Why Service Learning?
Why Now?
Adam Peck, Ph.D.
Dean of Student Affairs
Stephen F. Austin State University
Relevance
• The top 10 jobs in 2010 will be jobs that did not even exist
5 years ago.
• Today’s students will have an average of 10-14 jobs by
age 38.
• There are 31 billion Google queries each month.
• In a week of reading The New York Times, you can learn
more than a person in the eighteenth century might have
learned in a lifetime.
•As Keeling (2004) articulated in Learning Reconsidered: A
Campus-Wide Focus on the Student Experience,
“…knowledge is no longer a scarce – or stable –
commodity. (It) is changing so rapidly that specific
information may become obsolete before a student
graduates and has the opportunity to apply it” (p. 4).
Why Service Learning? Why now?
• A number of political, economic and social
forces have combined to make service
learning more relevant than ever before.
Issue: The digital age has
provided students with
unprecedented access to (often
conflicting) information.
Students do not know how to
evaluate what they learn to
determine what they believe.
This has caused them to be
increasingly dogmatic.
Disequilibrium: An Essential Element
• Service Learning projects are best when the provide students
with an “ill-structured problem” that demands something from the
student to solve it.
• Solving problems created disequilibrium. This is essential in
prompting belief change.
• This change depends upon four conditions that must be met,
1) Dissatisfaction with existing beliefs
2) Individuals must find new alternatives intelligible and useful
3) Individuals must find the new beliefs plausible
4) New conceptions must stand up to challenges and lead to
new learning
(Hofer, B. K. & Pintrich, P.R., 2004, p. 203).
Service Learning Improves Higher Order Thinking
• Recent studies connect participation in Service Learning
and other “High Impact” practices with measurable increases
in Higher Order thinking skills.
• This is especially true when reflective activity goes beyond
sense making to achieve meaning making.
•Solving these kinds of “ill-structured” problems provides
students with the opportunity to apply and improve their
reasoning skills.
Service Learning Improves Higher Order Thinking
• Service
learning
enhances more
than just critical
thinking!
• Provides a
context to go
beyond just
remembering,
understanding
and applying
course
concepts.
• Lower levels
of thinking are
becoming
obsolete in the
digital age.
• Service Learning provides students with “lived experiences” which
can help them become better consumers of information.
• It can aid students in developing their belief systems or “personal
epistemologies.”
The Relevance of Service Learning
• Service Learning exposes us to real
problems in context.
• It is harder to stereotype someone when
you know their real story.
• However, short-term projects may actually
exacerbate and confirm stereotypes.
Issue: Improved access to
higher education has flooded the
system with students who are
less prepared academically, less
secure financially and who do
not have role models for
success
“Because individual effort and involvement are the critical
determinants of college impact, institutions should focus on the ways
they can shape their academic, interpersonal, and extracurricular
offerings to encourage student engagement.”
Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005, p. 602
In the 2007 report of the National Survey for Student
Engagement (NSSE), George Kuh, Executive Director
of NSSE, addressed a question he is often asked,
“What one thing can we do to enhance student
engagement and increase student success?” He
replied, “Make it possible for every student to
participate in at least two high-impact activities during
their undergraduate program, one in the first year, and
one later related to their major field” (NSSE, 2007, p.
18).
“…teaching and learning practices have been widely
tested and have been shown to be beneficial for college
students from many backgrounds.”
•They demand that students devote considerable amounts of time and
effort to purposeful tasks.
•The nature of these high impact activities puts students in circumstances
that essentially demand they interact with faculty and peers about
substantive matters.
•Participating in one or more of these activities increases the likelihood
that students will experience diversity through contact with people who
are different than themselves.
•Students get frequent feedback about their performance.
•Participating in these activities provides opportunities for students to see
how what they are learning works in different settings, on and off the
campus
•Doing one or more of these activities in the context of a coherent,
academically challenging curriculum that appropriately
infuses opportunities for active, collaborative learning
increases the odds that students will be prepared to connect.
Effects of Participating in High-Impact Activities on Student Engagement
Level of Active and Student- Supportive
Academic
Collab.
Faculty
Campus
Challenge Learning Interaction
Env.
Learning Communities
Service Learning
Study Abroad
Student-Faculty Research
Internship
Service Learning
Culminating Experience
First-Year
++
++
Senior
++
+++
++
++
++
+++
+++
+++
+++
++
++
++
+++
+++
++
+++
+++
+
++
++
+++
++
+++
+++
++
++
+ p < .001, ++ p < .001 & Unstd B > .10, +++ p < .001 & Unstd B > .30
Issue: Difficult economic times
are resulting in reduced social
services for people who really
need them. It has also left higher
education trying to prove its
value as a “public good.”
Cuts to Social Services
• In March, the Texas House of Representatives passed a
$164.5 billion budget (about $23 billion less than the current
two-year budget).
• This budget includes deep cuts in social services including
education, mental health, and healthcare.
• As the Texas Senate advocates for a considerably larger
budget, it may be difficult to reconcile with the house.
• Comptroller Susan Combs added $1.2 billion to her estimate of
state revenues, making that much more money available to
budget writers who are scrambling for cash.
Baccalaureate Degree Production
Issue: A recent survey conducted by
the American College Health
Association found that 78 percent of
college students reported having felt
very sad at least once within the
preceding 12 months. Forty-two percent
felt so depressed it was difficult to
function, 9.4 percent had seriously
considered attempting suicide, and 1.4
percent had attempted suicide.
Altruism and Happiness
•
A national sample of more than 600 Americans, they found
that spending more on gifts and charity correlated with
greater happiness, whereas spending more money on
oneself did not.
• A study tracking 16 workers before and after they received
profit-sharing bonuses, found that that the workers who
gave more of the money to others ended up happier than
the ones who spent more of it on themselves. In fact, how
the bonus was spent was a better predictor of happiness
than the size of the bonus.
• 46 students were given either $5 or $20 to spend by the
end of the day. The ones who were instructed to spend the
money on others — they bought toys for siblings, treated
friends to meals and made donations to the homeless —
were happier at the end of the day than the ones who were
instructed to spend the money on themselves.
Issue: Consumerist notions of
education continue to dominate
student and public perceptions
of what education is for.
For the past 10-15 years, there has been a
drastic rise in….
This has been partially driven by:
• Declining state and federal resources for higher education.
• Call for accountability in Higher Education.
•Shifted the burden of student success from students to
institutions.
• Increased competition between institutions.
How do we meet these
challenges on our campuses?
Reflective Activities:
•Personal Journaling/Blogging
•Presentations to Community Organizations
•Case Studies Papers
•Small-Group Work
•Ethnographies
•Group Problem Solving
•Reflective Essays
•Artistic Projects
•Case Studies
•Histories
•Class/Workshop Discussions
•Electronic Discussion Groups
•Products Created for Organizations
•Portfolios/E-Portfolios
•Multimedia Class Presentations
•Problem-Solving Papers
Source: Janet Eyler, Dwight E. Giles, Jr. (1996). Practitioner's guide to reflection in service-learning: Student
voices and reflections. Vanderbilt University Press.
Meta-Cognitive Reflection
•In much the same way that a child posing for yearly school
pictures will show changes that may be unnoticeable day to
day, meta-cognitive reflection encourages students to
reevaluate their beliefs and to periodically think about the
ways that these beliefs have changed overtime.
Noticing Change
Take Aways
Understanding of
what they believe
Belief in action
High Impact
Improved Persistence,
Life Skills
Economic
Uncertainty
Unhappiness
Consumerist
Notions of Education
Practical Experience