Journal of Service-Learning in Higher Education

Benefits of Service-Learning in a Youth Development Program

Alice Hall — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Undergraduate students majoring in child and family development (CHFD) at a southeastern public doctoral/research university were required to complete 14 hours of service learning in a local after school program as part of the course requirements in a class titled Youth Development. The course is a required course for majors and reviews research, theory, and practice as they relate to the development of children ages 6 to 18 years as well as planning and implementing developmentally appropriate youth programming. A two-page survey measure called the Benefits of Academic Community Engagement (BACE) developed by Miller, Mehta, and McCauley (2018) was used to assess the benefits of the service-learning requirement in this course. Findings from this three-year (six semester) study found evidence in support of service learning as means of hands-on pre-services learning experiences with children ages 6-12 in an undergraduate class (N=219).

The Impact of Community Engaged Learning and Narrative Persuasion on Student Attitudes Towards the Death Penalty

Thomas Wagner, Jared Vornhagen, Maria Vassanelli, Grant Zentmeyer — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Attitude change on the death penalty is highly relevant issue to both legal and public policy actors. The current study adopted a novel approach to student attitude change with exposure to first-person narratives through community engaged learning. Senior capstone students (n = 28) completed projects on the death penalty. Students submitted four journal reflection entries in three-week intervals, which captured attitude change and learning experiences over time. Coders examined 119,522 words and conducted thematic analysis. Participants who connected with a narrative experienced a significant reduction in death penalty support and increased advocacy intentions, attitude strength, and subject knowledge.

Pedagogies of engagement: Creating spaces to enhance undergraduate students’ intercultural competence through community involvement

Marianela Rivera, Marta Ramos — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, it has become critical for higher education institutions to implement initiatives that promote the development of intercultural competence and community engagement with the aim of preparing students to contribute to society. This phenomenological study explores how undergraduate students who are learners of Spanish as a foreign language perceived an experience of service-learning and the impact it had on their intercultural competence. Participants were undergraduate students at a public university in the United States who completed a Hispanic culture course. The course included a service-learning component with members of local Spanish-speaking immigrant communities. Drawing from document analysis and interviews, three main themes emerged: civic engagement, cultural interaction and awareness, and lifelong learning. Beyond an educational and linguistic development opportunity, all participants recognized the positive impact of service-learning on their perception of and relationship with local Spanish-speaking communities, their own civic responsibilities, and the use of Spanish as a bridge to increase their engagement in social advocacy. Besides expanding on the literature available on the interconnection between service-learning and the enhancement of intercultural competence, this study provides information for faculty members interested in developing practical learning opportunities for students as they make decisions related to course content.

“Like a Slap in the Face, But a Good One”: A Service-Learning Project and a College Student’s Reflection, Agency, and Vulnerability in an After-school Fifth-Grade Writing Club

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Racism still drives the college curriculum at the cost of Black and Brown students. Service-learning courses are one way to address college students’ deficit thinking by offering interactions in real world situations with people from minoritized backgrounds. This study focuses on a pivotal discursive interaction between a university instructor and an undergraduate situated as a writing mentor in a service-learning course centered around an after-school writing club with Black and Brown fifth graders. Course instructors sought to humanize pedagogical practices by establishing an asset-based writing club with “Roseanna” a white, undergraduate mentor and fifth graders. Within this experiential learning space, university students and instructors regularly reflected on their interactions with fifth graders to explore how unconscious assumptions can impede one’s ability to value and affirm children's writing identities. Instructors’ discourse encouraged Roseanna and her peers to consider the (de)humanizing effects associated with one’s discourse, implicit bias, and social/positional identities. The research question guiding this paper is, “How did an undergraduate writing mentor in a service-learning literacy course negotiate the positions made available by instructors in an asset-based after-school writing club?” We ground our investigation in positioning theory (Davies & Harré, 1990; McVee et al., 2018) and draw on the model of mutual vulnerability (McKenna & Brantmeier, 2020) to analyze Roseanna’s discourse in relation to her social identity categories and privilege. More specifically, we examined the ways her verbal and written discourse revealed her positioning of self and other in relation to agency, culture, race, and beyond. Our findings capture how a dialogic exchange, during a routine writing club debriefing, was pivotal to Roseanna’s ability to reflect and act from a more humanizing and asset-based position with children in the writing club. Roseanna had moments of being reflective, agentive, and vulnerable. A pivotal teaching moment with on-going critical curriculum can support the quest toward equity and justice in schools.

Language Learning and Career Readiness Outcomes of an Undergraduate Speech Pathology Service-Learning Project

Lesley Graybeal, Sunjung Kim Thao, Mikelle Porter, Madeline Sims — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

While service-learning has numerous benefits for undergraduate students’ academic learning, professional skills development, cultural agility, and civic attitudes, examinations of service-learning in the context of preparing students for health professions in speech-language pathology have been limited (Bushman et al., 2021; Cooper et al., 2013; Diego-Lazaro et al., 2020; Kaf et al., 2011; Kong, 2014; Pace et al., 2019; Pakulski, 2011; Peters, 2011). This study examines outcomes from a service-learning partnership between an undergraduate speech-language pathology course and a local childcare center providing language development programing for preschool children. Data were collected through language learning session recordings as well as surveys and focus groups of the undergraduate students. Outcomes for preschool children included improved language skills in two of three measured areas of language development (total utterance and idea units); outcomes for college students included reinforcement of career goals, exposure to a professional setting, and development of career-related skills.

FORWARD

David Yarbrough — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Journal of Service-Learning in Higher Education

David Yarbrough — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000