Building a CLDE Theory of Change: 5 Essays and An Invitation

Yesterday Forbes published the last in a series of five essays we wrote together to amplify and invite conversations about the CLDE Emergent Theory of Change first shared widely at the 2017 CLDE Meeting in Baltimore. Because you have been partners and sources of inspiration for this work, we wanted to share the entire series with you, encourage you to share the essays as you see fit, and invite your feedback.

1. Hope And Strategy For A Thriving Democracy
   We believe higher education and its partners in communities across America need a vision of civic learning and democratic engagement for our time: oriented to the thriving democracy we have not yet achieved, but can build together.

2. Civic Learning And Democratic Engagement For What? Envisioning A Thriving Democracy
   There can be no single, simple antidote to the frustration and fatalism engendered by features of our common world. Yet we can imagine a new era in which higher education’s civic learning and democratic engagement work helps to unleash the latent energy of Americans yearning for inclusion, connection, and collective agency.

3. Civics Unbound: Knowledge, Skills, And Dispositions For A Thriving Democracy
   In order to foster the democratic values we discussed in our previous post, institutions also must embody the civic ethos we hope will ultimately prevail in our society. Doing so is likely to involve relaxing our expectations relating to control and quantitative measurement, as well as intentionally eliminating some of the boundaries we have placed around our imaginations, relationships and learning processes.

4. Integral, Relational, Organic, And Generative: Pedagogy For A Thriving Democracy
   Can we achieve our ambitious civic learning outcomes more effectively by planting more seeds and imposing less structure? We can begin answering that broad question by interrogating our current practices and considering some new possibilities.

5. A Gathering Of Hopes And Stories: Organizing For A Thriving Democracy
   Despite being sobered by the magnitude of the challenge, the four of us are optimistic about the possibility of initiating meaningful changes in and through institutions of higher education. Our hope is grounded in experiences with community organizing and long-term change strategies, and in the recognition that champions of the democratic values and practices described in our previous essays in this series have extraordinary assets on which to build.

We also hope you’ll join us for the 2018 Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement meeting from June 6-8, 2018 in Anaheim, California. Early-bird registration ends May 1 – register here.

We look forward to your feedback and hope you’ll share your insights, reflections and commentary with us by email or as comments on the essays themselves on the Forbes platform.

Thanks,

David Hoffman, Jen Domagal-Goldman, Stephanie King & Verdis Robinson
UMBC, ADP, NASPA Lead & TDC