Pivoting From Critical Service-Learning to Youth Participatory Action Research: The Challenges and Benefits Perceived by Undergraduate Participants

• In Event: Building Foundations for Strategic University-Community Research Collaborations for Equity: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Objectives
This paper examines undergraduate students’ perspectives on their experiences engaging with community members through either a critical service-learning framework or a collaborative research framework. What do they see as the core differences in these two approaches? What do they identify as the benefits and challenges of each type of engagement, and how do they describe the learning derived from each? This paper also considers what their reflections suggest about whether and how college instructors should make the transition from service-learning to collaborative research in their community-engaged courses.
Theoretical Framework
Drawing on Mitchell’s (2008, 2013) conception of critical service-learning and Small and Uttal’s (2005) discussion of collaborative research, the author proposes a Venn diagram model that illustrates where these two approaches to academically-based community engagement overlap and where they diverge.
Methods and Data Sources
This case study focuses on the experiences of five undergraduate students in an Urban Education course who spent two hours each week over the course of a semester at an under-resourced, urban high school. During the first hour, they served as individual mentors, assisting one or two high school seniors in the completion of their state mandated senior projects, a research and community-service project required for graduation. During the second hour, they joined a team of five high school seniors as part of a collaborative youth participatory action research team, studying the effects of a school merging (in the wake of school closure) on students and teachers. This team ended up producing a 20 page report, which was disseminated broadly within the community; they also presented their findings at an open community meeting; and three of the high school seniors and one undergraduate traveled together to Washington DC to join other activists in sharing their findings and protesting school closures.
Data sources for this study include field note records from YPAR sessions and artifacts of student work, including pieces containing the undergraduates’ reflections on their experiences. In addition, in-depth individual interviews with the five undergraduate students, conducted two years after the course ended, provided further evidence. The five undergraduates included one male and three white students, one Asian student, and one black student. The five high school seniors were all black, one of whom identified as female.
Results
Findings suggest that the undergraduate students found the collaborative research project more challenging and yet more substantive and meaningful than the service-learning project in which they were engaged. Even after a span of two years, they were more quick to identify the YPAR project as a more powerful educative experience than any of the service-learning projects in which they had engaged as undergraduates, with some even describing it as the most important learning experience they had during their undergraduate careers.
Significance
This study raises implications for university educators interested in transitioning from service-learning to collaborative research based courses. It elucidates the challenges undergraduates may perceive in doing this work and offers design recommendations and pedagogical considerations for instructors.

Author

• Jerusha Osberg Conner, Villanova University