From Classroom to Community: A Report from the TIP Seminar on Service-Learning
Tracy Citeroni
Debbie Hydorn
Besty Lewis
Miriam Liss
Chris McBride
Debra Schleef
With newly purchased workbooks in hand, the six of us began to unravel some of the mysteries behind the concept of service learning. While some of us had integrated community service into courses in the past and used the seminar to improve those offerings, others were just beginning to consider the impact service-learning could have in their courses. During the semester long seminar, we encountered several questions that made us reflect on the meaning, implementation, and desired outcomes of this community oriented approach to teaching. Below we outline some of the questions we considered as well as what we accomplished through this opportunity.
WHAT IS SERVICE LEARNING AND MUST SERVICE LEARNING INCLUDE CIVIC ENGAGEMENT?
We began by reviewing the Service-Learning Course Design Workbook published by the editor of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (Howard, 2001). The workbook provided a useful list of principles of good practice, some guidance on assessment of learning, and a discussion of the goals of service learning. Because one of our first tasks was to define the construct of service-learning, the last of these topics is where we started our discussions. The handbook argued that academic service learning is made up of three components: 1) meaningful service to the community; 2) enhanced learning in an academic area; and 3) enhanced civic learning.
While we all agreed on the first two goals, some suggested that civic engagement may not be necessary for academic service learning. Under the category of civic engagement, the handbook included such things as learning to be an active citizen, learning to be politically involved in the community, and learning about a personal responsibility to others. However, if students in a statistics course are conducting data analysis for a local nonprofit agency (as they have done in both Debbie and Chris’s courses), there may not be a much of a focus on civic learning as defined by the handbook. Can this type of assignment still be considered “service learning” or is it missing a critical component? Those of us who teach these courses were forced to reflect on this basic question.
Alternatively, others noted that CSL would not accomplish their goals without a very strong civic component. For example, Tracy came to the TIP seminar with serious reservations about the implementation of service learning in sociology courses because of a lack of meaningful civic engagement. Despite widespread belief that service-learning practices seemed a natural partner to Sociology, she struggled with the decision of not only how but whether to incorporate service-learning practices in her courses. Tracy’s concerns stemmed from her conviction that service learning may lead students to see civic engagement merely as the process of lending labor to preexisting social institutions without reflecting on how these institutions may, at their worst, produce social inequality and social problems in the first place.
Echoing Tracy’s call for more reflection on the meaning of civic engagement, Debra left the seminar with the conviction to make more connections to course material and to structural issues in sociology. For example, when looking at poverty, she would now assign critical readings that address the privatization of hunger by way of food banks, which solve the immediate problem but divert resources away from meaningful social change. She would address those student preconceptions so that they could learn something about the sociology of volunteer organizations. While she appreciates when students say that they learned something "about themselves" through service learning, she wants them to go beyond that statement - to apply sociology, to question charity work so that they can see the problems with it, and to recognize that there are no easy fixes. In this way, sociological concepts may come more alive for students while at the same time students are challenged to become active participants in social change.
SERVICE LEARNING: “CHARITY” OR “SOCIAL JUSTICE”?
To further the discussion on the purpose of service learning, we discussed an article written by Tammy Lewis of Muhlenburg College (Lewis, 2004). This work helped us further define the question of what effective service-learning should entail. Lewis makes the distinction between a “charity” model and a “social justice” model of service-learning as she outlines the struggle of a small liberal arts college to set goals for service-learning courses. Her conceptualization of the “charity” model mirrored what some of us had been doing in our statistics based classes. Basically, we and our students were serving as “consultants” to local nonprofit agencies. Lewis argues however that a social justice model, where the community is seen as a partner rather than a client and where projects are aimed at empowering community members, is the direction that service learning should be heading.
Once again, we found that the needs of each discipline may be slightly different. Sociology with an ultimate concern for social justice aims to teach students to look to the root causes of social problems and then urges them to confront structures of power and inequality that systematically disadvantage whole groups of people. Civic engagement for those in this discipline translates into a critical appraisal of social service agencies and instills a sense that sociologically informed individuals are responsible to engage in social activism that will draw attention to the larger contextual factors which give rise to social problems. The goals of critical service learning are to empower communities and create more equitable institutional structures (Marullo and Edwards 2000).
