“Looking at archival program reflections and conducting a series of interviews advanced our understanding of what our students learned during, and retained years removed, from their experience. The past students interviewed have all since graduated and had been involved in team-based, global service-learning experiences in Mexico, Kenya, South Africa, and Botswana.”  

By Trisha Gott and Chance Lee

Understanding how a global service-learning experience moves learners through transformative processes can advance our work as educators and participants in service-learning abroad. Anecdotal evidence too-often fuels conversations about the learning, the growth, and the transformation, that we suspect might occur in any given international experience– but are the transformational experiences we suspect really happening? What learning actually takes place following a global service-learning experience and, more importantly, how does this new knowledge change behavior of participants? These questions led us to a review of the past seven years of program history using the reflections of alumni participants. We conducted document analysis of previous reflections, along with in-depth interviews with ten separate alumni.

As faculty members in the Staley School of Leadership Studies at Kansas State University, we analyzed the impact of our International Service Team (IST) program on student learning. Through this program students prepare for global service-learning in a semester class, spend 8 -10 weeks in-country, and complete a reflective process upon returning home. For over two decades, IST has engaged students in a service experience abroad, but lacked sufficient evidence to evaluate impact on our students and our communities.

Richard Kiely’s Transformative Service-Learning Process Model pulls heavily from Mezirow’s transformative learning theory – a way to understand student learning and process. Kiely’s work identified a process of learning that students, engaged in a service-learning experience abroad, may go through. The process is illustrated in the table below.

A hallmark of global service-learning for students often becomes what Kiely and others have come to call dissonance, the disruptive learning experience that shifts student perspective, upsets their world view, and invites them to begin another way of considering the world they inhabit. This model pushes the idea of what dissonance includes; contextual border crossing frames how dissonance might take place. To understand more deeply the contextual border crossing elements of our particular program is to make sense of our student learning.

Our new understanding becomes a pivot point to change and deepen our practice and to design interventions as educators –  around student learning. Internal to contextual border crossing, distinct categories emerge, born of the experiences of a group of global service-learners who went through a transformative learning process. These categories include personal, programmatic, historical, and structural borders that we cross as learners in a global service-learning experience. Our students certainly fit into these categories, but what would we see internal to each theme? How were our students, years removed from the program, making sense of this disruptive learning? Were they making sense of it at all, anymore?

Although this study focused on student learning outcomes, we must also continue to seek positive change for the impact and outcomes of our work with communities. Practitioners focused solely on student learning have the potential to do damage to communities intended to be partners in the learning and service process. As such, we must be as diligent in our analysis of the impact on communities as we are with student learning. As a program, it continues to be of utmost importance to build a mutually-generated definition of reciprocity with our partner organizations and communities to reach outcomes beneficial to all involved.

Looking at archival program reflections and conducting a series of interviews advanced our understanding of what our students learned during, and retained years removed, from their experience. The past students interviewed have all since graduated and had been involved in team-based, global service-learning experiences in Mexico, Kenya, South Africa, and Botswana.  They participated in programs ranging from direct service work, teaching English in rural Mexico and working with youth development professionals in central Kenya, to capacity building work through partnering with a South African nonprofit to support local entrepreneurs. They all participated in similar preparation and reflection processes as this program was paired with a three credit hour preparation course focused on leadership and service-learning. In their professional life, how were they incorporating their learning and had we supported their development as justice-minded community leaders?

What did we find?

Students were not talking about historical or structural border crossing years removed from their experience. What did we miss here? Data indicated that students reported significant learning directly after their experience, and enduring years later, in the category of personal development. Learning connected to work on teams or in community continued to challenge their understanding of themselves in relationship to others. However, there was limited to no mention of learning connected to Kiely’s categories of structural or historical learning, both immediately and years removed.

Global service-learning practitioners can build interventions into their curriculum that compel students to consider connections between the personal and structural categories as a result of their learning. One way to design learning in response to this gap is for practitioners to develop learning interventions with reflective practices and learning outcomes in mind that explicitly include all areas of Kiely’s model. We believe all four categories (personal, structural, historical, and programmatic) are critical to the success of our program. It is important in our future curriculum designs and implementation to avoid privileging any one category over another. For our program, the structural and historical elements that were missing in alumni reflections, were also missing in our curriculum interventions. Although not groundbreaking work, our efforts to more fully understand student learning in our curriculum, lead us to implement changes in our curriculum design and implementation for future participants.

What do we recommend?  

This work suggests global service-learning practitioners take stock of curriculum and design interventions to build a comprehensive and responsible learning experience. Practitioners must be intentional in the design, implementation, and review of their curriculum and programs… but it does not happen in a vacuum. Our overlay of the DEAL Model of Critical Reflection with Kiely’s categories of contextual border crossing is one method to discovering holes in learning, but it is only one. We recommend practitioners attempt other means of discovery and consider utilizing multiple models to identify new ways of thinking to evaluate student learning in GSL experiences.

Although this study focused on student learning outcomes, we must also continue to seek positive change for the impact and outcomes of our work with communities. Practitioners focused solely on student learning have the potential to do damage to communities intended to be partners in the learning and service process. As such, we must be as diligent in our analysis of the impact on communities as we are with student learning. As a program, it continues to be of utmost importance to build a mutually-generated definition of reciprocity with our partner organizations and communities to reach outcomes beneficial to all involved.

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Trisha Gott is the Assistant Director of the Staley School of Leadership Studies; she has served in this capacity since 2011.  Gott is a two time graduate of Kansas State University, completing a bachelor’s of arts degree with a major in modern languages and a master’s degree in Educational Leadership.  She will finish her doctorate in education in 2016. Gott has been with the School of Leadership Studies at K-State since the summer of 2009.  She coordinates efforts to advance engaged teaching and learning and enhance student programs.  She is committed to developing strong curriculum and engaged programing in the U.S. and abroad and works with alternative breaks, international service-learning, and other student programs.

Chance Lee, Director of Social Media at globalsl.org, is an Instructor in the School of Leadership Studies at Kansas State University. In his current position, he teaches courses such as the Culture and Context of Leadership, Introduction to Leadership Studies, and Theories of Nonprofit Leadership. As a doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction at Kansas State, he focuses on the pedagogy surrounding service-learning in higher education, with a particular focus on critical service-learning practices. He is committed to bringing global issues of social change and justice to students at Kansas State.