Service-Learning: Volume 12

This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section entails an overview of service-learning. Specifically, this section provides an understanding of what service-learning involves, its central components, and its place and value within both higher education and K-12 education. A key consideration stemming from this section is that well-designed service-learning programs have a significant impact on the development of pre-service teachers while at the same time benefiting community partners. The second section reviews the concept of inclusive education. In particular, a working definition of inclusive education is proffered along with ways in which inclusive education is implemented in practice. An important consideration is the development of attitudes and knowledge for inclusive education in both pre-service and in-service teacher training. The third section explores the symbiosis between service-learning and inclusive education. The point being made is that service-learning experiences provide a viable and practical way for people to engage with children and adults who live on the margins of society. This point is especially apposite, as given research suggests that many teachers, especially in Western countries, originate from a middle-class, female population (Grant & Sleeter, 2009), which may prevent interaction with diverse populations. The chapter concludes with the understanding that service-learning has the capacity to engender a greater sense of empathy and appreciation in pre-service teachers that education is an inclusive enterprise.

In this chapter, we consider the impact of an international service-learning experience on six final year pre-service teachers’ preparedness to be inclusive teachers in terms of Kiely’s (2004) “transforming forms” (p. 9). These forms are “political,” “intellectual,” “moral,” “cultural,” “personal,” and “spiritual.” The analysis of the six participants’ reflection logs completed on return to university, and interviews undertaken 12 months after the experience, revealed four categories (personal growth, relationships with others, wider societal views, and impact on teaching) that encompass movement toward these transforming forms. We begin the chapter by considering service-learning frameworks and theories, drawing out our understanding of Kiely’s (2004) “transforming forms” (pp. 9–11). Following this discussion, we provide an overview of our program and the six participants. We then analyze the data from participants’ reflection logs and interviews. From our analysis, we suggest that all six participants showed some movement toward one or more of the “transforming forms.” Finally, we draw conclusions about the usefulness of Kiely’s framework for planning and reflecting on an international service-learning experience to prepare pre-service teachers to be inclusive teachers. We conclude that keeping in mind Kiely’s “transforming forms” when planning, reflecting on, and evaluating an international service-learning experience can better prepare students to be inclusive teachers.

This chapter explores a pre-service primary teacher’s personal experiences of service-learning, volunteerism and inclusion. The chapter initially considers literature on service-learning. A key point stemming from the literature is that service-learning can be a highly valuable activity for primary age children. Literature on volunteering is then reviewed. This literature highlights the positive impact of volunteering within society. The chapter then moves to the author’s personal experiences of volunteering and service-learning prior to entering university. At this point the author underlines her personal appreciation of the reflection component of service-learning. The chapter then features the author’s service-learning experiences while undertaking her four-year Bachelor of Education. These experiences include working with a child in the Western Australian Department of Child Protection and Family Support, a mission trip to the Philippines, and helping a Year 10 Aboriginal student. The author subsequently reflects on her service-learning and volunteering experiences. While commenting on the value of both, she notes the stronger impact that the service-learning experiences have had on her personally and professionally. The chapter then considers the author’s understanding of ways in which service-learning had positively impacted on her appreciation of inclusivity. Finally, the chapter outlines a range of future directions for the author as a consequence of her service-learning and volunteering experience. These include consolidating her teaching skills in the classroom, teaching in rural and remote communities of Western Australia, teaching in hard-to-staff schools, volunteering as a teacher overseas and designing effective service-learning programmes for primary-age students.

One defining characteristic of service-learning as a pedagogical tool is its focus on reflection. Within service-learning programmes, students engage collaboratively with one another and community members, and are encouraged to reflect on the various aspects of their experience. The author argues that reflection is crucial for its contribution to service-learning, as a teaching methodology, and to service-learning’s cognitive, affective and social impact. Part of service-learning’s impact is its contribution to the development of inclusive attitudes and predispositions towards inclusiveness among school students and tertiary students, particularly pre-service teachers. The chapter recognises inclusivity as an element of quality teaching that helps students make connections with contexts outside the classroom, engage with different perspectives and ways of knowing and to accommodate all their peers and all those being offered service. The chapter recommends a particular approach to the expansion of thinking and practice that inclusivity requires, one based on the methodology of the Philosophy in Schools movement, which has its genesis in the work of John Dewey. That approach uses the mechanism of the Community of Inquiry to structure reflective activities in a way that facilitates the development of students’ critical and creative thinking and their capacity for substantive dialogue. Within the Community of Inquiry students are encouraged to engage with differing and perhaps novel perspectives as they respond to real-life service-learning experiences. Well-facilitated reflection gives students the opportunity to develop skills and dispositions conducive to deep understanding of concepts and issues that arise in discussion. It also helps to raise awareness of preconceptions and attitudes that can undermine inclusiveness in education. The chapter draws the conclusion that rigorous reflection serves as a stimulus to act to implement inclusive practices within service-learning projects on the basis of well-justified reasoning.

