The TEFCE Expert Team held its first Expert Team meeting at the Institute for the Development of Education (Croatia) to discuss the initial results of the mapping of the policies and practice on community engagement in higher education. The meeting was attended by Paul Benneworth (Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, University of Twente – Netherlands), Bojana Ćulum(Faculty of Philosophy, University of Rijeka– Croatia), Marco Seeber (Centrefor Higher Education Governance Ghent, University of Ghent – Belgium) and Ninoslav Šćukanec Schmidt and Thomas Farnell (Institute for the Development of Education – Croatia). 

At the meeting, the experts discussed the initial results of the mapping, as presented by each team member:

·        Definitions, approaches and challenges to community engagement

·        Literature review: Dimensions and current practices of community engagement

·        Critical approaches to developing effective accountability tools in higher education

·        Mapping existing tools for assessing community engagement in higher education

Following discussions on each section of the mapping, the experts agreed on the final changes to be made to each paper before editing the publication collecting all the papers, as well as on the key elements of the conclusions chapter. Finally, the Expert Team made an initial outline of how (based on the results of the mapping) an innovative approach to developing a ‘toolbox’ for community engagement could go a step beyond existing international initiatives.

The publication containing the results of the mapping (Mapping and Critical Synthesis of Current State-of-the-art on Community Engagement in Higher Education) will be issued by November 2018. The draft TEFCE toolbox will then be developed by January 2019.

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