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Service-Learning and Engagement,
Academic Challenge, and Retention
Sarah M. Gallini and Barbara E. Moely
Tulane University
Students evaluating their service-learning courses (N = 142) were more likely than students evaluating other courses (N = 171) to report that the courses promoted interpersonal, community, and academic engagement, were academically challenging, and encouraged their continued study at the university (retention). A medi-ation model showed that the academic challenge of the courses and the students' engagement with course content were most important in determining the influence of service-learning courses on plans to continue study at the university. Further analyses showed that these effects held, as well, when only students in the first two years of college were considered, and when service-learning and nonservice-learning students enrolled in the same academic courses were compared.
This paper outlines the chronological progression of student altruism in semester-long undergraduate psychology service-learning classes. Thematic aspects of service experiences related to altruism are related to the contexts in which they occur. The qualitative methods used in this study allow for the presentation of an integrated, complex picture of student altruism that offers both a differentiated conceptual understanding of altruism and suggests possibilities for application in other service-learning settings.
Pitzer College's Spanish service-learning program is unmediated by local social service organizations. It directly places students with immigrant Mexican families living in nearby Ontario, California. Based on the concept that language is a social practice and culture should be the core of language teaching, it has developed long-term, mutually beneficial relationships among college and community partners. A space has been created to support dialogues across race, class, and privilege boundaries. This article focuses on the program's impact on community participants, whose homes are becoming neighborhood hubs of an informal informational resource network. Perhaps the weak ties between two seemingly incompatible social networks account for the ease with which this process was established. A program originally centered on pedagogy is slowly effecting small-scale social change and community development.
Feminist skeptics have criticized both service-learning and care ethics as socially conservative. Yet feminist advocates of service-learning find overlap between the goals of Women's Studies classes and service-learning courses, which both emphasize the relation between theory and practice. Care ethicists argue that institutionalizing an ethic of care would promote feminist aims. Our experience teaching ÒFeminism and Families,Ó a course integrating service-learning and care ethics, demonstrates that neither care ethics nor service-learning are inherently socially conservative; both can be used in Women's Studies classrooms to promote such key feminist pedagogical aims as connecting theory and practice, con-fronting and addressing privilege, and helping students understand political change needed to create a society that genuinely cares for all its members.
Practical guides exist to support faculty who are developing service-learning courses, but little research has been done on the process of transitioning from a nonservice-learning to a service-learning course. Since such transitions are likely to become increasingly common as service-learning becomes institutionalized on campuses, the need for relevant research is critical. This paper utilizes a case study to highlight some of the challenges inherent in course transitions. Drawing from literature related to service-learning course development, faculty development, and assessment, we contend that process-oriented assessment tools, such as the Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID), are essential to the research on, and practice of, effective transitions to service-learning courses.
Last Updated Jan. 31, 2004
