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Service, learning, and social justice.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This service learning research describes changes in teacher education students' attitudes and social justice concerns as they worked with children and families in government-subsidized housing. This research is unique because the participating students generally came from the same low-income, Latino, Spanish-speaking background as those they served in the community. Yet, their assumptions and attitudes changed as a result of participation in service learning. Examining and reconstructing their attitudes about the children's cognitive abilities and the families' levels of academic concern resulted in developing social consciousness.

Introduction

In the past two decades, an increasing number of higher education campuses have joined the service-learning movement that focuses on improving the quality of their neighborhoods (Musil, 2003). Effective implementation of the service-learning paradigm facilitates this movement by connecting the curriculum goals and learning objectives of the academic courses to serving the community's needs (Root, 1997). For the most part, research studies highlight service-learning initiatives in which students are involved in serving communities that differ greatly from the setting of the higher education institution that the students attend (Suyemoto & Kiang, 2003). However, there is a lack of research that investigates the effects of service learning in settings where the cultural backgrounds of the higher education students are the same, or similar, to the community they serve. The focus of this article is to describe the attitudinal changes of students towards children and families residing in low socioeconomic (SES) neighborhoods. The students, who are predominantly Latino, are enrolled in community-oriented teacher education courses at a public, commuter university. In this study, the cultural background, language, and demographics of the university students, for the most part, are similar to the community in which they serve.

What is Service Learning?

There is no one clear and concise definition of the term service learning. For the purpose of this article, service learning is defined as an educational, course-based service experience that attempts to meet community needs and is part of the academic curriculum (Bringle & Hatcher, 1996). This is consistent with Erickson and Anderson's definition (1997) that service learning is a "pedagogical technique for combining authentic community service with integrated academic outcomes" (p. 1). Thus, the various service-oriented activities included in these projects were not extracurricular or add-on assignments.

How Service Learning Changes Attitudes

Service learning extends beyond enhancing the institutions' commitment to the community; it serves as an impetus for change. Active participation in a well-designed and well-managed service-learning project transforms the theoretical to the practical by extending the boundaries of the classroom to the cultural setting of the community. Thus, traditional classroom-based instruction is substituted with course-based service-learning experiences, civic participation, and community-oriented activities. Unlike other teacher preparation practices, (e.g., field-based experiences or student teaching), service learning's transformation of...

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