Critical Service-Learning as Healing-Centered Engagement in the Middle School Classroom

• In Event: Targeted Uses of Community-Engaged Learning Across the Educational Life Span

Abstract

As education turns towards trauma-informed pedagogy, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers must look critically at this trend and consider classroom pedagogies that address the conditions that create collective trauma in the first place. Drawing on Mitchell’s (2008) critical service-learning framework and Ginwright’s (2018) conception of healing centered engagement, this study aims to better understand how critical service-learning can support students in collective healing and developing agency within their social conditions. We analyzed qualitative data from a sixth-grade class in Philadelphia that chose to explore the issue of drug addiction. Findings provide evidence of shifts in students’ language (from pathologizing to empathetic), shifts in their orientations (from fear to agency), and movement towards vulnerability (in discussing feelings and personal experiences).

Authors

• Kathleen Riley, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Gayle Soslau, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author