A Review of Social Learning as a Function of Student-centered Outreach in African Universities

Abstract

There are attempts in African universities to strengthen their engagement with communities through student-centered outreach (S-C-O). Although the concept of social learning has been introduced in S-C-O, there is still limited theoretical understanding of how the mechanism of social learning in the S-C-O model works due to inadequate availability of indicators for empirical assessment of social learning in S-C-O programmes. This review paper explores possible indicators for measuring social learning in S-C-O. A desk review was conducted to obtain literature about the key concepts of the university outreach and social learning. A thematic-content analysis was employed to obtain indicators for measuring social learning. Our review has revealed that communities of practice theory (CPT) of social learning provides a conceptual framework for analysis of social learning in S-C-O. The key tenets of CPT include practice, community, identity and meaning. This implies that social learning occurs through collaborative learning processes as a result of social participation. Thus, efforts to investigate social learning in the S-C-O model should focus on farmers in order to assess their interactions in the prevailing social setting and/or institutional context.