The overall question this dissertation asks is: what does it mean to teach posthumans? To answer this question, this dissertation turns toward scholarship on the body in order to understand the virtual and material presence that students develop, it looks to online video gaming communities as alternative classrooms providing effective models of learning, and it investigates the circulation of service learning pedagogies within academic institutions as a marker of the persistence of humanistic values within the framework of a posthuman work environment. The American university in general, and the humanities specifically, is struggling to make sense of its place in a culture shaped by fast capitalism, oppositional politics, boutique multiculturalism, social hierarchies, free markets, technological revolution, international conflict, and a host of other phenomena that challenge the university as a site of traditional humanistic inquiry. At the same time, these forces highlight the university's more modern roles in the knowledge economy as a credentialing service, gatekeeper, and commercial incubator. Such conditions represent yet another crisis of humanism. The contemporary posthuman world to which universities are beholden is characterized by transgressed boundaries, flexible identities, radical transparency, ubiquitous technology, networked subjectivity, and a loss of confidence in the universal narratives and notions of essential humanity that provided impetus to Western thinking for millennia. Colleges are struggling, whether they know it or not, to exist in, and prepare students for, this posthuman world. Perhaps the greatest promise of a responsible posthuman education is the potential to produce citizens who are critically technologically literate and able to rethink their relation to political systems, to the environment, to economies, to technologies, to work, and to leisure, without totally abandoning the humanistic values attendant to a liberal education. Part of this education must include enabling students to see social systems as technologies which can be adopted in order to produce different modes of being. Only then can the productive tension between humanism and posthumanism become a part of higher education.

An urban elementary school in the city of Phoenix showed little evidence of using active learning even though active learning is a best practice to create engaged citizens. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether participating in a 3-week service-learning project improved civic engagement among at-risk elementary students. The theoretical foundation for this study was the constructivist learning theory, which states that students learn and create meaning by being active participants in their own learning. The research questions asked if completing a 3-week service-learning project showed a statistically significant difference in civic engagement for at-risk tutorial students at the school and whether there was a statistically significant grade level interaction effect. The Civic Responsibility Survey for K-12 Students Engaged in Service was used to gather quantitative data for this quasi-experimental design. The sample consisted of 162 students and was limited to the number of students enrolled in first through fourth grades in the 2016-2017 school year. Descriptive statistics and an analysis of covariance was conducted to determine the effect of participation in a service-learning project on reported civic engagement outcomes. There was no statistically significant difference in civic engagement after students participated in a service-learning project compared to students who did not participate. There was, however, a statistically significant difference in civic engagement scores between Grade 3 and Grade 1 and Grade 3 and Grade 4. A 3-day professional development was created for teachers as a result of this study. This may influence positive social change by creating active learning experiences for students at the school, which may lead to greater civic engagement, improved teacher-student relationships, and higher academic achievement.

In recent years attention has been concentrated on the experiences of traditional college students, with very little research or attention on the experiences of transfer students. The purpose of this causal comparative mixed-methods study was to describe the experiences of transfer students who engage in the experiential learning activities of service learning and/or internship activities at a four-year public Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the Inland Empire. Relationships were found between transfer students who participated in service learning and/or internship activities and those transfer students who did not participate in those activities on the following: level of satisfaction with their educational experience, current job/career, and sense of connectedness to the university, and beliefs about how much the university contributed to their acquisition of job- or work-related knowledge and skills. Predominant concepts regarding transfer students' beliefs about what the university could do to help them be successful, were the implementation of a transfer student orientation and creating a transfer student center.

