Being, Knowing, Doing: Learning with a Public Purpose
The Being-Knowing-Doing Framework is a structured format we use in the David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement for students to begin thinking about the public purpose behind their education and action. This framework has supported students who want to be involved in their communities, yet do not yet have a clear issue of public concern or type of action they are passionate about.
In the Foundations of Community-Engaged Learning, students draft a Statement of Public Purpose to identify next steps for getting involved in community-engaged learning that resonate with their values, community knowledge, and different types of social actions that can support the public good.
When starting to support communities, first we need to ask ourselves: What is the state of the world right now? What social issues, or issues of public concern, are calling us to take action? How will our personal growth benefit the wider public good?
Being: What are 3–5 values you strive to live by? How do you see yourself now?
In any new context, it is important to explore how we want to be in the world. What are the values guiding our intentions and actions? Where did we learn those values from? How do our values inform who we reach out to and what actions we take? “ What are your core values?” is often the hardest question to answer;, because our values are so ingrained in how we are in the world, we can forget their existence and history.
When leading a workshop on core values, Engaged Ambassador Lesly Zhicay ’23 found the following video on “Values vs. Goals”, by Dr. Russ Harris, to be a helpful way to explore how a values-focused approach changes the way we think about our community-engaged learning journey. We learn our values from our environments, upbringings, communities, cultures, education, governing bodies, and more. As we begin to engage with communities in different contexts and roles, sometimes we will share values, and sometimes we won’t. The process of collaboration can challenge, reinforce, or change our understanding of our core values and the values of our partners.
Knowing: Which ways of knowing would you like to explore more? How might community wisdom complement your Cornell experience?
Seeing ourselves as we are and where we want to be or go helps us identify what we need to know to be effective in supporting our communities. While in the context of Cornell University, there can be an emphasis on academic theory, there are many ways of knowing the world. In their article, “Multiple Ways of Knowing: Expanding How We Know” , Elissa Sloane Perry and Aja Couchois Duncan term the types of knowledge most valued in academic institutions as generalized knowing; examples include theories, best practices, and concepts that come from multiple experiments. This type of knowledge is valuable when sharing lessons from varied experiences in ways that amplify individual projects and smaller-scale initiatives in communities across the world.
By relying too much on generalized knowing, however, we overlook knowledge, experiences, ideas, and actions that exist outside of conferences, articles, and textbooks. There is practical knowledge, which focuses on “learning from the doing. Not the learning about doing.” There is artistic knowledge, which focuses on how we learn and engage with each other, whether through spoken word and writing, or music and movement. Sanjna Das ’21 writes about the necessity of valuing and preserving traditional knowledge in her own life, fromor personal relationships with her grandmother to scientific understandings of climate change.
The importance of acknowledging these different ways of knowing is to also recognize the wisdom that exists outside of academia and higher education. Professors and scholars have wisdom, but what about elders in our own community? The murals across Ithaca? Front-line workers and informal caregivers? The different types of knowledge that we look for and trust complement and challenge each other, strengthening our own understanding of the complex issues we face.
Doing: What form of action or community engagement do you feel drawn to? Why? Are people already taking action in this community to address your issue of public concern?
As we learn more about ourselves and our communities, we become familiar with different types of action. In college, the types of social action that immediately come to mind are often direct service, such as volunteering in kitchens and shelters, or fundraising, giving, and philanthropy, such as donating canned goods or funds. Through the work of Campus Compact, the Social Change Wheel 2.0 allows us to explore a variety of actions community members take to work toward social change, and offers some ways to think about how what we learn outside of campus can influence the ways we make social change at Cornell, as well.
Particularly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been challenged to think more creatively in how we support members of our community, from supporting mutual aid efforts to incorporating bias intervention training in our own daily behavior. As we learn more and get involved in different types of actions taking place in our communities, we learn more about which actions we are best suited to support. With her background in research and activism, for example, Amber Haywood ’21 worked at the intersection of philanthropy and community and economic development to better understand and advocate for the ways the Einhorn Center (then the Office of Engagement Initiatives) allocates funds to black and indigenous communities, communities that are often most affected by issues of public concern.
Committed and sustainable community partnerships require us to, time and again, align our values, learning, and actions. The Being-Knowing-Doing framework is a tool to support you in moving towards your goals and the goals of your community whether you use it as a critical reflection prompt as you search for ways to connect with your community, or guiding questions to keep in mind in a lifelong journey of community-engaged learning.