This chapter provides practical research-based advice on implementing service-learning in inclusive classrooms to maximize academic, social-emotional, and civic outcomes. The K-12 standards for service-learning quality are explained in detail, and the relationship to inclusive learning is described. Guidance and examples for how to improve meaningfulness of service, connect service-learning to curriculum, develop strong reflection processes, engage in progress monitoring, ensure appropriate duration and intensity of the experience, provide students’ with voice and choice, promote diversity, and develop strong community partnerships are provided. The chapter also includes information on improving student engagement and retention of information.

Many opportunities for a service-learning experience are available to education pre-service teachers at the University of Notre Dame Australia, and the Whale of a Tale Reader Mentor Program is one of these. The Whale of a Tale developed as a service-learning experience as a result of a partnership between the University of Notre Dame Australia School of Education (UNDA) and the Western Australian Department for Child Protection and Family Support (DCPFS). The programme aimed to address some of the needs of children in out-of-home care (referred to as ‘children in care’) who have experienced trauma. This chapter initially describes how the Whale of a Tale Reader Mentor Program came into being. This description is followed by the rationale for basing the structure of the reading programme on a service-learning pedagogy. The results of a subsequent research study that evaluated the reading programme are then presented. Finally, the chapter discusses the concept of inclusion and how the Whale of a Tale Reader Mentor Program has facilitated a designated outreach approach to children on the margins. In particular, the programme focused on how these children could engage with reading stories that would hopefully inspire a lifelong love of reading and learning.

Aquinas College provides ‘across-school’ leadership positions for each of the key areas of Religious education, spirituality and service. These areas are sometimes referred to as the ‘head, heart and hands’ model of religious formation and they reflect a holistic approach to education by including experiential learning. In doing so, each area becomes an intrinsic part of a young boy’s education at Aquinas and every student is called to be a ‘man for others’. In 2005, a formal service programme was introduced at the Junior School level and a Service Coordinator position was created. It is important to keep in mind the overall context in which this programme was developed. The aim of the programme was not only to promote and engage younger students in volunteering and fundraising (as most primary schools already do), but to also link them to service projects that already existed in the Senior school. The Junior Service Program also incorporates leadership and reflections on gospel values and sees volunteering as a learning exercise as well as an opportunity to help others. The main characteristics of the Junior Service Program (known as the JSP) are: (a) Voluntary, (b) Membership, (c) Structured activities, (d) Reflection, (e) Recognition.

In this chapter, the authors draw connections between the five stages of service learning (investigation, preparation, action, reflection, and demonstration) and entry points for differentiation (readiness, interest, learning modality, content, process, product) within varied service-learning experiences. The intent is to model how a dynamic service-learning approach aligns with and supports differentiated learning that is purposeful for high school students. Such an approach strengthens students’ commitment to developing content knowledge and skills in a way that works for them and provides opportunities for students to apply their learning to issues that matter to them.

With a focus on core concepts such as coming as guest, being present, story, innate dignity and the value of difference, students in a Boys High School spent 6 months volunteering on a hospitality van with the homeless. Over that period the students engaged in varying levels of meaning making linked to their reflection of the experience. While some students remained at a surface level of meaning making, the majority progressed to deeper meaning making and some to the level of existential change. Analysis of the associated case studies would indicate that deepening levels of meaning making are linked to direct engagement with the clients of the service, the active presence of mentors, a longer service engagement, reflection upon experience, critical analysis and the deliberate engagement with the core concepts. This process, along with the development of a supportive inclusive school culture, will provide a platform for the Service-Learning program to enhance inclusivity as a lived and owned value within the participants’ lives.

With a storytelling tone, this chapter narrates different examples of service-learning programs at The American School of Barcelona. The opportunities for international schools to develop experiential/learning programs through partnerships with a variety of institutions from the local community such as hospitals, multinational corporations, local and international NGOs, business schools, and regional or national governments are described. Establishing these partnerships not only provides students with valuable opportunities for experiential learning and service-learning, but it also has a very positive impact on partner institutions and their constituents, enhancing the school’s image in the community. Processes, as well as problems and solutions, that arise when developing service-learning programs are examined. By reading this chapter, it is hoped that readers will be inspired and, if they are practitioners of service-learning, will be able to replicate some of these programs in their own contexts. The reader will be able to see the positive benefits both for those who are serving and those who are served.

