POE 2003 Conference

The Perspective: Service Learning

Panel Organizer:
Wilfred Holton, Associate Professor of Sociology, Northeastern University

Panelists:
Joan Arches, Associate Professor of Community Planning and Human Services, University of Massachusetts ­ Boston

Donna Killian Duffy, Professor of Psychology, Middlesex Community College

John Duffy, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts ­ Lowell

Knowledge Broker:
Michelle Lee, Lecturer, Communication Studies, Northeastern University

Major Issues/Points Raised

Donna Duffy began the session by providing an overview of service-learning, particularly geared toward those unfamiliar with the service-learning paradigm and mission. She outlined the definitions, aims, and objectives of service-learning, as well as some examples of service-learning projects and a list of resources for further review. Joan Arches then discussed the importance of valuing ‘local knowledge’ and placing the community partners (as opposed to the faculty member or students) in positions of power and decision making in executing service-learning projects.

For a service-learning project to be successful, Joan argued that the community voice must be loud and strong early in the process of developing the project. Similar to faculty members, community members are concerned with content and process, and their concerns must be incorporated into the practice-oriented curriculum. This may require a shift in perspective, moving from one that perceives students and faculty as ‘coming in to help’ to one which perceives the ‘served’ community as having value and knowledge to impart with the academic community. Crucial to this is the politics of interpersonal relationships as a locus of change and learning; this involves the notion of power-sharing, strong listening skills, and promoting empathy between those involved in the POE experience.

After the introduction, an engaging presentation followed with the panelists discussing their individual service-learning initiatives. These cross a broad range of disciplines (including psychology, community planning, human services, and engineering) and range from highly localized projects to ones of an international scope.

Donna Duffy

Donna discussed a service-learning project that she has incorporated in her Abnormal Psychology class since 1993 and presented her findings from this endeavor in terms of both its opportunities and its challenges. Some questions raised early on in her work included:

• How do we assess students in different ways on service-learning projects? For example, how do we evaluate a student who writes an ‘average’ reflection paper but receives an outstanding on-site evaluation? Or a student who writes an ‘excellent’ reflection paper but receives a poor site evaluation?
• How do we incorporate multifaceted aspects of students’ work to create an accurate assessment?
• How can we assess ‘authentic’ settings (e.g., those outside the controlled classroom)?
• How can we share community learning to capture levels of meaning? (This refers specifically to how students who participated in the option of service-learning relate their understanding of course material to students who did not take the S-L option, and vice versa.)
• How do we help students solve complicated, ‘real life’ problems without becoming overwhelmed?

Donna then discussed a number of positive outcomes and opportunities that resulted from her grappling with these questions through her course. She also conducted end-of-term evaluations to measure students’ perceptions of success with the project, and the overall feedback was positive, indicating that a number of learning objectives had been met and surpassed. These benefits included:

• Working in a service-learning setting can bring what one learns in a text to life
• Service-learning provides a three-dimensional kind of learning
• Questions raised by those engaged in the service encouraged students to see course issues raised both in others and in themselves through the interactive exposure
• Even students who did not directly participate in the service project benefited from hearing their classmates’ experiences (a way of bringing the ‘out there’ into the classroom)
• Service-learning facilitated greater critical thinking
• Service-learning enabled students to better reach the discipline’s established guidelines for outcomes in teaching

John Duffy

John Duffy proceeded to explain his work with service-learning projects in the discipline engineering. It is important to point out that service-learning need not be restricted to just the social sciences, but can be applied in all disciplines. John integrated service-learning into a variety of different engineering courses across all levels of complexity, ranging from very basic to incredibly far-reaching service projects. This indicates the flexibility of service-learning as a teaching pedagogy and how it can be molded to shape both course material as well as student maturity. John noted the challenge of linking academic content with community needs, but noted that he has found connections can be made even in very introductory classes.

The capstone of John’s work in service-learning, and of his conference presentation, was a discussion of his work with upperclassmen in Peru. Advanced engineering students participate in a project with rural mountain communities in Peru to provide them with electricity, radio communication devices, water purification systems, hydroelectric power services, and other basic needs. In doing so, the students learn their required course content in engineering in a very real and material way. John presented a vivid slide presentation to show the students’ work ‘in action.’ He also pointed out some of the additional challenges to this approach, including issues of scheduling conflicts with the academic calendar, funding, sustainability, and the challenge of reflection. In spite of these challenges, John noted that the quantitative evaluations from students indicate overwhelming success with this and his other service-learning projects.

