Moving Like a Starfish: Beyond a Unilinear Model of Student Transformation in Service Learning Classes

Abstract

This article argues that the proponents of service learning courses see “perspective transformation” as the ideal goal of such courses. Most commonly this transformation is viewed as a linear trajectory “from charity to social justice.” However, this frame of reference is inadequate to the complex ways in which students change through the agency of service learning, particularly in the area of their moral development. The article suggests a new, more adequate frame of reference for transformation: “enabling the starfish to move.”