Shifts in Perspective: Capitalizing on the Counter-Normative Nature of Service-Learning

A review of almost any article or text on service-learning generates descriptors such as collaborative, participatory, reciprocal, self-directed, egalitarian, engaging, and connected. It is doubtful, however, that these adjectives would be at the top of most students' lists if they were asked to describe their typical classroom experiences. In fact, some North Carolina State University students recently used such phrases as lecture-based, passive, hierarchical, highly structured, and anonymous when asked to describe their experience in traditional courses. Phrases such as focused on progress, interactive, personal, student voice, and conducive to relationships were offered by students in reference to service-learning enhanced class. In that difference lie some of the challenges--but also some of the most important opportunities--of service-learning. It is well known that students face difficulties transitioning from traditional instructor-centered pedagogies to those that require greater learner responsibility (Felder & Brent, 1996). The importance of exploring the factors that help and hinder teaching and learning, when service-learning is the new pedagogy integrated into course, has been articulated (Gilchrist, Mundy, Felten, & Shields, 2003). The real messiness and unpredictability, complexities of social change processes, personal and intellectual risks inherent in reflection, and shared control and responsibility implicit in partnerships are among the many unique characteristics of service-learning. Relative unfamiliarity with its defining dynamics often makes service-learning--especially high quality service-learning, which is well-integrated academically, rigorously reflective, and procedurally democratic and communal--difficult for students and faculty alike to undertake effectively (Eyler & Giles, 1999). Its uniqueness can lead to degrees of dissonance, frustration, and uncertainty. This, in turn, can lead to diminished outcomes, especially if the response is to disengage, reduce risk-taking, or try to force-fit this new experience into the modes of teaching and with which students and faculty alike are apt to be more comfortable Intentionally confronting the discomfort is fruitful, albeit challenging, path. In fact, it is this very dissonance and its associated difficulties that give service-learning much of its potential as transformative pedagogy, and make it such vital component of education in the 21st century. Vaill (1996) suggests that the traditional model of institutionalized learning--with its emphases on efficiency, answer orientation, assumption of teacher (not learner) responsibility for establishing goals, rule-constrained nature, and competitive mode--does not adequately prepare learners for the rapidly changing, unpredictable, interconnected temporary world. In fact, it tends to disqualify us for the kinds of we need to do throughout lives, in large part because the traditional model of institutionalized learning does not teach us about ourselves as learners or help us view the world as set of opportunities (p. 48). Our world of permanent white water requires us to reconceptualize as a way of being, thereby defining the task of educators as helping to empower creative, expressive, reflective, self-directed learners who are capable of tapping the potential of all their experiences and thus living more effectively in an uncertain world. Service-learning seems to be extraordinarily well-suited to developing such capacities, but it must often do so within institutionalized learning contexts, whose norms are in stark contrast. Although not speaking of service-learning per se, Vaill (1996) articulates the conviction at the heart of this article: our common experience with institutional suggests that for each of us there will be some common challenges as we develop mode of as way of being (p. …