On the other hand, it is more difficult to make the leap to social justice for those who are teaching math or science based courses. The science based examples we read were more structured to instilling a sense of community connectedness through helping the community answer research questions. We came away from these theoretical discussions with a much better understanding of what service-learning can entail. It was an excellent opportunity for each of us to reflect on what service-learning should mean to our classes and how service-learning might be used as a catalyst for not just learning, but also for social change.
IMPLEMENTING SERVICE LEARNING
Once we defined service learning for ourselves in the context of our own disciplines, we began to think about issues surrounding implementation. To this end we read about specific examples of instituting service learning. We learned how instructors have linked service-learning to the theme of altruism in Spanish literature (Irizarry, 1999). We read how chemistry students volunteered hours to detect levels of heavy metal contamination in river sediment (Miller 1996). We perused Heffernan’s (2001) “Fundamentals of Service-Learning Course construction,” which identifies six models for incorporating service learning and includes a compilation of syllabi from several disciplines. These and other readings provided a broad base of possibilities for service-learning in a variety of courses.
We also learned from each other’s experience. Debra highlighted some of the problems she has had in the past when utilizing service-learning in her Social Problems course. She noted that service-learning takes considerable work to set up and sustain. Some of the work involved finding a setting that students can do on their own, but they often had difficulty contacting and gaining access to the organizations even when she made the initial forays. Students sometimes neglected the importance of timing and would leave the volunteering until late in the semester, and then have trouble completing it. She had to deal with reluctant students (shouldn't volunteering be voluntary, they would ask?) and preconceptions about service learning ("this should make me feel good, why doesn't it?" "this organization will be run like a typical business" - when so few organizations have the time or resources to be run this way; "these people will respect and look up to me," or "I can fix the world."). Adding to the challenges of implementing service-learning, Chris noted that her biggest challenge in her Applied Research methods class is trying to mesh an academic schedule with the schedule of community organizations.
Despite the hurdles, to read and discuss how those outside one’s own discipline integrate service was refreshing and inspiring. So much so that UMW students have some new courses integrating CSL. For example, Miriam was inspired to include CSL when designing her new Psychology of Women course, Betsy is gearing up to teach a Spanish literature course with a CSL component, and Chris put together a team of independent research students to accomplish some research with community partners. In addition, Tracy is currently working on a plan to incorporate critical service learning practices into her qualitative research methods course by inviting students to collaborate on projects using a participatory action research design. In the future, she expects to integrate this type of research into other upper-level sociology courses as well.
HOW DO YOU ASSESS SERVICE LEARNING?
Another large question we grappled with was how to assess what students have learned from their experience. Unlike material presented in a textbook or through lecture, academic service learning can not be assessed through the usual midterm exam. However, we read about and discussed several approaches to assessment that would allow the students an opportunity to show the connections they’ve made between their community work and the material at hand. Three approaches that seemed most conducive to our courses were journaling, papers and group discussions.
Miriam’s new service-learning requirement in Psychology of women is a good example of how these assessment tools can be used. Students in Miriam’s course are required to do 20 hours of community service over the semester. They write journal entries in which they reflect on their experiences and begin to make connections between their experience and class material. She encourages them to view their experience as an additional text from which to learn and to make observations about how gender roles are manifested in daily life. Additionally, she encourages them to think critically about how their life experiences differ from those they are working with, how race and class interact with gender to shape experience, and to reflect critically about their views of themselves as a "helper." Students read Reaching Out to Children and Families by Michelle Dunlap (another book we read and discussed during the seminar) in order to help them negotiate the complexities of working in unfamiliar environments with different norms and to help their self reflections about how their own life experience has shaped their preconceptions and beliefs. Journals culminate in a paper in which they are asked to explicitly connect their experiences with class material drawing from class discussions, the main text books and the Dunlap book. Reflection also involves group discussion. Four times during the semester the class spends the entire period discussing CSL experiences and sharing connections that have been made between their experience and course material.
