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

Abstract

Service-learning is an experiential pedagogy that combines community service opportunities with academic content and critical reflection. When higher education rapidly shifted to online learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic, educators, community partners, and students had to reimagine how to implement the community component of this pedagogy. As a part of a larger study from a pilot service-learning-mentoring program, results from the spring 2020 semester showed that students’ attitudes about civic action, social justice, and diversity decreased throughout the semester. We argue that a decrease in civic attitudes seen in service learners during the spring 2020 semester points to important implications about the impact of shared and sustained distress on student’s capacity to engage in service activities that deviate from their expectations of service as an opportunity to provide in-person help to individuals. We consider the role of psychological proximity in moving students to see themselves as interconnected with the communities they serve and to see the problems that exist in these communities as their own. We suggest that a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic might provide an opportunity for service learners to build psychological proximity to communities and social problems in the absence of physical proximity.