Broader social issues that affect students’ lives manifest in the classroom and the current neo-liberal reform structures in education (e.g., the accountability movement combined with punitive discipline measures and structural classism/racism) fail to acknowledge the impact of these issues on student identity within school and community. While this era of standardized testing has brought about anti-democratic realities in schools of all sorts, it is also the case that schools that pass tests often enjoy a more liberatory climate while schools struggling to meet testing requirements are more likely to possess oppressive qualities. Not coincidentally, the more oppressive schools are often populated by poor kids, kids of color, and very often in urban schools, poor kids of color. Deficit thinking runs rampant in urban schools and marginalized communities – student experiences perpetuate oppressive social hierarchies and students are pushed to think that they can’t, won’t, and aren’t capable. Critical service learning, and more specifically photovoice as a form of critical service learning, has promise to provide a different kind of educational experience. This project is an exploratory qualitative study using photovoice, photo elicitation, and critical thematic analysis to determine what narratives students construct while participating in photovoice as a form of critical service learning. This study posits a way to move from deficits to possibilities by providing a space for traditionally marginalized youth to legitimize their sense of place, identity, and connection to their community while empowering them to be advocates for social change. Students served as action researchers, constructing counter narratives through an adaptation of photovoice documentation, addressing social inequities by highlighting strengths and assets in their own schools and community. In addition to using photovoice as a methodology, this study also addressed how photovoice as critical service learning pedagogy can serve to create discursive spaces for those counter-narratives to circulate and to be heard. This project addressed the need for a critical service learning approach in education that empowers students to become agents of change, using their own stories and cultural/social capital to disrupt deficit perspectives while promoting possibility perspectives – moving us closer to a more democratic public education.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate outcomes of the service-learning requirement in the Associate of Science in Nursing (ASN) curriculum at the local college. The problem addressed in this study was that the local ASN program lacked formal evaluation of the service-learning requirement. Guided by Kolb's model of experiential learning, a goal-based, summative evaluation employed as a qualitative case study explored the perceptions of 20 stakeholders including graduates, faculty members, and key community informants. The research questions focused on how service learning influenced a student's learning of cultural competence and the impact service learning had on the community. In-depth qualitative data were collected through face-to-face or phone, semi-structured interviews. Qualitative content analysis was the analytic method used in this study. To ensure trustworthiness, students' perceptions were triangulated with faculty's and community members' perceptions as related to outcomes of service learning, and interpretations were validated through member checking. Key results from the study indicated that service learning was perceived as a valuable component in the curriculum that influenced the students' knowledge of social and cultural factors, as well as their level of cultural competence in clinical practice. In addition, service learning was perceived as having a positive impact on the community. An evaluation report was created to provide administrators at the local college summative data upon which to base decisions regarding curriculum requirements or changes. Positive social change may result if nursing students are involved in civic engagement and have an opportunity to develop a more critical consciousness while serving the local needs of the community.

This study is aimed to evaluate service-learning program's impact on senior dental students' attitude to community service at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Dentistry. Experience gained through service-learning in dental school may positively impact dental students' attitude to community service that will eventually lead into providing care to the underserved. Two surveys were administered to 105 senior dental students. For the first survey (post-test), students reported their attitude to community service after the service-learning program completion. For the second survey (pre-test), students reported their attitude prior to the program retrospectively. Seventy six students responded to the post-test and fifty six students responded to the pre-test. A repeated-measure mixed-model analysis indicated that overall there was a change between pre-test and post-test. Scales of connectedness, normative helping behavior, benefits, career benefits, and intention showed a significant pre-test and post-test difference. A relationship between attitude to community service and student characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, and volunteer activity was also examined. Only ethnicity showed a significant difference. In conclusion, service-learning program at VCU School of Dentistry has positively impacted senior dental students' attitude to community service.

