the nature and quality of student, staff and community engagement on projects; project evaluations; student involvement in project planning and recruitment to community‐based research projects. Each area is addressed in turn and the actions taken to date to enhance the service delivery is described. Some initial thoughts on the implications of the work are given.

This paper will be of value to students, educators and community partners interested in the possibilities inherent in students learning with communities, and in the process of reflection on this work.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of student learning from community engagement by critically assessing the implementation of this pedagogical approach in the context of teaching and learning chemistry and also evaluating the role of personal development in student‐community engagement.

A case study on the implementation since 2007 of community‐based learning (also called service‐learning) projects in an academic department in Ireland is presented. Analysis of assessment grades, student reflective accounts and evaluation questionnaires informs this work, as does a recently completed self‐assessment of our activities using Shumer's Self‐Assessment for Service‐Learning.

A marked improvement in student engagement and confidence, and their appreciation of how their subject is applied in real‐world situations, is reported. Some difficulties arise however, in relation to the level of critical thinking and self‐awareness evident in reflective writing assignments, as the students were generally not experienced in reflection on personal experiences. The extent to which it has been demonstrated that genuine community needs are being met is also an issue in some instances.

The paper describes some innovative practices, as CBL is not well established in the discipline concerned, chemistry, and it has also not often been applied to the benefit of small local businesses. A critical analysis of the process followed when CBL activities were implemented in an institution without an existing, well‐established culture of applying this pedagogical approach is provided, as this is a perspective not often explored in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of popular theatre (PT) as a pedagogical tool around which a community service learning (CSL) senior undergraduate course was oriented, specifically assessing the university student learning experience from this work relative to PT processes and CSL objectives.

This paper presents a case study based on participant observations made by the course instructor, and reflective journal entries written by the university student participants.

Educational partnership efforts of this nature require that they be tailored to contingent circumstances: locale, time constraints, spaces of interaction, willingness, effort and abilities of the group partners, and other particularities of community. Given this, we see learning outcomes as replicable, though shaped in various ways by the circumstances of specific situations.

The paper demonstrates that by recognizing and relying upon the often unnoticed and neglected, strengths of differently‐abled community members – both students from the university, and the clients from the partner social agency – this kind of community service learning team project transforms and enriches traditional academic outcomes.

This paper reports on the outcomes of this experience from the student perspective, and highlights themes of boundary‐breaking, pedagogical risk‐taking and changes in understanding of community through the analysis of the student service‐learning diaries and instructor participation. It also highlights some specific difficulties regarding group dynamics and student concerns that can emerge under learning environments like this, where course expectations, direction and outcomes may not be clearly defined at the outset.

This paper describes a unique fusion of two alternative teaching and learning methods: CSL and PT. This fusion contributed significantly to student creativity and innovation, to their sense of accomplishment and confidence, and especially to their understanding of diversity and connection to community, all of which they take into the world beyond the university. This fusion of pedagogies is seen as a fruitful direction for institutions of higher education seeking innovative paths to learning, while noting that facilitators need to pay close attention to the unique dynamics of such learning environments.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of a service‐learning experience on the personal development of college students, particularly focusing on the expression of empathy.

Reflective writing papers were evaluated using a rubric with definitions for three types of understanding, as defined by Wiggins and McTighe in 2005, perspective, empathy, and self‐knowledge. The results were analyzed using Fisher's exact test to determine if there were significant differences in the expression of these types of understanding between the service‐learning group and the group that did not do service‐learning.

Students involved in the service‐learning assignment were significantly (p < 0.05) more likely to express empathy in their reflective writing than the students who did not participate in service‐learning. There were no significant differences between the groups in the other two types of understanding.

This was a small study in two classes taught by the researcher so the findings are limited by these factors. The self‐selection of the students into the two assignment groups also limits the conclusions that can be drawn from the findings.

Personal development can be fostered by service‐learning assignments that include opportunities to interact with people in need so that understanding through empathy is likely to be experienced.

This study focused on the type of service‐learning experiences that are likely to lead to experiencing empathy which contributes to personal development. This type of development is a component of the general education goals for undergraduates in the USA.