Seeing Community Engagement as We Are: Student Perceptions of Service-Learning and Social Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract

The purpose of the research was to more deeply understand undergraduate students' perceptions of servicelearning (SL) and social entrepreneurship education (SE) by examining ways in which the gender of students and their prior experiences in community engagement might shape those perceptions. We designed, administered, and analyzed the results of a survey completed by 382 undergraduate students. Results indicated that, regardless of whether the students had experiences in SL or SE, they shared similar views of the values and practices associated with each approach. However, the disaggregated data by gender showed that self-identified female students more strongly endorsed certain aspects of the community-engaged approaches in comparison with self-identified male students. These findings further emerging critiques of community engagement learning experiences that have explored how positionality impacts students' understanding of, and approach to, community engagement.