Critically-Engaged Civic Learning (CECL) at Salem State is an equity-based framework that views all constituent stakeholders as invested partners in the co-design, implementation, and evaluation of CECL initiatives, and is founded on redistributed power and authority to promote civic learning and social change. Our work in this area has been published in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning.

At Salem State, we use the term CECL as an updated revision for the term "service-learning." The term service-learning is problematic as it invokes inequitable power dynamics that inherently privilege one group over another, with more privileged groups providing “service” to marginalized groups (Bortolin, 2011). CECL is structured by six guiding principles: social justice, power dynamics, community, civic learning objectives, reflexivity, and sustainability. We argue that CECL can be seen across four overarching outcomes: increased self-awareness, self-efficacy, and self-empowerment; increased awareness of civic agency; better understanding of community; and workforce preparation, which attend to the importance of sustainable community and social change. For faculty and community partners interested in undertaking this approach, we recommend using these principles to guide your co-design and implementation of your collaboration.

This framework also calls for a paradigmatic shift in service-learning pedagogy from a student-centered approach to an equity-based approach through what we call the stakeholder cloverleaf. Through the cloverleaf, representatives from each stakeholder group (community members, community organizations, college students, and faculty and community engagement professionals in higher education) have redistributed power and equitable authority in the co-design, implementation, and evaluation of a CECL initiative. Community (as a people and place) is broad and intentionally inclusive of all people who live, learn, work, play, and have impact on the local community, to include all stakeholders as well as individuals not directly involved in the initiatives.

In addition to the CECL framework, the Center also co-created a correlating assessment tool: The CECL Inventory for Social Change (CECL-ISC). CECL-ISC is designed to measure incremental and holistic change among stakeholders and in their communities. This instrument is unique in that it measures both student learning and the impact of CECL work in the community. The current version provided here is still in development and is currently being test-piloted.

For more information on CECL and the scholarship that shapes this framework, please visit these resources: