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Scholarship
March 29, 2017
Democratic Dilemmas of Teaching Service-Learning: Curricular Strategies for Success
- Author
- Cress, Christine M.; and Donahue, David M.
- Publisher
- Stylus Publishing, LLC, Sterling, VA
- ISBN
- 9781579224318
- Table of Contents
-
Foreword
Introduction
I. Democratic Dilemmas of Teaching Service-Learning
ch. 1 The Nature of Teaching and Learning Dilemmas: Democracy in the Making
ch. 2 Banning Books to Protect Children: Clashing Perspectives in Service-Learning
ch. 3 Solidarity, Not Charity: Issues of Privilege in Service-Learning
II. Designing Service-Learning Courses for Democratic Outcomes
ch. 4 Pedagogical and Epistemological Approaches to Service-Learning: Connecting Academic Content to Community Service
ch. 5 Student Objection to Service-Learning: A Teachable Moment About Political and Community Engagement
ch. 6 Practice Makes Imperfect: Service-Learning for Political Engagement as a Window into the Challenges of Political Organizing
ch. 7 Modeling Citizenship: The Nexus of Knowledge and Skill
III. Creating Democratic Learning Communities Within and Without
ch. 8 Consensus, Collaboration, and Community: Mutually Exclusive Ideals?
ch. 9 Cultivating Relationships Between a Grass Roots Organization and a University
ch. 10 Negotiating Student Expectations and Interpretations of Service-Learning
ch. 11 Service-Learning is Like Learning to Walk: Baby Steps to Cultural Competence
IV. Deconstructing Dilemmas for Democratically-Centered Learning
ch. 12 Conflict as a Constructive Curricular Strategy
ch. 13 Why Are You So Mad? Critical Multiculturalist Pedagogies and Mediating Racial Conflicts in Community-Based Learning
ch. 14 Working with High School Dropouts: Service-Learning Illustrations of Power and Privilege
ch. 15 Democratic Lessons in Faith, Service, and Sexuality
V. Academic Disciplines as Dimensions of Democracy
ch. 16 Disciplinary Knowledge, Service-Learning, and Citizenship
ch. 17 Why Should I Care? Introducing Service-Learning and Political Engagement to Computer Science Students
ch. 18 Political Science Students and the Disengaged Polis: Civic Education and Its Discontents
ch. 19 Health Psychology and Political Engagement: The Why and How
ch. 20 To Reform or To Empower: Asian American Studies and Education for Critical Consciousness
VI. Evaluating Democratic Process and Progress
ch. 21 Assessment of Expected and Unexpected Service-Learning Outcomes
ch. 22 Expecting the Political, Getting the Interview: How Students (Do Not) See Writing as a Political Act
ch. 23 Addressing Policy Dilemmas with Community-Based Research and Assessing Student Outcomes
ch. 24 Service-Learning for a Democratic Future
Contributors
Index
A college student wants to lead a campaign to ban a young adult novel from his child’s elementary school as his service-learning project in a children’s literature course. Believing the book is offensive to religious sensibilities, he sees his campaign as a service to children and the community. Viewing such a ban as limiting freedom of speech and access to information, the student’s professor questions whether leading a ban qualifies as a service project. If the goal of service is to promote more vital democratic communities, what should the student do? What should the professor do? How do they untangle competing democratic values? How do they make a decision about action?
This book addresses the teaching dilemmas, such as the above, that instructors and students encounter in service-learning courses.
Recognizing that teaching, in general, and service-learning, in particular, are inherently political, this book faces up to the resulting predicaments that inevitably arise in the classroom. By framing them as a vital and productive part of the process of teaching and learning for political engagement, this book offers the reader new ways to think about and address seemingly intractable ideological issues.
Faculty encounter many challenges when teaching service learning courses. These may arise from students’ resistance to the idea of serving; their lack of responsibility, wasting clients’ and community agencies’ time and money; the misalignment of community partner expectations with academic goals; or faculty uncertainty about when to guide students’ experiences and when direct intervention is necessary.
In over twenty chapters of case studies, faculty scholars from disciplines as varied as computer science, engineering, English, history, and sociology take readers on their and their students’ intellectual journeys, sharing their messy, unpredictable and often inspiring accounts of democratic tensions and trials inherent in teaching service-learning. Using real incidents – and describing the resources and classroom activities they employ – they explore the democratic intersections of various political beliefs along with race/ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and other lived differences and likenesses that students and faculty experience in their service-learning classroom and extended community. They share their struggles of how to communicate and interact across the divide of viewpoints and experiences within an egalitarian and inclusive environment all the while managing interpersonal tensions and conflicts among diverse people in complex, value-laden situations.
The experienced contributors to this book offer pedagogical strategies for constructing service-learning courses, and non-prescriptive approaches to dilemmas for which there can be no definitive solutions. (From the Publisher)
This book addresses the teaching dilemmas, such as the above, that instructors and students encounter in service-learning courses.
Recognizing that teaching, in general, and service-learning, in particular, are inherently political, this book faces up to the resulting predicaments that inevitably arise in the classroom. By framing them as a vital and productive part of the process of teaching and learning for political engagement, this book offers the reader new ways to think about and address seemingly intractable ideological issues.
Faculty encounter many challenges when teaching service learning courses. These may arise from students’ resistance to the idea of serving; their lack of responsibility, wasting clients’ and community agencies’ time and money; the misalignment of community partner expectations with academic goals; or faculty uncertainty about when to guide students’ experiences and when direct intervention is necessary.
In over twenty chapters of case studies, faculty scholars from disciplines as varied as computer science, engineering, English, history, and sociology take readers on their and their students’ intellectual journeys, sharing their messy, unpredictable and often inspiring accounts of democratic tensions and trials inherent in teaching service-learning. Using real incidents – and describing the resources and classroom activities they employ – they explore the democratic intersections of various political beliefs along with race/ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and other lived differences and likenesses that students and faculty experience in their service-learning classroom and extended community. They share their struggles of how to communicate and interact across the divide of viewpoints and experiences within an egalitarian and inclusive environment all the while managing interpersonal tensions and conflicts among diverse people in complex, value-laden situations.
The experienced contributors to this book offer pedagogical strategies for constructing service-learning courses, and non-prescriptive approaches to dilemmas for which there can be no definitive solutions. (From the Publisher)