Participatory Standards Development: Best Practices in Global Service-Learning
A participatory process of developing and strengthening best practice principles in global service-learning is underway. At the 12th Annual International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement Conference in Baltimore, MD, scores of global service-learning practitioners and community partners came together for initial conversation about best practice principles in the field. We are pleased to announce that several of the recommendations developed at that gathering will be advanced throughout the coming year. Discussion will take place on this website, at the 6th Annual Cornell University Global Service-Learning Institute, and (pending) at the Forum on Education Abroad’s Standards of Good…
For Good Or For Ill? Community Impact in Global Service-Learning
While there is a growing body of research relating to community outcomes of global service-learning projects, one of the challenges the field faces is becoming increasingly specific and nuanced about both understanding and – to the extent possible – working to manage community impact ethically. The following list of possible positive and negative outcomes of GSL programs was generated at the 2012 Conference of the International Association of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement. Please feel free to add additional positive and negative community effects in the comments section, as all of this will continue to feed into our collective…
Can critical global engagement be to colonialism in international development what service-learning is to charity in community development? Thoughts from IARSLCE 2012
By Nadia De Leon What does quality engagement across cultural differences, locally and abroad, look like for faculty and students in American universities? After participating in many inspiring discussions at this year’s IARSCLE, two words I have often utilized before in other educational contexts stand out to me as answers to the question of quality: responsible and responsive. It seems we are doing a much better job at ensuring our students learn from the experience, than at creating positive change in the communities we work with. The terms colleagues shared as having heard from disgruntled community partners when describing SL…
Conferences Past, Community-Building Forward: Critical, Concerned, Applied, and Open
October is an exciting month for the Building a Better World Forum, as we are building on insights and relationships from the 2012 International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) and Intercultural Horizons conferences. Additionally, we are pleased to welcome Annie Wendel, a Providence College Senior (Public Service), as Social Media Manager. Annie, who recently returned from a semester in South Africa followed by an immersion experience in the Solomon Islands, is deeply concerned with this work and is looking forward to helping facilitate our conversations. The recent surge of conference-going forced us to more systematically structure…
Are International Service-Learning Projects Sustainable? Where is the focus on the community?
By Nora Reynolds I come to this work as a practitioner- as a founding member and vice president of an international non-profit organization (www.waterforwaslala.org). In 2002, as a 21 year old recent college graduate, I traveled to rural Nicaragua with a group of ten friends and ended up starting an organization that has now raised over $400,000, built 13 community water systems, and employs two full time staff members as well as several contractors in Nicaragua. I come to this work both as a vice president of this non-profit and as a former university administrator who helps to facilitate international…
The National Survey of Alternative Breaks: Using Both Qualitative and Quantitative Research to Understand Immersive and Global Service-Learning Experiences
Elizabeth Niehaus, University of Maryland Five years ago I had the good fortune to become involved in a research team at the University of Maryland – College Park, looking at the ways in which students make meaning of short-term immersion programs. Each member of our research team was a staff advisor or instructor for a different group of students travelling to a different state or country over spring break – three of these programs were service-learning focused Alternative Breaks, while one was a leadership focused short-term study abroad course. Employing multi-site case study methodology, we engaged in participant observations during…
Educating for Global Citizenship: What do we know? What can we show? Where are we going?
By Eric Hartman A student entered my office and shared that she broke down in tears at the shopping mall. The tears flowed because she connected with children in Bolivia, she briefly made a difference in their lives, and every day since she returned home she wanted to do something to continue to make a difference. But she had no idea where to start. In the language of the service-learning community, she felt profound values and commitment shifts but she lacked the knowledge, skills, and efficacy to make a global difference. I wondered if it was possible to make that…
Technical, practical or critical: What is the state of ISL research?
By Jessica Arends International service learning (ISL) facilitates two long-standing goals of higher education: to prepare students for citizenship and the ability to understand and appreciate other cultures (Plater, 2010). However, much of service-learning research has been conducted from a technical perspective (Billig & Eyler, 2003), or one which strives to capture objective knowledge from a neutral stance with normed instruments informed by the natural sciences (Phillips & Burbles, 2000). Indeed, the most recent scholarship in ISL charges researchers to transcend the commonly-studied aspects of service-learning, such as frequency and rate, to address issues of inequality, community and reciprocity (Erasmus,…
Where's the Research in Global Service-Learning? A Four-Part Series
We know more about global service-learning all the time, although sometimes it feels like the field is growing so quickly that it’s hard to know what has already been systematically investigated, what methods have worked well, and what remains entirely unexplored. To be certain, much remains unknown, but several researchers have been assembling data and conducting rigorous analysis of global service-learning theory, community outcomes, and student outcomes for many years. A previous post, What DO we know about global service-learning? points to Richard Kiely’s seminal work on the role of critical reflective practice in transformational learning. In addition to highlighting…
Creative, Provocative, Law-Abiding, Law-Breaking: Young & Inspired Global Activists
By Eric Hartman “Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy…” – Nikos Kazantzakis in Report to Greco Who is doing what today to make the world a better place? Despite considerable chatter about the Me Generation, today’s young people are working – legally and illegally, through conventional means and in unprecedented ways – to advance concerns about common humanity, environmental preservation, peace, and a broad array of social issues….
