Winter ‘26 Institute on Teaching Social Action

This three-day virtual institute will introduce faculty and teaching staff to an experiential learning approach for incorporating social action campaigns into either a semester-long course or co-curricular workshop series. In this transformative experiential learning model, students develop and launch a social action campaign of their choosing during the semester the course is taught.

The student campaigns seek to change a rule, regulation, norm, or practice of an institution, whether on campus or in the community. While not all of the student campaigns are successful, many have been and those that haven’t succeeded have still taught valuable lessons to those who led them and those who were engaged in one form or another.

Our long-term goal is to mainstream this model for teaching active democracy. The world needs more people who have developed their knowledge and skills in bringing about positive change through real world experience.

Institute Preparation

During the three-day Institute, which runs from 1-5:30 pm EST, participants will begin to develop a teaching plan to support student campaigns to be launched mid-semester. The Institute sessions will be led by Dr. Scott Myers-Lipton, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at San José State University. In preparation for the Institute, participants will read two textbooks — CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action and CHANGE! A Guide to Teaching Social Action — as well as CHANGE! A Companion Guide to Teaching Social Action.

These resources address all aspects of teaching a social action course, including:

An Overview of Teaching Social Action
Organizing Your Class
Issue Development & Choosing Campaigns
Change Theory & Building Power

Research & Group Dynamics
Strategy & Tactics
Campaign Kick-Off
Campaign Plan & Evaluation

Here is a graph of how these course topics flow in Scott’s social action course:

Over the three-days, participants will meet each day for discussions about your goals, course models, teaching approach, and sharing examples and exercises that will help you plan your social action course or workshop series.

Institute participants will work with this course planning worksheet (below), which explores many of the issues that arise when teaching social action.

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Social Action Course Planning Worksheet

At the conclusion of the institute, we will invite attendees to participate in our networking community of fellow practitioners who are teaching or learning how to teach social action using this experiential, real-world model. The Teaching Social Action Group is hosted by the Bonner Foundation on the Bonner Learning Community Platform to give faculty, staff, and students a forum for asking questions, discussing active student campaigns, sharing successes and challenges, and announcing future opportunities for training, education, and reflection.

Application

There is no cost to join the Winter ‘26 Institute on Teaching Social Action. However, we want to restrict participation in the institute to those faculty or staff (who can teach) who are committed to implementing this experiential social action course model. Please note that preparing and supporting students to launch their social action campaigns generally takes at least half of the course content and assignments. Some courses are directly on social action and change, while others address a societal issue (e.g., climate change, housing, poverty, etc.) around which students develop their campaigns. From experience, the social action campaign dimension of these courses takes up roughly half of the course work (readings, assignments, and in-class teaching and group work).

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