Service learning is the catalyst for people to enter an oppressed or disenfranchised community, create bonds of understanding through dialogue, and learn to genuinely understand the behaviors and actions of that community. This paper explores the links among empathy creation, oppression, and different forms of consciousness that service learning is responsible for creating. The theories of Paulo Freire's engaged pedagogy, bell hooks critical consciousness, Novella Keith's theory of reciprocity, and Walter Fluker's theory of ethical leadership provide the context for my exploration. These authors demonstrate the importance of creating genuine empathetic bonds through action, practice, and reflection. / Urban Education

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Many academicians, business people, and government officials are calling for college students to not only earn a degree but to leave college ready to be active and engaged citizens in their communities. One of the fastest-growing responses to this call within higher education has been the introduction of service-learning courses across disciplines. This study was designed to attempt to bring some focus to community agency needs and desires in service-learning relationships, both in domestic and international programs. Factors and criteria frequently cited in the literature as important to community agencies and when creating partnerships were compiled into a list of 10 criteria. Community agencies and faculty/staff involved in service-learning at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) were then asked to respond to each factor, indicating how important each was to them and how satisfied they were with how each factor was carried out in their current relationship(s). Overall, the 62 respondents found having interaction based on mutual respect and relationships built on trust as most important and the factors with which they are most satisfied. Faculty/staff respondents tended rate each factor as more important than community agency respondents, though there were no significant differences between the two groups’ satisfaction ratings. International respondents, including both faculty/staff and community agency respondents, in general, rated each item more important and reported greater satisfaction than domestic respondents. Aspects of the relationships under study, including frequency of interaction, type of interaction, and frequency of supervising service-learning students, were also related to respondents’ ratings of each factor. Even with limitations, the study helps move toward a greater understanding of working with community agencies, establishing criteria to aid in evaluating and implementing service-learning relationships, and providing a base for future studies.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University of Pennsylvania. / Includes bibliographical references.

This study examined the relationship between service-learning and civic engagement in the 2- year college and also investigated specific differences between service experiences to determine whether those differences moderated the relationship between service participation and civic engagement outcomes. The study yielded 110 matching pre- and post-Student Civic Engagement surveys from service-learners in five different course subject areas at a large southeastern community college. The findings of the paired-samples t tests suggest that students experienced significant gains in four of the seven dimensions of civic engagement after participating in service. Students in comparable courses in subject matter but without service-components were also surveyed, yielding 117 matching pre- and post-surveys. A comparison of the mean differences between pre- and post-responses of the non-service-learners and service-learners suggests that the service-learners had a higher tendency than the non-service-learners to participate in the majority of assessed civic engagement activities. The data were sorted by subject area to allow for an analysis of the service-learners and the non-service-learners in comparable courses. Those results, however, were inconclusive, and no clear trends emerged. ANOVAs and independent-samples t tests were used to determine the relationship between gains in civic outcomes and select variables. The findings suggest that the type of service-learning activity, the duration of the service experience, the participant-perceived quality of the service experience, the amount of required student reflection, and the teacher’s frequency of use of active and passive instructional strategies significantly moderate the relationship between service participation and a number of measures of civic engagement.

Given the tormented history of development projects around the globe and the fact that global service learning and engineering-for-development often engages students in development interventions, it is critically important to explore the impact of global service learning projects and partnerships not only on student learning, which has received ample attention, but also on the international host communities. Although there is increasing research on student outcomes of participation in service-learning, there is a lack of research focusing on the outcomes related to the community where the service takes place. Research focused on the impact on communities should include the wide range of perspectives that compose the community- participants, organization leaders, residents, and others. This study responds to this need by exploring the community participants’ perspectives in Waslala, Nicaragua about the projects and partnership with Villanova University’s College of Engineering. The two research questions explore the community participants’ perspectives about: (1) outcomes of the projects or partnership, and (2) educational goals. Community participants’ perspectives call for a broader conceptualization of what counts as outcomes and highlight the importance of participation in all phases of the research process. Supporting existing scholarship about host community motivations to serve as co-educators, my findings describe what the community participants want to teach university students. Community participants’ perspectives describe a desired shift in students and a move towards critical global citizenship education. This study highlights the utility of Fraser’s (2009) theory of social justice and Andreotti’s (2006) framework for critical global citizenship education as useful tools to analyze and understand GSL partnerships. / Urban Education

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Esta investigación intenta entender mejor qué tipos de aprendizaje ocurren cuando los estudiantes toman parte en un programa de aprendizaje basado en el voluntariado internacional. Una meta es demostrar que las cinco C’s de ACTFL (comunicación, cultura, conexiones, comparaciones, y comunidades) son parte del aprendizaje percibido por los estudiantes después de haber participado en un programa de aprendizaje basado en el voluntariado en el extranjero. Otra meta es ofrecer un ejemplo de un programa que utiliza los métodos de auto-reflexión y auto-análisis recomendados en los estudios críticos del voluntariado y cómo estos métodos empujan a los estudiantes a alcanzar las cinco C’s de ACTFL, para que otros profesores tengan un modelo para crear sus propios programas de aprendizaje basado en el voluntariado internacional.

This study investigated the levels of involvement in service-learning programs and activities in 4-year public colleges and university that held membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).

The purpose of this study was to explore college students' intellectual development through their service-learning experience. This study also took into consideration the characteristics of student groups and the way in which they transformed intellectually through their service-learning experience. To examine these questions, twelve upper-division college students who had completed a service-learning course were interviewed, in order to capture the dynamics of their service-learning experiences, their perceptions of their intellectual development, and their values and priorities as college students in detail. From the interviews, five major themes related to college students' intellectual development emerged. Three of the themes focused on the interpersonal capacities and complexities of intellectual development, and two were related to the complexity and challenges of unstructured problems related to service-learning and college students' intellectual growth. In addition, by analyzing the themes and the characteristics of student groups together, I coined new terms to capture the intellectual transformation of modern-day college students who participate in service-learning. The findings of this study will add to the understanding of college students' intellectual development through service-learning, as well as how students transformed through the experience, and provide opportunities for future research to investigate specific groups of college students in this and other collegiate settings.

ABSTRACT There is a growing body of research that demonstrates the relationship between identity development, the development of citizenship, and the pedagogy of service learning (Eyler & Giles, 1999; Jones & Hill, 2001, 2003; Rhoad, 1997; Youniss &Yates, 1997). While a review of the effects of community service on elementary and high school participants in the USA provide some indication that participating in service-learning programmes is beneficial to young people, Alt & Medrich (1994) state that there is still relatively little clear, systematic evidence demonstrating the connection between community service and particular affective and educational objectives. It is of concern in the light of the Further Education and Training (FET) Life Orientation (LO) Curriculum’s call for citizenship education (Department of Education, 2003), that no research on ‘community service’ work done by high school learners in South Africa can be located. The studies that link a service- learning or community work pedagogy to the development of empathy have primarily been conducted with college students (Burnett, Hamel, & Long, (2004); Giles, & Eyler, (1993); Jones & Hill (2003); Pratt, (2001); Rhoad, (1997)). Although there is some research with adolescents (Hamilton & Fenzel, (1988); Leming, (2001); Middleton, & Kelly (1996); Yates. & Youniss, (1996), it has primarily focused on social and identity development in community service settings and not specifically on empathy. However Hatcher’s (1994) research with adolescents and college students provides indications that empathy is developmental and can be elicited by environmental intervention and that some aspects of empathy can be taught to adolescents if a developmental shift is caught. Key words: empathy, service learning, community work, identity, citizenship