LCRM304 - Community Engagement

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

LCRM205 Corrections Law and Practice and LCRM303 Criminology Research Project

Unit rationale, description and aim

As with any tertiary degree there is a point where all the learning undertaken within an academic context needs to be applied within a workplace context. Making this transition successfully and effectively is obviously of particular importance to every graduate.

This unit provides students with structured support to make an effective transition to applying what they have been learning through the degree within a workplace. It does this by first providing students with intensive training in workplace approaches, practices and customs. These include such matters as occupational roles and boundaries, health and safety, anti-discrimination and bullying, codes of conduct, and performance evaluation. In addition, students will be encouraged to see their transition into the workplace as a transition into being an autonomous professional with the capacity for further professional growth through ongoing reflective practice. Equipped with this foundation, students will then undertake a 40-hour placement in the criminal justice sector or in an organization that provides services to, or that conducts research with, people who have come into contact with the criminal justice system.

The unit forms part of Australian Catholic University Core Curriculum which comprises three units:

(a)      UNCC100: Self and Community: Exploring the Anatomy of Modern Society,

(b)     UNCC300: Justice and Change in a Global World; and

(c)      A Community Engagement Unit specific to each University program.

Units (a) and (b) are common to most undergraduate programs. Unit (c) serves to draw the Core Curriculum experience together and offer students an opportunity to live the Core Curriculum in action.

This unit falls within the third category mentioned above. It furthers the Mission of ACU and its commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, the dignity of the human person and the common good whilst engaging the Catholic intellectual tradition to bring a distinct perspective to the study of criminology and the pursuit of a career within the criminal justice profession. 

This unit will provide students with an opportunity to reflect upon the ability of the criminal justice system to respond to the needs of the marginalised and disadvantaged members of our society. The unit will also assist students to develop and reflect upon the values of collaboration, equality, mutual respect and commitment to justice.

The pursuit of justice and the achievement of the common good and the realisation of the dignity of the person are central objectives of community engagement in the Criminology and Criminal Justice degree and, correspondingly, this unit. Materials developed and used in the pre-placement phase of the course will emphasise these themes in order to prepare students for their work in the field. In addition, the reflection exercises contemplated during and after the placement will specifically address and focus upon the identity and mission of the University.  

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - Recognise workplace customs (GA5)

LO2 - Solve problems in the workplace (GA6)

LO3 - Reflect upon and evaluate self-performance in the workplace (GA3, GA4)

Graduate attributes

GA3 - apply ethical perspectives in informed decision making

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA6 - solve problems in a variety of settings taking local and international perspectives into account

Content

Topics will include:

• Workplaces in the criminal justice sector
• Occupational roles and boundaries in the criminal justice sector
• Service-learning and clinical education: understanding the purpose of a placement
• Regulation in the workplace: work, health and safety laws
• Regulation in the workplace: anti-discrimination and understanding cultural safety
• Regulation in the workplace: code of conduct
• Performance evaluation in the workplace
• What is a reflective practitioner and how do I become one?
• How to keep an effective reflective journal
• Evaluating your placement

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

The learning and teaching strategy in this unit is unlike others in the course. Here, the strategy is in three phases: intensive preparation for a workplace placement, the placement itself, and a workplace-based reflective exercise used as a tool for ‘de-briefing’ through which students gain increased self-awareness of their ability to apply their course-work learnings to the workplace.

Thus, the unit begins with two weeks of intensive online training on topics 1-8 (above) incorporating a short answer assessment task. This training coincides with sourcing of and provisional allocation of the placement to be undertaken.

Next, students are required to pass a “graded hurdle” exam. This is scheduled in week 5. The reason for this hurdle is that it tests students’ ability to be safely placed in the workplace with (at least) a minimum level of competence. Here, “safety” takes account of the prevalence of confidential and ethical matters in criminal justice organisations. Failure to pass the hurdle will result in failure of the unit, and the student will not be able to proceed to placement. There is no opportunity possible to repeat the hurdle assessment because it is temporally linked to the placement itself. Because of the critical nature of this assessment, it should be noted that it is structured and designed in a way that renders it unlikely to be failed – particularly given the intensive two-week training that precedes it.

When the hurdle exam is passed, students proceed to a placement of 40 hours.

Students then round out their experience with a workplace-based reflective exercise.

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment tasks have been explicitly created to address the identified Learning Outcomes for this unit (assessment of learning) and designed to allow students to learn about and apply the skills required by professionals working in the field of criminology (assessment for learning).

Students will be required to complete three assessment tasks in this unit. The first is a short answer task, in which students will be expected to identify a placement workplace (or if one has already been identified for them, that workplace), and then define its work, its service and any issues or ethical challenges faced by workers in the workplace. The aim is that the student understands the workplace before entering it.

This is followed by a ‘graded hurdle exam’, which will take place in week 3, before the placement. It will be a hurdle task testing knowledge of the material taught intensively in weeks 1 & 2. The exam will be multiple choice. This will be 30 items and the passing mark will be 20.

Finally, students complete a reflective journal that helps to ensure students connect their in-class learning and degree knowledge to their workplace learning in a meaningful way.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Cleak and Wilson, Making the Most of a Field Placement, 2018. 

Dal Pont, GE, Wolski, B., Macdonald, R. and Clark-Dickson, D., Lawyers: Roles, Skills and Responsibilities (Thomson Reuters, 3rd Edition, 2016)

Schwabel, D., How to Make the Most out of Internships (2011) http://business.time.com/2011/12/07/how-to-make-the-most-out-of-an-unpaid-internship