Dilemmas in Service-Learning: (Missed) Opportunities for Transformative Partnership

• In Event: 44.084 - Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: 44.084-19 - Understanding Local and Community Partnerships

Abstract

Because of growing concerns on how university-community collaboration can accentuate power differences between the server and served, establishing transformative partnership in service learning has its share of dilemmas. This case study used participant observation and discourse analysis to examine the perceptions of third year undergraduate students of a health-related degree in a Philippine-based Jesuit university about their service learning in a primary healthcare setting. At the start, students saw themselves confronted with the challenge to overcome personal barriers from authentically encountering the urban poor, whom they served. But, later on, some underwent perspective transformation and learned to relate with marginalized community. Such findings can contribute to discourses on service learning, informing practitioners how to support social transformation in university-community collaboration.

Authors

• Genejane Monroy Adarlo, University of Hong Kong

• Urduja Amor, Ateneo de Manila University

• Norman Dennis Marquez, Ateneo de Manila University