Critical Service-Learning and Cultural Humility

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Traci C. Terrance ◽  
Marie L. Watkins ◽  
Lauren Jimerson
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Cultural Humility ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Community Voice ◽  
Racial Ethnic

Racial, ethnic, and cultural context impacts how communities perceive problems, and ultimately their perception of what is deemed helpful. Thus, a lack of awareness of these particularities can render service-learning efforts ineffective. This chapter highlights a 12-year service-learning partnership between a predominantly White, comprehensive, liberal arts college and the local Haudenosaunee community. Pedagogical strategies utilizing the Six Requirements (6Rs) of service-learning and informed by cultural humility act as a transformative way to facilitate student readiness to engage with the said community. Cultural humility is positioned as a process that transforms service-learning into critical service-learning, as it enhances students' ability to engage in critical self-reflection, mitigating the toxic elements and empathic failures of uninformed service-learning efforts. This chapter contributes to more mindful service-learning efforts, challenging all to work with service-learning partners in a manner that keeps community voice and choice at the core of service.

Community Engagement in the Liberal Arts: How Service Hours and Reflections Influence Course Value

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 416-430
Author(s):  
David Lynn Painter ◽  
Courtney Howell
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Arts Community ◽  
Individual Conversations

Background: In response to critics’ charges that the liberal arts lack practical value, most colleges have incorporated service-learning in their curricula. Ideally, these service-learning activities not only benefit the community but also enhance the course’s (a) pedagogical effectiveness as well as the students’ (b) civic engagement and (c) professional development. Purpose: This investigation uses a survey to measure the extent to which service-learning in community engagement courses at a liberal arts college achieved these three outcomes. Methodology/Approach: Specifically, we parsed the influence of service hours and reflection activities on 740 students’ ratings of pedagogical effectiveness, civic engagement, and professional development. Findings/Conclusions: The results suggest students in community engagement courses that included at least 15 service hours and three different types of reflections reported significantly greater outcome achievement than those with fewer hours or reflections. Moreover, class discussions and individual conversations were rated the most effective types of reflection activities. Implications: Based on these findings, we provide some best practice suggestions for service hours and reflection activities in liberal arts community engagement courses.

Using Service-Learning Field Placements to Radically Transform Teacher Education From the Inside Out

2018 ◽  
pp. 377-392
Author(s):  
Jennifer Carlson ◽  
Jean Strait
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Cultural Humility ◽  
Teacher Education Programs ◽  
Liberal Arts University ◽  
Field Placements ◽  
Suburban School District ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Hands On Learning

The current educational landscape is more complex and demanding than ever. The integration of service-learning into teacher education programs increase opportunities for intersectionality of curriculum, the development of cultural humility, use of contact theory, and hands-on learning. The partnership between an urban liberal arts university and suburban school district resulted in the College Pals model. The College Pals model acknowledges that pre-service teachers need to learn how to navigate systems that are familiar to their students in order to positively impact student learning and educational experiences. Service-learning as a pedagogical approach enhances instructional readiness through earlier opportunities to work in and connect to classrooms prior to their matriculated field experiences and provide an effective integration of community-oriented approaches to teacher education.

Liberal Arts College Faculty Reflect on Service-Learning: Steps on a Transformative Journey

2002 ◽  
pp. 143-165
Author(s):  
Joan Burton ◽  
Laurie Kaplan ◽  
Judy Jolley Mohraz ◽  
Lawrence Kay Munns ◽  
Barbara Roswell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
College Faculty

What History is good for: Service-learning and studying the past

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 50-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Smith
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
Reflective Process ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rich Data

Many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities can offer profound insights into what it means to be human. History, however, encompasses the totality of human experience: economics, politics, philosophy, art, ethics, sociology, science - all of it becomes part of history eventually. Therefore, the opportunities for incorporating service-learning (carefully integrating community service with academic inquiry and reflecting on insights derived from such integration) into history courses abound. Many historians have taken advantage of this opportunity. Few historians have undertaken a scholarly investigation of the learning taking place in their service-learning courses, however. Indeed, despite the fact that the reflective process so central to service-learning lends itself remarkably well to the scholarship of teaching and learning (it generates very rich data on both the affective and content-based learning students are experiencing), there has been little published SoTL research from any discipline about service-learning. Drawing on qualitative evidence from an honours course comprised of 16 students at a private liberal arts college in the northeastern United States, I argue that not only does service-learning in history lead to more active citizenship, but that it also leads to deeper appreciation of an historical perspective as a key ingredient for being an engaged citizen.

The Endless Dance: Realization of Western Liberal Arts Tradition in Chinese Cultural Context

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-64
Author(s):  
Ching-Fai Ng
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Liberal Arts College ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Chinese Traditional Culture ◽  
Whole Person ◽  
International College ◽  
Literature History

Being the first full scale cooperation in higher education between the Mainland and Hong Kong, the United International College (uic) positioned itself as “A New liberal Arts College” to help the country diversify her higher education landscape as part of education reform. While attempting to retain the defining characteristics of a us-style liberal arts college—caring for students, small class sizes, broad based curricula, facilitating cross fertilization of ideas, uic strongly emphasizes Chinese traditional culture, literature, history and Chinese thoughts through the ages, in addition to helping students acquire an international outlook. This is deemed essential not only because the students should learn about their own cultural heritage, but also they should treasure the wisdom of traditional Chinese thinking that could lend a helping hand to solving many problems the world faces today. It is gratifying to see that, after 10 years’ experimentation, the traditional western liberal arts education could be realized in the Chinese traditional culture context. In particular, the Confucius education philosophy could help nurture the whole person—junzi (君子), which is the overarching education goal of uic.

Students Involvement in Multilingual and Multicultural Community Services

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying-Chiao Tsao
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Cultural Competence ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
Community Services ◽  
Cultural Humility ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Multicultural Community ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Teaching Learning

Promoting cultural competence in serving diverse clients has become critically important across disciplines. Yet, progress has been limited in raising awareness and sensitivity. Tervalon and Murray-Garcia (1998) believed that cultural competence can only be truly achieved through critical self-assessment, recognition of limits, and ongoing acquisition of knowledge (known as “cultural humility”). Teaching cultural humility, and the value associated with it remains a challenging task for many educators. Challenges inherent in such instruction stem from lack of resources/known strategies as well as learner and instructor readiness. Kirk (2007) further indicates that providing feedback on one's integrity could be threatening. In current study, both traditional classroom-based teaching pedagogy and hands-on community engagement were reviewed. To bridge a gap between academic teaching/learning and real world situations, the author proposed service learning as a means to teach cultural humility and empower students with confidence in serving clients from culturally/linguistically diverse backgrounds. To provide a class of 51 students with multicultural and multilingual community service experience, the author partnered with the Tzu-Chi Foundation (an international nonprofit organization). In this article, the results, strengths, and limitations of this service learning project are discussed.

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