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I’m giving a talk tomorrow to our Pyschology Department’s brown bag series entitled “You Call This Service? The Effect of Project Type on Deficiency Paradigms in a Service Learning Project.”\u00a0 The main theme of this talk is that unreflective service learning programs that emphasize altruistic service learning<\/em> where the pedagogical emphasis is on “service” has deleterious effects for both the subject and object of service learning.\u00a0 From my article<\/a> (currently under review The Journal of Political Science Education):<\/p>\n the programmatic emphasis with altruism focused service programs is on the community being served as \u201cin need\u201d rather than as a community with a pre-existing stock of assets (Kretzman and McKnight 1993). This deficiency paradigm (McKnight 1996) leads to a focus on what Eby (1998) calls McService or Service in a Box \u2013 a perspective on service that ignores the specific context in which the service takes place and thereby reinforces a paradigm of advantage and dependence.<\/p>\n \n<\/blockquote>\n Service learning is a very powerful and effective pedagogy. A number of studies find that the approach enhances students’ understanding of links between theory and practice, their problem-solving and critical thinking and their empathy towards social problems. But how do we keep our students and our institutions from developing a “do gooder” syndrome where they view their role as “saving” communities?<\/p>\n In the study I discuss tomorrow, I present very preliminary research that suggests that students gain a more complex relationship of low-income communities when service learning programs are designed to promote collaborative work rather than traditional forms of voluntarism. Altruism and giving of one’s time are important elements of a strong civic culture. However, my fear is that we train a generation of students who want to work for rather than with people in low income communities.<\/p>\n Theda Skocpol<\/a> has a great critique<\/a> of the change in civic participation from locally-based associations to national “professional advocacy” organizations that limit the range of voices in public discourse. I’m curious to hear about other’s experieince with service learning. Do students work collaboratively with communities or work for communities? Do the projects they engage in emphasize the community as deficient<\/em> or as asset filled<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m giving a talk tomorrow to our Pyschology Department’s brown bag series entitled “You Call This Service? The Effect of Project Type on Deficiency Paradigms in a Service Learning Project.”\u00a0 The main theme of this talk is that unreflective service learning programs that emphasize altruistic service learning where the pedagogical emphasis is on “service” has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1111,705,1113,1110,1112],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-altruism","tag-civic-engagement","tag-deficiency-paradigm","tag-service-learning","tag-skocpol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n