Social Foundations of Education and Service-Based Field Experiences

This chapter highlights one social foundations of education program's initiative to develop specialized service-based projects on which each course's field experience, readings, and assignments would center. Utilizing both a justice-oriented and intersectional foundation, professors developed projects meant to engage the program's mostly white and female students in more critical and meaningful experiences that would help pre-service educators reflect on power, privilege, and oppression and their roles in this process. The authors focus on two example projects for this chapter with a goal of examining successes and difficulties experienced in developing such projects, including the challenge of maintaining strong community partnerships. These two case studies are not meant to provide generalized experiences, but the authors hope that sharing the development, implementation, and outcomes can help other programs create field experiences for pre-service educators that will teach pre-service educators the importance of safe yet critical classroom spaces.