Diverse Applications of Sociological Imagination: A Qualitative Study of Service-Learning Mentoring

Abstract

This project expands discussions regarding critical ways that students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences intertwine with service-learning and social justice. Educators need to empower the next generation to explore their views, apply their skills, and engage with social issues. The research intersects with complex conversations about students’ perspectives regarding media representations, justice system responses, and views of at-risk youth. The project spanned four semesters of a sociology of media and crime course with service-learning mentoring. Qualitative reflection data drawn from 104 participating student mentors provided insights into how service-learners’ unique personal histories and sociological imaginations inform their views of youth, the mentoring experience, and social justice. The findings focus attention upon diversity within classrooms and expand the conversation about social justice praxis and service-learning pedagogy. Through reflexivity, the researchers consider their own social justice and service-learning practices, and add to the call for greater reflexivity within community-engaged sociology classrooms.

Postdigital Imaginations as Emancipatory Practices

“…Imagination has never entered the mainstream of social sciences. Nevertheless, it has been used as a methodological tool in different fields including sociology (Atkins and Grant 2022;Fuist 2021;Nasu 2014;Palmer 2023;Willis 2000), anthropology (Atkinson 1990;Rohrer and Thompson 2023), and social work (Barnetz 2015). The Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope (1959Hope ( /1986) has sparked considerable interest among critical social scientists, making a 'dramatic contrast to the Frankfurters' autopsy of the self-destroying Enlightenment' and connecting utopian imagination to educated hope (see Therborn 2024).…”

Benefits and challenges in integrating service-learning of social sciences subject in higher education

“…For students in Sociology, some reports have identified the relevance and benefits of integrating service learning in training programs (Atkins and Grant, 2022;Balazadeh, 1996;Eby, 2002;Freude et al, 2019;Hollis, 2002;Marullo, 2000). The American Sociological Association has stated that integrating service learning is necessary to gain sociological imagination, better understand the system of technical terms, and identify the effects of social science in studying social structure on people's lives (Calderon and Farrell, 1996).…”

“…In addition, service learning equipped students with necessary skills such as critical thinking, planning and teamwork. Atkins and Grant (2022) also emphasized that integrating service learning into the training program should allow students to participate in discussions to solve social problems, practice skills, and shape social attitudes, including a view on social justice.…”