What is Community Engaged Learning?
Community Engaged Learning (CEL) is both a pedagogical approach and an epistemological method that embeds collaboration with communities into teaching and knowledge creation. Related terms include Service-Learning and Community-Based Learning (Eyler & Giles, 1999; Jacoby, 2016; Yonder et al., 2021).
At its core, CEL is experiential learning in which students collaborate with external communities to address real-world challenges as part of their studies and research. Rather than remaining confined to lecture halls, students engage with lived realities, cultivating empathy, reflexivity and civic responsibility.
CEL takes many forms: from community-led design projects and participatory storytelling to community-based research or arts collaborations (see UCL’s Community Engaged Learning pages).
CEL through the lens of social justice
CEL recognises that communities are not merely “sites” of study but active partners in knowledge creation. It positions learning as a two-way process in which knowledge is co-produced rather than delivered. Through these collaborations, students learn with communities, applying academic ideas to practical challenges while critically reflecting on their own assumptions, privileges and biases.
In this model, educators act as facilitators of mutual learning. They design processes that promote dialogue, co-production and shared reflection. For community partners, CEL provides a platform to articulate priorities, co-design solutions, and strengthen local capacity. For universities, CEL transforms how knowledge is understood not as something to be transferred, but as something to be shared, negotiated and reimagined collectively.
However, CEL is not neutral; it is inherently political. A socially just approach requires us to examine power and voice - whose knowledge counts, whose experiences inform the curriculum, and who benefits from partnership. A justice-oriented practice moves beyond the language of “mutual benefit” to interrogate the structural and epistemic power imbalances between universities and communities, and between academic and local knowledge systems.
It asks: Who defines the problems? Who interprets the findings? Who owns the outcomes?
CEL thus becomes a means of challenging epistemic injustice, the exclusion of certain voices or ways of knowing from academic legitimacy, and advancing knowledge democracy (Tandon & Hall, 2014).
The SIIL module: co-creating knowledge at King’s College London
At the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, a Service-Learning module was developed in collaboration with the Southwark Pensioners Centre (SPC), a charity supporting older adults in South London. The module, titled SIIL (Self-Identity, Intercultural and Intergenerational Learning), forms part of the MSc in Mental Health Studies and was first delivered in 2019-20.
The module was co-created with SPC to foster intergenerational and intercultural collaboration and to address loneliness and isolation - both among older adults and postgraduate students. Its structure was developed in direct response to SPC’s priorities and the socio-cultural questions they wished to explore through partnership. One of the main aims was to ensure that the voices of older adults were heard and represented in ways that could inform social and policy change.
Learning through connection
Students were paired with one or two older adults and invited to engage in conversations by phone or in person about mental health and overall well-being. Because the module was launched during the Covid-19 pandemic, many discussions naturally explored themes of isolation, resilience and adaptation.
Students collected personal stories and conducted thematic analysis to identify patterns of meaning and emotion. Assessment took creative forms: digital storytelling projects and reflective essays that combined analysis with personal insight. These artefacts honoured both the voices of their community partners and the students’ own learning journeys.
At the end of the academic year, students and older adults gathered at SPC for a celebration event where students shared their digital projects. This act of returning the stories to the community, closing the loop, was central to the ethos of CEL, ensuring reciprocity and accountability.
The SIIL module continues to run successfully. Over six years of collaboration, SPC has gathered a rich collection of oral narratives illuminating the lived experiences of South London’s older adult community. SPC now plans to use these stories as evidence for social and policy change, addressing socio-economic inequities affecting older people. Another ambition is to share the oral histories with the British Library, preserving them as a socio-cultural testimony to the lives of older adults in South London.
Impact
The SIIL module demonstrates how CEL can be transformative for students, communities and educators alike:
For students, it develops empathy, listening and reflexivity - skills essential for mental health professionals and global citizens. Many reported that the experience reshaped their understanding of ageing, wellbeing and community connection.
For community partners, it amplifies voices that are often marginalised in public discourse. Participants described feeling valued, heard and reconnected through their conversations with students.
For educators, it redefines teaching for social justice not as content but as process: designing spaces for dialogue, reflection and shared authorship of knowledge.
Ultimately, CEL helps reimagine higher education as a relational ecosystem in which learning, research and civic engagement reinforce one another.
Challenges and reflections
CEL also brings challenges. Building meaningful partnerships requires time, trust and institutional support. Universities often prioritise measurable outputs over relational outcomes, making it difficult to sustain long-term collaborations. Ethical considerations such as consent, representation and emotional labour demand ongoing reflection and care.
Yet, as the SIIL experience shows, these challenges are generative. They push institutions to rethink success not as efficiency but as transformation. They remind us that education, at its most impactful, is about connection, care and shared responsibility.
Call to action
If you are an educator, you can embed community engagement into your teaching through small, purposeful collaborations that connect learning with community needs. Prioritise reciprocity and co-creation.
If you are an academic developer or leader, create structures that recognise, support and reward community-engaged practice through training, partnership facilitation and appropriate workload allocation.
You can also join the UK Service-Learning/Community Engaged Learning Network, Jiscmail, and become part of a community of over 100 UK practitioners.
Together, we can build universities that belong to their communities where knowledge is co-created, power is shared and learning drives social change.
Marie Xypaki is a higher education practitioner and researcher recognised in the UK for her leadership in socially just, community-engaged and participatory pedagogies. She is co-founder of the UK Service-Learning Network and has led sector-wide initiatives embedding Service-Learning and Education for Sustainable Development. With an interdisciplinary background in political science, urban planning, and the sociology of education, she brings a critical, systemic perspective to pedagogy and educational policy. Since 2012, she has held senior roles across UK universities, leading curriculum transformation and securing over £400,000 in funding for collaborative projects. She is affiliated with SOAS and University College London.
Donata Puntil (SFHEA) is a Lecturer in Psychotherapy at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. Donata is a qualified Psychodynamic Psychotherapist and a member of the British Psychoanalytical Council (BPC) and of the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists (TSP). Donata's background is multidisciplinary with a strong focus on critical pedagogy, on the intersectionality between education, social justice and mental health. She is a co-founder of the UK Service-Learning/CEL network.
Patricia Zunszain (SFHEA) is Professor of Multidisciplinary Mental Health Education at the IoPPN, researching biochemical and social aspects of depression, resilience, diversity and neuroeducation. She designs and implements initiatives to promote personal growth and wellbeing of postgraduate students and researchers and is a co-founder of the UK Service-Learning/CEL network.