Cone and Harris
African-American community in which 39% of all
residents live in poverty and the per capita income
is $6,108 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990).
While the contrast between USC and the surrounding community is stark, it is also true that students'
impressions of the community are often exaggerated and ethnocentric, if not racist and intolerant.
Cheryl's response highlights a dilemma which
we, as service-learning practitioners, struggle with
on a daily basis. As the world shrinks and our contact with a wide range of human experience
increases, "multiculturalism" is a reality and no
longer simply an ideal. However, multicultural
experiences do not necessarily lead to a "multicultural attitude" (i.e. one that is tolerant and understanding); students such as Cheryl often draw on
deeply-ingrained stereotypes, media images and
previous experiences unless they are encouraged to
consider new experiences from a critical, academically-informed perspective. Although experiential
education has existed in one form or another for
almost a century (Kraft, 1996), never before have
we lived in such a diverse society and had to deal
with the opportunities and challenges such diversity presents.
Cheryl is one of thousands of college students
facing similar dilemmas everyday in the growing
number of service-learning programs nationwide.
As the number of programs has skyrocketed, so too
has the number of scholarly articles examining service-learning practice and theory. The journal in
which this article appears was created to provide a
forum for the growing number of educators interested in reading and writing about the field.
Despite this surge of scholarly interest, the academic component of service-learning has not been a
priority for the majority of programs, which tend to
focus on the personal benefits to the students
(Maybach, 1996; Shumer & Belbas, 1996). This
emphasis has resulted in creating programs which
do, indeed, increase the self-esteem of service
providers (Kraft, 1996). However, it is not clear
that they avoid doing so at the expense of the communities they "serve." Without an academicallyinformed understanding of difference and diversity,
service may let students like Cheryl feel good
about themselves, but they may leave the community having learned very little. Furthermore, this
service-heavy approach may have devastating consequences for the future of service-learning as a
pedagogy, which, as Cohen (1994) and Zlotkowski
(1995) have suggested, may depend on its ability to
prove its academic worth.
We believe that service-learning needs to consider the personal and intellectual growth of both the
student and the community. For it to serve as an
effective tool that will survive the test of time,
careful thought must be given to the pedagogy of
service-learning. A model which simply asks students to go into community settings and learn
through experience is potentially damaging. As we
can see from Cheryl's journal entry, simply experiencing new worlds doesn't necessarily increase
understanding and may even serve to confirm
stereotyped perspectives. Dewey made a similar
point when he wrote:
The belief that all genuine education comes
about through experiences does not mean that
all experiences are genuine or equally educative.... Everything depends upon the quality of
the experience...(as)...every experience lives
on in further experiences. (1938, pp. 25-26)
A genuine service-learning pedagogy requires
careful thought about how people learn experientially and careful attention to the methods educators can use to shape and structure the quality of
student experiences.
Theoretical roots
The model which has guided the development of
experiential education for more than a decade is the
model proposed by David Kolb (1984). Kolb's
model is a variation of the process of experiential
logical inquiry set out by pragmatist philosopher
John Dewey more than half a century ago. Dewey
set out a six-step process of inquiry which
involved: 1) encountering a problem, 2) formulating a problem or question to be resolved, 3) gathering information which suggests solutions, 4)
making hypotheses, 5) testing hypotheses, and 6)
making warranted assertions (1938).
Kolb conceptualizes Dewey's six steps as a fourstage experiential learning cycle involving concrete experiences, reflection, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation (see Figure 1).
Learners are engaged in a cycle in which their
work in community or work settings forms the
basis for written or oral reflection. Under the guidance of an instructor, reflective work is used to
form abstract concepts and hypotheses are generated which then get cycled back into further concrete
experiences. It is a student-centered model which
Kolb believes allows a variety of students with
very different learning styles to develop and integrate their skills.
In 1990, David Moore suggested a post-structuralist approach to experiential learning: a "critical pedagogy...in which students and teachers conduct an unfettered investigation of social institutions, power relations, and value commitments" (p.
281). He argues that meaning is not centered or
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