Having done service learning activities in Introduction to Statistics for several years, Debbie was most interested in learning more about assessing the impact or value of service learning on students’ learning. The seminar reviewed a number of different resources that refer to assessing service learning programs, including booklets from Campus Compact and several articles. Howard offers 10 principles of good practice for service learning pedagogy in his course design workbook. These principles were used by faculty at Purdue University to assess their service learning program in engineering and discussed in another article the seminar group read (Coyle et al 1997). Another 10 principles resulting from consultation with more than 70 organizations interested in service learning are presented in Principles of Good Practice for Combining Service and Learning (Honnet et al 1989). In Models of Good Practice for Service-Learning Programs, thirteen “themes for success” for good service learning practice were identified through assessing service learning programs at 27 colleges and universities (Schneider 1998). While most of the practices discussed in these resources are designed to evaluate service learning programs rather than service learning courses, Debbie feels that the service learning activities her students complete involved most of Howard’s 10 practices and Schneider’s 13 themes. Her goal for future service learning activities for her students is to enhance students’ awareness of their civic responsibility and to improve the community agency’s role in defining the service project.
OTHER SEMINAR OUTCOMES
Apart from the redesigned and newly constructed courses mentioned above, this TIP seminar led to several other tangible outcomes. First, as part of the seminar, we helped design a summer workshop on service-learning in the classroom. Following up on a suggestion from the Board of Visitors that community service learning could possibly play a larger role on campus, our group aided the COAR office in putting together a program for a day long faculty workshop on service-learning. As part of the program Betsy, Debbie, Chris, and Debra shared their service experiences with a roomful of faculty interested in community service as a pedagogical option.
Fueled by the BOV’s interest in service learning, we also developed a “wish list” for service-learning on the UMW campus. Our wishes included the advent of a fulltime director of service learning who could assist students and faculty in community placements, foster relationships with community organizations, and provide resources for faculty teaching service-learning courses. In addition, we outlined the need for on-going service learning seminars, recognition of service-learning on academic records and faculty activity reports, and a web-based system for linking students and community agencies. While we intended to directly address the BOV with our thoughts through a carefully constructed letter, unfortunately our thoughts never made it to a BOV agenda for consideration. We still remain hopeful however that the University can fund and support more opportunities for faculty to learn about and practice service-learning in their classrooms. To aid in the process of funding, Debbie has started to explore how other colleges and universities financially support service-learning and what grant opportunities may be available. She also explored the possibility of establishing a Center for Community Based Research and Service, by examining the structure of a Center for Quantitative Life Sciences at Harvey Mudd College and the types of funding agencies that support Campus Compact and similar programs.
A final outcome of our seminar was the rewriting of the CSL faculty guide to service-learning. The old guide was a bit dated and had very little in the way of useful suggestions to get faculty started. Drawing on their experience in the seminar, Miriam and Brianne Meagher (COAR director) rewrote the guide to better reflect what faculty might need by including concrete examples and making the process of incorporating service learning much clearer.
CONCLUSION
We came away from the seminar with strong commitments to service-learning and a respect for the effort and support it takes to do it well. We appreciated the support from TIP that made this opportunity for discussion and reflection possible.
Articles cited:
Coyle, E.J., Jamieson, L.H., Sommers, L.S. (1997). “EPICS: A Model for Integrating Service-Learning into the Engineering Curriculum.” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 4:81-89.
Dunlap, M. (2000). Reaching Out to Children and Families. Rowman & Littlefield.
Heffernan, K. (2001). Fundamentals of Service Learning Course Construction. Providence, RI: Campus Compact.
Honnet, E.P and Poulsen, S. (1989). Principles of good practice in combining service and learning. (Wingspread special report). Racine, WI: The Johnson Foundation.
Howard, J. (2001). Service-Learning Course Design Workbook. University of Michigan OCSL Press.
Irizzarry, E. (1999). Altruism and community service in Hispanic literature: Readings and praxis. In Hellebrandt, J & Varona, L. (Eds.) Construyendo Puentes (Building Bridges): Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Spanish. American Association for Higher Education.
Lewis, T.L. (2004). Service-learning for social change? Lessons from a liberal arts college. Teaching Sociology, 32, 94-108.
Marullo, S and Edwards, B.(2000). “From charity to justice: The potential of University-community collaboration for social change.” American Behavioral Scientist 43: 895-912.
Miller, S. (1996). Science and Society: Redefining the Relationship. Campus Compact.
Schneider, M.K (1998). Models of Good Practice for Service-Learning Programs. AAHE Bulletin/June 1989/9. http://www.aahe.org/service/bulletin%20article.htm