The main theme that I am working on is based on an idea I had that students should be able to integrate their feminist activism with their academic learning. On top of that idea and based on my experiences of working part time at the Career Service I thought about the ways in which students might be able to get practical experiences in women centred or feminist organizations and again integrate them into their academic learning. Many universities offer placements to undergraduates through an intercalculated year but making it an integral part of an MA offering is less usual.

In starting to do research into the different models of experiential learning for academic credit I came across practices in the USA that were embedded into the secondary education system by the Bush administration in the 1990s. Wikipedia provides a pretty good overview of the different forms in which experiential learning can take, specifically community based learning (CBL) or service learning wikipedia Service Learning. I have also read an interesting paper that provides a typology of the different types of experiential learning and thinks about their usefulness for those leading Sociology courses see here Experiential Learning in Sociology Mooney and Edwards (2001)

It seems to me that having something like CBL or other forms of experiential learning embedded in our module would be a fantastic opportunity for those interested in Gender, feminism and sexualities because of the lived nature of these areas of study. What do you think?

Samantha Lyle