Applying Students' Perspectives on Different Teaching Strategies: A Holistic View of Service-Learning Community Engagement

  • Ricke A
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Abstract

From a university perspective, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) has been identified as a high-impact practice that offers advantages over traditional lecture and assignments, yet students do not always embrace SLCE courses. While most studies of undergraduate students' perceptions of SLCE focus on particular experiences or on SLCE in general, contextualizing these findings within students' perceptions of various teaching strategies and knowledge can better assist faculty in engaging students. Drawing on cognitive anthropology, this article is one of the first to conduct a cultural domain analysis to provide insights into how undergraduates conceptualize SLCE in relation to other teaching strategies. This broader analysis of the associations undergraduates make with SLCE reveals how these can carry ramifications for quality engagement with the project and community partners. The results include how faculty can design and scaffold SLCE into their courses in the absence of a centralized agency or formal campus-wide process for regulating SLCE experiences. From a university perspective, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) has been identified as a high-impact practice that offers certain advantages over traditional lecture and assignments, yet some students do not always recognize the benefits of SLCE. 1 Past research reveals that part of the context that influences students' understandings of and responses to SLCE includes students' life experiences and identities, their expe-1. The author acknowledges some of the problems associated with the term "service-learning" (Jacoby, 2015). However, at the university where the research was conducted, "service-learning" was the term commonly used by faculty and students at the time of the study. Thus, this article uses the term "service-learning community engagement" to reflect how it was referred to in the case study. Its use at the time of the study aligned with Bringle and Hatcher's (1995) definition of service learning as "an educational experience [i.e., a course] in which students (a) participate in mutually identified service activities that benefit the community, and (b) reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of personal values and civic responsibility" (p. 112).

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APA

Ricke, A. (2021). Applying Students’ Perspectives on Different Teaching Strategies: A Holistic View of Service-Learning Community Engagement. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 27(2). https://doi.org/10.3998/mjcsloa.3239521.0027.202

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