Magister Curationis - MCur / The re-engineering of the healthcare landscape requires Higher Educational Institutions (HEI) to employ teaching and learning approaches that would produce graduates, who could respond to the transformative initiatives within the healthcare system. Graduates are required to become involved in a service-learning project, as part of their learning experience, within the Masters of Nursing in Advanced Psychiatric Nursing programme. Their learning and teaching activity is intended to prepare them to become competent advanced psychiatric nurse specialists, who are able to address social transformation.

This study compared moral reasoning of first year college students who chose to take the service learning section of a required general education course with students who took the non service learning section of the same course using the Visions of Morality Scale. This study hypothesized that students who chose to take the service learning section of the course would have a higher level of moral reasoning compared to those students who chose to take the non service section. Data was collected from 24 respondents via the Visions of Morality instrument and was joined to data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). The study found that students in the service learning sections of the course scored lower on the Visions of Morality Scale than those in the non service learning sections. Based on CIRP data taken from respondents at the beginning of their freshman year, this study also found a statistically significant difference between students who chose service learning courses and those who chose the non service learning courses in respondent desire to participate in community based action programs. The implications for this study include insight into the reasons why students decide to participate in service courses and subsequently, why some service courses might be more effective than others.

The purpose of this case study was to explore and describe educational psychology students' experiences of academic service learning (ASL) as part of a higher education- rural school partnership in order to inform knowledge on higher education community engagement. The Transformative Learning Theory framed the study by engaging students in an active meaningmaking process of critical self-reflection and integration of experiences. Qualitative methodology was chosen as the preferred mode of inquiry which contributed to my insight and understanding of participants' subjective experiences of ASL. A constructivist epistemology guided dynamic interaction with participants, providing a platform for co-constructing knowledge generated based on participants' retrospective experiences. Seven cohorts of Master's students in Educational Psychology (2007 to 2013; n=22), who were involved in assessments and interventions at a rural school as part of their training at the University of Pretoria, were purposefully selected. Participants were, as far as possible, representative in terms of gender, age and cultural background. Qualitative data generation techniques (i.e. questionnaires and semi-structured interviews) were used to collect data, which were then thematically analysed by reporting on patterns across cohorts. The findings suggested that participants experienced the ASL practicum as an engaged scholarship that is socially transformative. The findings furthermore revealed that participants experienced ASL as an integral part of the educational psychology curriculum and a platform for initiating and developing professional identity. The ASL practicum experiences of participants are consistent across cohorts and similar to that experienced by other students in ASL programmes. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

Higher education institutions have been mandated by government to engage in community development projects and partner with local communities. This was done in order for the higher education institutions to reconsider the role the play in local communities and redress some of the injustices that occurred during the apartheid era. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the experiences of young people from a rural school on higher education community engagement partnership. The participants were made up of 31 young people from a rural school in Mpumalanga and had been involved in a community engagement partnership with a higher education institution. The young people were provided with a platform to share their experiences using PRA activities and the data generated was analysed using deductive thematic analysis. The young people expressed what they think the purpose for the partnership was, how they benefitted from the partnership and indicated what should be changed for future partnerships as well as suggestions to improve the partnership. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Globally, healthcare curricula are being transformed to serve societal needs and strengthen the provision of healthcare services towards ensuring Primary Health Care. Community Engagement and its typology were deemed significant to redress the nature of healthcare services, as well as the nature of the nursing curriculum, in order to develop socially accountable graduates. SL is known as a philosophy and an approach to community development and pedagogy. In this current study, the primary focus of SL was viewed as pedagogy, with the intention of fostering skills and values associated with accountability.

No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Anatomy Academy (AA) is a service-learning program in which pre- and current health professional students (Mentors) work in pairs to teach anatomy, physiology, and nutrition to children in the community. The purpose of this study was to investigate the short- and long-term Mentor outcomes in personal, social, civic, academic, and professional domains. Former Mentors were invited to complete a survey of Likert-style and free response questions evaluating the perceived impact of their AA experience on: teaching skills, personal and interpersonal development, civic engagement, and academic and professional development. Follow-up interviews with a subset of survey respondents were performed. The survey was completed by 219 Mentors and 17 survey respondents were interviewed. Over 50% of former Mentors reported moderate or major impact of AA participation on elements of personal and interpersonal development (e.g., selfesteem [57.6%], altruism [67.9%], communication skills [60.1%], and ability to work with others [72.6%]) and community service participation (54.2%) that endures in the years after the program. Mentors who worked with low-income or Special needs populations reported unique impacts in personal, interpersonal, and civic domains. A majority of former Mentors agreed that AA participation helped them learn practical skills (76.3%) and factual knowledge (65.4%) relevant to the their careers, with several current health professionals reported that they regularly employ teaching and interpersonal skills learned while Mentors in their roles as physicians, nurses, or physician’s assistants. A majority of former Mentors reported that AA validated their choice to either pursue a healthcare career or not (59.7%), increased their confidence in performing professional tasks (64.7%), and helped shape their professional identity (58.9%). These results indicate that a health education-based service-learning program offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional students interested in or actively pursuing a healthcare career benefits across personal, interpersonal, civic, and professional domains that support their academic progress and preparation for professional practice. This study contributes much-needed evidence of the long-term student outcomes of service-learning to the literature, with a particular focus on how the pedagogy can supplement the education and professional development of pre- and current health professional students.

No description available.

Service learning has been proposed as a way to create a meaningful environment for the language acquisition process (Weldon & Trautmann, 2003). As a pedagogical tool for second language acquisition the greatest benefit of utilizing service learning activities is that it creates connections to the target language community and provides authentic experiences for target language use (Long, 2003; Morris, 2001). However, there is no detailed record of how service learning actually impacts language and culture acquisition (Bloom, 2008). This multiple case study describes the ways in which four advanced Spanish learners engaged with service learning and the influence of this activity on their ability to communicate in the target language. Each case provides triangulated descriptions of what actually occurred when students went onsite to engage in service learning activities, what their personal reflections were on the experience, and how they carried this experience back into their classroom and academic work. Qualitative analysis of onsite and in-class observations, face-to-face interviews, electronic journal entries, and reflective written reports revealed the importance of the nature of interactions and language use in service learning for second-language acquisition. Where the service was more academically aligned and offered repeated interactions in the target language, students were more likely to advance their language skills. However, though the service may provide an important community contribution, all service learning did not prove equal in its ability to instruct and align with desired educational outcomes.

This master’s thesis is a qualitative research project that explored the transformation of multiple individuals who initially learned for self-interested purposes, but later had a shift in their desire to learn so as to benefit others. The author collected rich narratives that described this phenomenon and provided insight into the following question: what is the experience of a learner who transitions from learning out of self-interest to learning out of altruistic purposes? The author found the following five major themes across six participants as they transitioned to more altruistic learning: humility, self-efficacy, resources, success and agency. These themes give insight into the shift of an altruistic learner’s perspective as they shifted from self-interested desires to altruistic desires. In doing so, these learners find the most significant meaning in learning by helping influence the recipient in a meaningful way and not just accomplishing the task. The implications of this research can better help educators understand principles of altruistic learning and thereby create opportunities for others to become altruistic learners.