Service-learning is the combination of traditional teaching methods with field-based learning and critical reflection (Hurd, 2008) and is popular in first-year composition (Deans, 2001). However, academic research on service-learning in first-year composition is relatively scarce and the most frequently-cited scholarship is at least a decade old (Adler-Kassner, Crooks & Watters, 1997; Deans, 2001; Haussamen, 1997). This study seeks to contribute to the scholarship on service-learning in first-year composition by exploring how stakeholders, including the instructor, the students, and the community partner, perceive the project's purposes and outcomes. To complete the service-learning requirement for the course in this study, students conduct a bystander intervention workshop for a small group of their peers that focuses on cultural humility and sexual assault prevention. In preparation for the service-learning project, students attend a bystander intervention training conducted by the [Women's Advocacy Program], a center on campus that specializes in violence prevention, LGBTQA rights advocacy, and promoting cultural humility on campus and in the surrounding community. In order to explore participants' experiences with the project, data was gathered through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and relevant artifacts, such as student work and course materials. In total, the study includes twenty-one participants, including the instructor, the community partner, and 19 students. Of the 19 students enrolled in the course, this research focuses on the experiences of five key informants (Bogdan & Bilken, 1997), who are referred to as “focal students” throughout the study. The findings of this study have implications for first-year composition instructors who engage in service-learning. Echoing previous research, this study finds that the relationship between the community partner and the instructor is an important factor in service-learning. Specifically, in this study, the instructor and the community partner design, implement, and assess the service-learning project collaboratively and have adapted the project over five semesters to ensure that it meets both their needs. The instructor and the community partner cite their collaboration as one of the reasons the project is successful. This study also reflects previous findings that indicate service-learning is more successful when it is integrated into the course curriculum. Students in this study feel that the project seems somewhat “separate” from the course, and perceive this lack of integration between the project and the course as one of the project's biggest weakness. A key finding of this study is that stakeholders in a service-learning project may not need to recognize or understand one another's perspectives about the project's purposes or outcomes in order for the the project to be successful. Previous research has suggested that service-learning projects are more likely to be successful if stakeholders understand one another's expectations for the project (Bringle, Clayton, & Hatcher, 2012; Deans, 2001), but this study suggests that this understanding might not be as essential to a service-learning project's success as previously thought. This study finds that participants perceive the project's purposes differently and have varying expectations about its outcomes. They make different and occasionally contradicting claims about which aspects of the project are effective or ineffective and they often indicate that they don't fully understand one another's perspectives on the project. Participants perceptions of the project are consistently divergent with one exception: they believe the instructor should continue teaching the project in future courses because they believe that the project is beneficial to their community, which suggests that participants don't need to understand one another's perspectives in order for the project to be successful.

This study explores whether students in the mandated Ontario high school community service program consider their service requirement to be meaningful; the relationship between meaningful service and subsequent service; and other factors related to a meaningful experience and future service. A secondary analysis was conducted using a survey of 1,341 first-year university students, collected by a research team led by Steven Brown of Wilfrid Laurier University. The main finding is that meaningful service is a predictor for subsequent service and can contribute to individual and social change. Meaningful service opportunities help address a gap in service learning literature, which is the impact of service on communities, perhaps by underestimating the capacity of youth to contribute to social change. Three policy recommendations emerge: curriculum should be created to enable students to serve more effectively; program structure is necessary for reflection; and nonprofit agencies can meet both of the above needs.

This study explores whether students in the mandated Ontario high school community service program consider their service requirement to be meaningful; the relationship between meaningful service and subsequent service; and other factors related to a meaningful experience and future service. A secondary analysis was conducted using a survey of 1,341 first-year university students, collected by a research team led by Steven Brown of Wilfrid Laurier University. The main finding is that meaningful service is a predictor for subsequent service and can contribute to individual and social change. Meaningful service opportunities help address a gap in service learning literature, which is the impact of service on communities, perhaps by underestimating the capacity of youth to contribute to social change. Three policy recommendations emerge: curriculum should be created to enable students to serve more effectively; program structure is necessary for reflection; and nonprofit agencies can meet both of the above needs.

Over the past two decades researchers have analyzed motivating factors and institutional barriers that influenced a professor's initial decision to utilize a service-learning pedagogy. The majority of this research has been quantitative in nature, surveying faculty members' initial attitudes around service-learning. However, the extant literature fails to qualitatively examine the experiences of faculty members who successfully integrate service-learning, especially at a public research institution with civic-engaged mission. Because a public institution relies upon a critical mass of faculty members to support its civic engagement mission, this study focused on explaining the lived experience of exemplar professors in service-learning to understanding their motivations, barriers, and experiences. Faculty members are important to study because service-learning is a form of community engagement that cannot happen without sustainable efforts from professors. Moreover, students and communities cannot derive the benefits of service-learning, nor can civically minded institutions achieve their goal, if faculty members do not incorporate service-learning into their classrooms. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to understand the experiences of service-learning faculty members at a four-year public research institution where community engagement is a stated priority. Utilizing a recently developed faculty engagement model (Demb & Wade, 2012) as the guiding theoretical framework, this research study seeks to understand the lived experience of faculty members at The University of Texas at Austin by inquiring 1) how faculty members implement meaningful community engagement through their service-learning classes, 2) how service-learning may shape a faculty members' professional and personal identity at a research institution, and 3) how service-learning fits into faculty members' larger scholarship agenda. / text