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The evolution of a service-learning course.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

A natural fit in a Construction Management capstone course is the active pedagogical approach of service-learning; however, as a faculty member who is interested in issues related to diversity and cultural awareness, the combining of the two is often difficult. This article addresses three conceptualized interpretations of service-learning as a progressive pedagogy dealing with technical, cultural, and political implications. Experiences from five years of teaching a service-learning course and the continuous evolution of that course are discussed.

Service Learning Conceptualized

Multiple conceptualizations of service-learning, as a pedagogy, have been developed by Butin (2003) to help clarify and provide groundings for discussing the implications of service-learning. While Butin provides us with four conceptualizations of service-learning, that of the technical, cultural, political, and poststructural, he also encourages theorists and practitioners of service-learning to use multiple perspectives. Butin states, "... many issues continue to plague service-learning practice and scholarship precisely because of a lack of multivocality in the definitions, criteria, and conceptualizations" (2003, p. 8).

The goal of this article is to document the evolution of course goals for a senior capstone course, which utilizes a service-learning pedagogy. This is accomplished by showing how a course which originated as a "one-way" service to the community, i.e. requiring students to apply their knowledge to solve specific building problems, evolved to become a "two-way" learning experience, where by the community was also encouraged to educate the students on the environment in which they live or operate. This approach allowed students to utilize their technical knowledge to aid community organizations and for these organizations to help educate the students about their culture and community. Responding to Butin's call for "multivocality", this article utilizes the experiences from two projects undertaken by students in the class which are analyzed through Butin's conceptualizations of technical, cultural, and political [1].

Incorporation of Service-Learning

Construction Management requires broad knowledge of architectural and engineering fields, a general understanding of skilled trades, as well as personnel and financial management. While construction is a technical discipline (originating in the architectural and engineering schools), this description is dissimilar to Butin's use of "technical" which is more commonly referred to in the service-learning literature as "academic service learning" (Butin, 2003 and Madsen & Turnbull, 2005). In academic service-learning, the focus is primarily on the linkages between course content and identified cognitive outcomes (Butin, 2003). In this context the "technical" refers not to the knowledge but rather the innovative pedagogy most closely aligned with the experiential learning espoused by John Dewey (1916). This is in opposition to Prosser (1925) who disagreed with Dewey and felt that a dual system was the best way to educate students about vocational (career) education. In fact in Prosser's sixteen theorems, there is no mention of educating...

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