The Beagle Bay Immersion Program is a Christian Service-Learning experience, which facilitates opportunities for secondary school students to experience unique expressions of cultural diversity found in remote Aboriginal communities of Western Australia. Through engagement in the program, students undergo a process of experiential learning, identifying core social justice issues present in a broader Australian social context, and helping to address identified community needs. This immersion program is conducted as part of the Christian Service-Learning Program at a Perth-based Catholic Secondary College in Western Australia. The Beagle Bay Immersion Program serves as an opportunity for students to engage in acts of discipleship, modeling values of social and cultural inclusivity as a means of enriching their own communities. Underpinned by core Gospel values, the program aims to actively promote a “spirit of solidarity and service to others” (Prendiville, 2016, p. 42) both among the immediate participants and the wider school community. Presented in this chapter is an examination of the values which guide the College’s Service-Learning Program and the ways in which the Beagle Bay Immersion Program facilitates attitudes of inclusivity by exposing students to diverse populations. Christian Service-Learning can serve as a means through which students can circumvent barriers that preclude exposure to diversity. The Beagle Bay Immersion Program seeks to build relationships through service, which benefit both the College and Beagle Bay Communities, providing students opportunities for personal, spiritual, and academic growth while fostering a culture of inclusion.

Teachers are increasingly required to include students with disabilities in mainstream classroom settings. In order to effectively prepare pre-service teachers to address the needs of all students in the classroom, including students with disabilities, teacher-training programs must utilise effective pedagogy. Service-learning has been shown to be an effective pedagogy to employ to address the knowledge/learning needs of pre-service teachers. This chapter will build upon the use of service-learning to increase knowledge and will discuss the importance and practice of also developing positive attitudes towards students with disabilities. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen, 2002) is utilised as a basis for developing the service-learning program, and exemplifies three main elements as being necessary to bring about behavioural change: behavioural beliefs, normative beliefs and control beliefs. The pre-service teachers described in this chapter are completing a special education specialisation at a tertiary institution, and are required to complete a service-learning unit as a component of the specialisation. Reflection, an important requirement for service-learning programs, allows the researcher to determine if the goals of the program have been met, and how these outcomes relate to the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the potential they may have to bring about behavioural change for the pre-service teachers. Six main themes were identified in the pre-service teacher reflections. These themes were further divided into two main categories: affective (empathy, personal growth, confidence); and cognitive (knowledge, skill development, enhanced professional practice). Links between the pre-service teacher reflections and the Theory of Planned Behaviour suggest that the service-learning experience is beneficial for developing pre-service teachers who are more inclined to address the needs of students with disabilities.

Within tertiary education, service-learning can offer deeply engaging and transformational experiences for students, broadening their consideration of a host of social justice issues of our time, including diversity and inclusion. This chapter describes how service-learning interfaces with two areas in particular, both of which have wide-ranging public health implications and are generally misrepresented in public media: poverty and mental health. Representative studies are highlighted and case examples are presented in each domain, concluding with recommendations for future research. The authors argue that service-learning courses addressing social justice issues such as poverty and mental health can lead to deep learning in students if they are sequenced to include both direct service-learning that concretizes the issue and community-based research that highlights the public policy challenges and implications of addressing that issue systemically.

This chapter explores the value of a service-learning unit within a pre-service secondary teaching course. It does so through the perceptions of pre-service teachers. The purpose was to determine the potential of a service-learning program to prepare pre-service secondary teachers for the classroom, both personally and professionally. The context for the research is a social justice service-learning unit offered to pre-service secondary teachers undertaking a Bachelor of Education, Master of Teaching or Graduate Diploma of Education. There were 105 participants in the study. Data collection entailed a 25- to 30-minute survey, which participants completed at the conclusion of the unit. The survey contained qualitative and quantitative questions. Data were analysed through content analysis in the case of the open-ended questions while percentages and frequency column graphs were used for the multiple response questions. The results revealed that the personal and professional development of pre-service secondary teachers had been impacted significantly as a result of engagement in service-learning activities. Additionally, participants listed a range of ‘memorable’ experiences, highlighted various challenges associated with service-learning, indicated ways service-learning prepared them for their teaching practicum, and noted the importance of including service-learning as part of a teaching degree. An over-arching theme that emerged repeatedly in the comments of the pre-service teachers was the need to adopt an inclusive attitude in their teaching practice. The chapter concludes with the authors offering recommendations that focus on further research into the viability of service-learning programs in pre-service teaching courses.