Joan Arches

Joan Arches then presented on her project in a Human Services course at UMass-Boston. She uses what she terms a ‘total immersion model’ in which the whole class enters the local community as a team to carry out activities with the local youth and to conduct outreach with various community members. Her students work with youth ages 9-14 at Harbor Point, a low-income housing project next to the university. The philosophy of her course is that students work under a model of ‘social action,’ in which people learn about their own community and how to become more engaged and active in working to solve local problems. This is implemented by students working closely with community members to identify the problems the community perceives and jointly devising strategies for solving them. Youth then become proactive agents of change, while the university students serve as mentors and facilitators. The service experience is then brought back ‘into the classroom’ through various reflection exercises.

The project occurs in three stages:
1. The pre-planning phase: the community voice must be critically involved, students are recruited and make schedules through the faculty member
2. The ‘getting started’ phase: students are acquainted with the community through observation, interaction, and needs assessment procedures
3. The ‘team assembly’ phase: groups are formed around various needs and concerns

Joan identified a number of concerns that have been raised in her work with service-learning, namely:
• Internal/external group dynamics
• Issues with race, class, and affiliated stereotypes
• Administrative oversights ­ miscommunications
• Inconvenient meeting times
• Uneven participation

In spite of these challenges, Joan sees the benefits of service-learning as a pedagogy far outweighing the disadvantages.

Wilfred Holton closed the presentation by outlining his work with service-learning in the fields of sociology and human services. He placed emphasis on providing service to meet needs identified by and within the local communities themselves. He also discussed a POE model he devised called “Mapping Practice-Oriented Education” in June 2002 which places service-learning in conjunction with other experiential practices as contributing to “maximum impact” or the optimal learning situation for students.

Principal Themes

Across the panelists, some common ideas emerged. These focus on student-centered learning, the importance of moving learning outside the classroom, and the critical value of experience in learning. The major themes of this session might be summarized as follows:

• Service-learning is a truly experiential form of educating and learning in that it plucks the student out of the comfort zone within the classroom and finds educational value in ‘controlled discomfort’ ­ that is, a student learns both introspectively and reflectively through the practice in part because it is unfamiliar, uncomfortable (at least initially), and non-traditional.
• Service-learning is unique from other practice-oriented approaches in that it is both education- and community-centered ­ there is a clear balance in its aims to both educate the student and to serve the community. This differentiates it from other practices (e.g., coop, internships, volunteerism, community service, field education, or internships).
• Reflection remains a critical component of service-learning, as it is with other POE approaches; a difference in service-learning, however, is that reflection occurs in and through the practice, not merely at the end of it.
• Assessment remains a challenge in service-learning, as with other POE approaches; faculty members must deal with how to fairly and accurately assess the whole student, not just the traditional measures of classroom productivity.

Commentary on Conference Questions

1. How is the work environment distinctive in its potential as a learning venue?
There is some concern in equating ‘service’ with ‘work’ as a form of practice-oriented education. This aside, the local community ­ as with the office workplace, the laboratory, the outdoors, and other ‘working’ environments ­ holds just as much, if not more, educational opportunities for students than the traditional classroom environment can accomplish alone.

2. What is it about work (service) that induces learning in the first place?
Service-learning and other practice-oriented education approaches require students to be proactive agents of learning, not passive recipients of information. There is a creative and interpersonal focus in these approaches as well, which distinguishes it from an impersonal, linear model of classroom instruction.

3. What kind of learning is generated by practice?
Learning from practice (service) induces a balanced learning that is both theoretical/conceptual as well as tangible/concrete. This is distinguished from traditional classroom learning, which emphasizes the theoretical/conceptual in isolation.

4. What processes and methods are necessary to distill learning from work?
Ongoing and continuous reflection (i.e., not just terminal) are critical. Open and judicious dialogue in the classroom, which connects experience to concept, is also important.

5. What are the roles of theory in learning from work?
Theories provide us with the language to describe our experiences in more critical ways. When we just have the experience without the theory, we can only explain our experience in layman’s terms. With theory and research, we are able to define and clarify the experience in conceptual ways in the language of our various disciplines.

6. Are there thresholds of experience that are required to make work (service) learningful? Is simulated experience sufficient? What makes for effective practice?
With respect to service-learning, the real benefits evolve most certainly from engaging in the service project directly. However, as indicated by Donna Duffy’s report about her course in which service-learning was an option that only half of her students take, both groups of students benefited from the actual service. Yet, it should be pointed out that at least some of the students in her course had to engage in real practice in order for those students who did not take the service option to benefit.

• Return to Reports from the Panel Sessions