UCLA Ed&IS book launch celebrates UC Link publication
University-Community Links (UC Links) and the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies will celebrate the publication of University-Community Partnerships for Transformative Education: Sowing Seeds of Resistance and Renewal, a new book reporting on a network of innovative in-school and out-of-school programs that are part of UC Links, Tuesday, October 1 at UCLA.
Edited by Mara Welsh Mahmood and John Cano of UC Berkeley, and Marjorie Elaine of UCLA (formerly Marjorie Faulstich Orellana), the new publication describes programs in California, Germany, Italy, Spain, Uganda, and Uruguay offering transformative models of education helping to re-imagine educational practices, policies, and programs. Chapters in the book explore strategies for co-creating learning environments that are innovative, collaborative, democratic, equity-oriented, and fun, and that merge teaching, research and service.
For example, in the chapter, “Nurturing Connection through Joyful, Creative Play: A Heart-Driven Approach to Educator Preparation,” Elaine joins with authors Andrea C. Minkoff and Janelle Franco to review B-Club-a play-based after-school program serving a diverse, new immigrant community in Los Angeles. The chapter discusses the transformative potential of spaces like B-Club for educator preparation and suggests possibilities for re-imaging teacher education and reconceptualizing what learning can look like for both children and adults. The chapter includes examples of creative play and joyful human connection that took place in this multilingual, cross-age program at the UCLA Community School from 2009 to 2020.
“This book is the result of two years of uplifting, on-line writing workshops, authors supported each other to develop the chapters while learning about each other’s sustained community-engaged research,” says Elaine. “We show a variety of models for long-term, sustained, community-engaged research, giving readers a taste of the joy that these programs have fostered as the seeds of the UC Links model have flown around the world.”
The book also includes first-person reflections from community partners, undergraduate and graduate students, and university faculty in UC Link programs, as testimonies to how the UC Links experience has transformed learning and lives.
UC Links is a collaborative network of university and community partners working to sustain after-school programs that extend access to quality educational resources and activities for P-12 youth from underserved California communities. The UC Links network has grown to connect university faculty and students with young people and their families in diverse communities around the world.
University-Community Partnerships for Transformative Education: Sowing Seeds of Resistance and Renewal is published by Palgrave Macmillan Cham and is available as an open-access publication via Springer Link.A book launch celebrating the publication will be hosted by the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies on Tuesday, October 1, at 3 pm in the reading room at Moore Hall at UCLA. The editors and authors of several chapters will guide the audience in conversations about this model of sustained community-engaged research.
Learn more about the October 1st Book Launch event here.