The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics: - Higher Education ...

The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics
was the development of students’ political engagement. In post-placement
interviews the students talked about their improved appreciation and
estimation of political processes and actors, which grew out of seeing the
important and non-partisan work they do on a day-to-day basis. With clear
evidence that young people have become disconnected from traditional
political procedures (e.g., Sloam 2007) and with the mounting public
cynicism towards established political institutions following the MPs’
expenses scandal in 2009, this is a matter of no small importance.
The second unexpected and related benefit was the students’
discovery of their own ability to make a difference in the world. For
example, through lobbying government departments on behalf of a
constituent, the students found that they could act politically and get
things done (Curtis and Blair 2008). In addition, most of the students
came away with a clearer understanding of the political careers that were
open to them along with the knowledge that they could successfully
function and succeed in such environments (Curtis 2009). In short, the
students experienced an increase in their sense of personal or ‘internal’
efficacy: ‘their sense of what they think and do politically matters, that they
are capable of grasping complex political issues, and that they have a role
to play in the political process’ (Colby et al. 2007: 229), although we would
expand this definition to include a clear pay-off in terms of employability
as well.
As we discovered, the scholarship of engagement for politics was
broader and richer than we perhaps anticipated. We hope to capture some
of that richness in this volume. In addition to the concern with using
placements to improve learning and teaching, the themes of citizenship
and employability have been given equal weighting. 2 The chapters in this
volume grew out of the end-of-project conference we hosted at the
University of Warwick on 10–11 June 2008, which we used as an
opportunity to pull together and learn from many of the people we had met
and worked with through the course of the project. In the subtitle shared
by the conference and this book we have thrown open the meaning of the
scholarship of engagement for politics to embrace community engagement,
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