Becoming “Effective” Citizens? Change-Oriented Service in a Teacher Education Program

Abstract

The authors investigated the impact of 22 pre-service teachers' participation in a change-oriented service-learning project on their conceptions of citizenship as civic actors and civic educators. The goal of this project was to push students toward adopting more critically conscious and activist conceptions of citizenship as aligned with the needs of a democratic society. Using Eyler and Giles' (1999) typology of effective citizenship as an analytic framework, we describe how students' participation in this project led to demonstrated growth along all five dimensions of effective citizenship. Yet, analysis revealed that, despite the project's change-orientation, students' conceptions of citizenship failed to move beyond personal responsibility to include enhanced social consciousness and the importance of collective action. Thus, we raise critical questions about what constitutes "effective citizenship" in a democratic society and the role of higher education in preparing teachers to embody and enact such a vision.

Trends in Higher Education Service-Learning Courses for Pre-Service Teachers: A Systematic Review

“…On the contrary, 3 studies chose not to officially evaluate the students and only one study made use of alternative, modern means of evaluation such as posters, short narratives and photography. Wistfully, only one program out of the total 15, included a final celebration in the form of a class poster fair (Iverson & James, 2010), following the guidelines (Jenkins & Sheehey, 2011) and offering the students their much deserved demonstration moment as a form of validation. Little or no information is offered about the course credits system.…”

“…The selected research predominantly utilized S-L programs designed as components of various core curricula university courses, such as inclusive education and diversity courses (Conner, 2010;Carringtonm & Selva, 2010), introductory or capstone pedagogical courses (Chang, Anagnostopoulos & Omae, 2011;Coffey, 2010;Trauth-Nare, 2015;Sletto, 2010;Power, 2013), methods of teaching courses (Cone, 2012;Iverson & James, 2010;Kim, 2012), pedagogical research courses (Wallace, 2013), art education courses (Whiteland, 2013), thus corroborating the flexibility of S-L as a powerful curricular tool. Out of the total 15 approaches, 2 scholars designed the S-L experience as a summer program: a summer arts-based S-L with Australian Aboriginal people as beneficiaries (Power & Bennet, 2015) and a summer enrichment mentoring S-L program for developing pedagogical skills (Green, 2011).…”

“…Nevertheless, all studies included in the current qualitative synthesis are student-centred, focusing mainly on enhancing the preservice teachers' authentic learning experience (Green, 2011;Power & Bennet, 2015;Wallace, 2013) and their level of positive attitudes (Chang, Anagnostopoulos, & Omae, 2011;Carringtonm & Selva, 2010;Cone, 2012;Kim, 2012), as well as to ease the transition into practice per se (Coffey, 2011). Table 1 summarizes the subordinate enhancement aims which ranged from positively influencing students' assumptions or negative stereotypes (Conner, 2010) to increasing retention and learning success (Naidoo, 2012), enhancing critical thinking (Carringtonm & Selva, 2010), self-efficacy (Trauth-Nare, 2015), civic efficacy (Iverson & James, 2010;Naidoo, 2012), encourage introspection (Carringtonm & Selva, 2010;Whiteland, 2013) or addressing and maintaining a sustainable partnership with the community (Sletto, 2010;Whiteland, 2013).…”

“…Almost half (7) of the studies analysed chose a reflection journal as their main reflection component, while others (4) decided to involve technology as being more suited for the "digital-native" (Prensky, 2001) student: blogging (Green, 2011), weekly logs (Iverson & James, 2010;Sletto, 2010) or digital stories (Power & Bennet, 2015), Table 5. Less frequent were weekly reflection essays, focus groups, reflection on the course material, question logs or interviews, with one study mentioning each.…”

Justicia Social en la Escuela: Representaciones de Estudiantes de Educación Secundaria y Desafíos para la Formación del Profesorado

“…Al revisar la literatura sobre justicia social en la formación de profesores, hemos reagrupado los estudios en cinco líneas: a) Temáticas vinculadas con los distintos niveles del sistema educacional: macro, micro y meso La concepción de la justicia social puede ser entendida desde los distintos niveles educacionales: En el nivel macro se ubica el clima político que asocia la educación con los estándares de desempeño, la responsabilidad y la normalización (Conklin, 2008;Zeichner, 2010); a nivel micro se encuentra el tema de la resistencia del profesor de pregrado (Iverson y James, 2010). Otras investigaciones argumentan que la formación docente debe preparar a los profesores para relacionarse y comunicarse con la diversidad de estudiantes que se encuentran en el aula (Darling-Hammond, 2001).…”