Fostering Community Life and Human Civility in Academic Departments Through Covenant Practice

摘要

Creating desirable academic departments for individuals’ well-being and quality scholarship is an important effort as well as a novel idea. The focus of this reflective article is twofold: (a) We present a social capital theory of social justice covenants as a product and process of community building, and (b) we share the multiple lived experiences of three scholars within the context of our department's covenant ideology and practice. We explore how faculty can promote community and civility by not only developing but also enacting an internally generated covenant while operating within a larger institutional context that produces tension. As related to our purposes, we examined the relevant literature on social capital, capacity building, workplace environments, and organizational covenants to frame our discussion of community-driven action in education. We include an extended application of a covenant that guides our departmental faculty's social outlook, interpersonal behavior, scholarly work, and communal activism. Although our focus is on change-oriented, grassroots activity within higher education, the public schooling context is considered.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2011.573608