Start Date
6-6-2013 1:45 PM
End Date
6-6-2013 2:55 PM
Description
Service-learning in higher education is fundamentally about facilitating connections among service, learning, teaching, and reflection to create a powerful and engaging pedagogy. Inherent in that is also connecting students, faculty, staff, and the community for mutual benefit. In 2010 and 2011, a series of earthquakes destroyed the city of Christchurch, New Zealand and a resulting example of mutually beneficial community service at the University of Canterbury (UC) emerged. Over 9,000 UC students organized themselves as the Student Volunteer Army (SVA) to provide immediate post-quake relief and this served as a catalyst for the creation of a service-learning course, CHCH101: Rebuilding Christchurch, at UC. Because this was an atypical model for a service-learning course – service that occurred prior to the course – it has Paper presented an opportunity to consider the roles of service and learning in a rather discrete way with a particular emphasis on evaluating the student outcome of critical reflection. What, then, might be an alternative model for service-learning where the service has been completed prior to the course? Further, what would the emphasis of such a course be and would the course achieve similar outcomes as the typical design, particularly with regard to critical reflection? On these questions, the literature is lacking and our case study of an atypical service-learning course, CHCH101, provides a contribution. Quantitative data for the case study was collected by administering Kember’s (2000) survey of critical reflection before and after the course. An analysis of this quantitative data strongly suggests that students’ ability to think and reflect critically improved after the course. Qualitative data for the case study was collected from students’ assignments and reflections during the course. The quantitative findings were corroborated and more thickly described by the qualitative data. This qualitative data indicates that students’ improvement in critical reflection ability occurred because of discernible and progressive shifts in their thinking about service through three distinct, and recurring, stages: 1) an initial assurance that their service efforts were inherently and unquestionably good, 2) a subsequent self-critique of that assurance, often resulting in guilt, and 3) a temporary conclusion that service is complex and nuanced.
Recommended Citation
O'Steen, B., & Perry, L. (2013, June). The why not the what: Critical reflection in an atypical service-learning course. Paper presented at the 4th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Service-Learning: Service-Learning as a Bridge from Local to Global: Connected world, Connected future, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China.
Included in
The why not the what : critical reflection in an atypical service-learning course
Service-learning in higher education is fundamentally about facilitating connections among service, learning, teaching, and reflection to create a powerful and engaging pedagogy. Inherent in that is also connecting students, faculty, staff, and the community for mutual benefit. In 2010 and 2011, a series of earthquakes destroyed the city of Christchurch, New Zealand and a resulting example of mutually beneficial community service at the University of Canterbury (UC) emerged. Over 9,000 UC students organized themselves as the Student Volunteer Army (SVA) to provide immediate post-quake relief and this served as a catalyst for the creation of a service-learning course, CHCH101: Rebuilding Christchurch, at UC. Because this was an atypical model for a service-learning course – service that occurred prior to the course – it has Paper presented an opportunity to consider the roles of service and learning in a rather discrete way with a particular emphasis on evaluating the student outcome of critical reflection. What, then, might be an alternative model for service-learning where the service has been completed prior to the course? Further, what would the emphasis of such a course be and would the course achieve similar outcomes as the typical design, particularly with regard to critical reflection? On these questions, the literature is lacking and our case study of an atypical service-learning course, CHCH101, provides a contribution. Quantitative data for the case study was collected by administering Kember’s (2000) survey of critical reflection before and after the course. An analysis of this quantitative data strongly suggests that students’ ability to think and reflect critically improved after the course. Qualitative data for the case study was collected from students’ assignments and reflections during the course. The quantitative findings were corroborated and more thickly described by the qualitative data. This qualitative data indicates that students’ improvement in critical reflection ability occurred because of discernible and progressive shifts in their thinking about service through three distinct, and recurring, stages: 1) an initial assurance that their service efforts were inherently and unquestionably good, 2) a subsequent self-critique of that assurance, often resulting in guilt, and 3) a temporary conclusion that service is complex and nuanced.