This thesis seeks to highlight the transformative dimension of learning through analysis of the student experience of International Service-Learning (ISL). ISL is a pedagogical approach that seeks to blend student learning with community engagement overseas and the development of a more just society. It presents a useful strategy for Universities as they respond to reforms in Higher Education and seek to enhance both the student learning experience and graduate employability. However, ISL remains under-theorised. This study investigates the transformative nature of ISL as experienced by students at Liverpool Hope University (LHU), a British University with a rich tradition of ISL. Through interpreting student descriptions of their experience of ISL it seeks to analyse features of the transformative learning process in this context and understand the potential for transformative learning outcomes from ISL. A holistic conceptualisation of transformative learning is proposed that looks beyond an epistemological process that involves shifts in worldview and habits of mind to an ontological process that accounts for changes to the student's ways of being in the world. This study is conceptually. driven and empirically grounded. A framework emerges to think about the development of the authentic self as an ongoing process of becoming oneself, becoming persons-in-relation and becoming other-wise. Groups of conditions, processes and resultant dispositions are identified as being particularly useful for interpreting the experience of ISL for 27 students across a range of international locations. This thesis argues that transformative learning in this context is a form of engagement that has a distinctly moral dimension. Although ISL has the potential to be ethical in character, evidence is presented of a number of factors that tend to militate against this. The implications of this thesis for educators and researchers are elicited at the levels of practice, institutional ethos and partnership.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:581451 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Bamber, Philip Michael |
| Publisher | University of Leeds |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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