Learning through partnership with communities: A transformational journey

The purpose of this article, co-authored by instructors and students, is to highlight student learning and a student-developed model of Community Development that occurred through a service-based clinical placement. As part of their clinical community practicum, a group of second year nursing students were partnered with a group of seniors living in an inner city community. By deconstructing and categorizing ongoing student involvement with this community, students were able to make linkages to the many concepts that together form a community development approach to care, leading to the creation of a model of community development (the Community Health Advancement Model) to guide their evaluation. The process of evaluating nursing student progress from a community development perspective, and the subsequent creation of the model, highlighted several noted challenges of working within a service-learning model of care: the high level of self-direction and critical thinking required by students, and the lack of known outcomes. This article captures the students' struggles with and subsequent mastery through growth in understanding of these concepts. The model of community development, an outcome of their learning, showcases their depth of understanding of the importance of nurturing partnerships as foundational to providing care at a community level. This model may be useful within education of undergraduate nursing education by providing a visual road map of the process of community development. This article is an exemplar of the capacity and depth of understanding that is possible when students learn through community partnership.