3 Timely Pieces for Independence Day – Finding Meaning in Work, Life, and Freedom
What is the purpose of America? What kind of society are we creating? Where will we go from here? These are all excellent questions for reflection as The United States prepares to celebrate Independence Day, and a few thinkers gave us significant food for thought on these very topics this week: Writer Tim Kreider struck a cord with many Americans with The Busy Trap. It quickly launched to the top of the NY Times most-emailed list. He’s convinced that the increasingly common rejoinder of being “too busy” is often self-imposed and even self-delusional: Busyness serves as a kind of existential…
The Hole in Our Helping, part 3: Entitlement, Sentimentality, & Assessment Constraints
The final installment in a three-part contribution to the faith, values, and service-learning series by Richard Slimbach: 5. Entitlement and sentimentality Global political economy tends to commodify and commercialize most everything, including global philanthropy. Not surprisingly, student-volunteers, their parents, and even global educators are likely to see “study abroad” and “global service learning” as consumer goods purchased at market rates. Education abroad organizations are then expected to deliver the goods. The dominant “what’s in it for me?” orientation among American collegians is traceable to the unprecedented prosperity that followed WWII. The ‘Great Prosperity’ that extended from 1947-1977 (and continues for some today) meant…
The Hole in Our Helping, part 2: Service versus Charity, Institutional Self-Interest, & Individualist Ethos
The second of a three-part contribution to the faith, values, and service-learning series by Richard Slimbach: 2. Charity orientation Once we’ve resolved the questions of who our neighbors are, and what our moral obligations are to them, the question we’re left with is how neighbor-love can best be expressed. In the majority of cases, it is expressed in works of charity—the direct, short-term, personal involvement of good-willing people in the lives of the less fortunate. Global service learning, as a form of charitable involvement, engages young adults with discretionary time and money in a variety of “helping” projects: running summer camps, operating food…
The Hole in our Helping – Part 1
“So, how do our member NGOs stand to benefit from your students’ involvement?” The first of a three-part contribution to the faith, values, and service-learning series by Richard Slimbach: Several weeks ago I was in Addis Ababa, sitting with the director of an organization in Ethiopia that serves as an “umbrella” for over 300 national and international NGOs. The agency’s four-story office complex was elegant by any standards, North or South. As we sipped the customary macchiato, I began to explain the purpose of my visit. My university, Azusa Pacific University, in partnership with respected higher education institutions in Addis, was preparing…
Light, Poignant, Beautiful – Learning to Dance, anew, Around the World
This week the blogosphere has been buzzing with the release of Matt Harding’s latest global dancing video. The newest piece, which you should absolutely watch to ease into an optimistic and engaging weekend, is below. The best commentary I’ve seen on it is by Ethan Zuckerman at My Heart’s in Accra, who has tuned into the nuance of the production: “Matt’s first two videos made me smile – his next two have made me smile and made me weep. The moments that get me are small ones, like the cut, in his 2008 video, between dancing with a happy group…
The Goals of Jewish Service-Learning
By Jon Levisohn Jewish service-learning is a hot topic, and rightly so. Funders, policy makers and academics have noticed a groundswell of activism and energy in the Jewish world, especially among young people, and have hopped on board. This has led to an expansion of service-learning opportunities for young Jews. This is a good thing. But what are the goals of service-learning? Service-learning is, obviously, related to service, and dependent on it, but they are not the same thing. The goal of service is to benefit the person or community served. The goal of service-learning is, in addition to the…
Serving Our Neighbors: Learning across the Lines that Divide Us
By Chad Frey As many pundits have pointed out, the upcoming elections have inaugurated silly season in Washington. If only this could be dismissed as a passing period of political frivolity so we could all get back to the task of building of a better world. Surely partisan rhetoric and personal attack ads don’t represent the best that our civic leaders have to offer a 21st century global society. Yet, I can’t help but wonder why an educated citizenry continues to reward self-aggrandizing politicians and media moguls who run roughshod over the common good. Have we lost our ability to…
Teaching Catholic Social Thought through Global Service-Learning
By Rachel Tomas Morgan All institutions of higher education have to answer questions that arise from challenges to their larger social role and their particular educational aims. Yet by their very existence, faith-based universities are also obligated to the institution’s founding and historical religious tradition, which distinguishes them both from other faith-based institutions of higher education and from secular universities. Faith-based institutions can be and arguably should be self-conscious about how they teach and the values they seek to cultivate in their students, while at the same time remaining committed to the pursuit and sharing of truth and to full…
Voluntourism Debate, Cambodian Orphanages, & The Need for Better Standards and Data
Al Jazeera’s The Stream recently profiled a People and Power documentary on the so-called voluntourism industry with a new expose-style piece on Cambodian orphanages. The thirty-minute clip (below) raises several important questions and begs for tighter focus and analysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQcTpRjJi7o Watching the profile reminded me of the relatively loose terminology too common within today’s international volunteerism, study abroad, and service-learning. Development practitioner and blogger Aaron Ausland has worked to add some focus to the numerous related terms with his posts Poverty Tourism: A Debate in Need of Typological Nuance and Poverty Tourism Taxonomy 2.0. While there are incredibly important moral and ethical issues…
Faith & Service-Learning: Embracing Difficult Questions
By Jessica Friedrichs The Seventh National Faith-Based Service-Learning Conference held at Messiah College near Harrisburg, PA this weekend embraced difficult conversations. For those of us in the world of local and global service-learning difficult conversations abound. For some of us, the concept of “faith-based” may even be where they begin. Although many practitioners of service-learning, as well as the institutions that support them, are faith-based, the field as a whole is rarely explicit in this regard. The broad trend toward encompassing service-learning under the broader banner of civic or community engagement is evidence of this emphasis (see AAC&U’s recent publication…
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