Building Relationships for Critical Service-Learning

Abstract

Service-learning is a pedagogical approach that higher education can use to promote civic engagement among students, but it has not fully realized its original civic purpose. Butin (2010) argues that to meet its civic mission, service-learning must move toward a more justice-oriented pedagogy that empowers stakeholders to bring about social change. To that end, we worked toward a more critical model of service-learning, first proposed by Mitchell (2008), that encourages a social change approach to service-learning. We propose that students' relationships with their professors, community partners, and peer mentors help facilitate this goal. We examined how these three types of relationship impacted students' civic engagement. Results demonstrated that each type of relationship had a different impact on students' developing civic engagement attitudes. This article discusses how such relationships can help achieve critical service-learning's goal of developing more participatory and transformational citizens. Service-learning represents an important pedagogical approach that higher education can use to promote civic engagement among students (Duncan & Kopperud, 2008). Civic engagement, defined by Thomas Ehrlich (2000), is using political and non-political means to engage with a community to make a positive difference in the quality of life for members of that community. Higher education is uniquely positioned to encourage civic engagement because it can provide students with a space to recognize injustice and inequality, to obtain skills to speak and act on unchallenged systems, and to gain intercultural competencies to promote public action (Musil, 2009). We propose that service-learning students' relationships with their professors, community partners, and peer mentors further develop their civic engagement attitudes. Research demonstrates a wide range of benefits of service-learning for students including significant gains in social skills, academic performance, personal insight, and cognitive development (Celio et al., 2011; Yorio & Feifei, 2012). These benefits in student outcomes reveal the positive impact of service-learning coursework on students' personal and professional development (Butin, 2010). Such glowing findings might mislead us into thinking service-learning has only positive outcomes. A significant number of theorists and researchers have

The Power of Proximity: Navigating Physical and Psychological Connection in Service-Learning Courses Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Within this uniquely challenging set of circumstances, where existing inequities and vulnerabilities are being highlighted and garnering increased attention, service-learners are expressing decreases in their own self-confidence relating to their intentions to engage civically (civic action), their understanding of the causes of inequality and how social problems can be solved (social justice attitudes), and their attitudes toward diversity and relating to culturally different people (diversity attitudes). While this may seem somewhat counterintuitive and contrasts with previous findings in this area (Harkins et al, 2020), in the context of a global pandemic, these findings are in line with the literature on the theory of terror management as well as the theory of reasoned action.…”

“…The data presented in this article is a part of a larger study of a service-learning mentoring program that was developed at an urban, private university in the Northeast from 2017 to 2020 (Grenier et al, 2021;Harkins et al, 2020). This program encompassed multiple levels of mentoring: faculty-faculty, faculty-graduate student, graduate student-undergraduate student, and undergraduate student-undergraduate student.…”

“…In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have returned to some of our earlier research on a pilot service-learning mentoring program (Harkins et al, 2020)…”

Value of Volunteer Leadership for University Students Formerly Enrolled in Prescribed Reading: An Anti-Deficit Model

“…Additionally, a variety of terminology is used to describe these various models (Paull et al, 2015). The variations of student experience challenge the reliability of board statements about the benefits of volunteering, pointing to the value of qualitative studies (for example, Weinronk et al, 2018) and mixed-method research (for example, Harkins et al, 2020) that explore student perceptions of volunteering in specific settings. Contextual analyses of student volunteer experiences can highlight beneficial trends and practices.…”

Collaborating Successfully with Community Partners and Clients in Online Service-Learning Classes

“…Service-learning requires collaboration as students and community partners must span physical, relational, psychological, structural, and cultural boundaries (Hayes & Cuban, 1997; Janke, 2008) to work together. Service-learning provides real world relevance as students work with partners to create deliverables that meet community needs or address issues facing clients.…”