Placing Service Learning Curriculum

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Praxis in Otherwise Spaces (Table 13)

Abstract

This qualitative study on service learning curriculum explores urban college students’ understanding of and relationship with their city and university in the context of their service in a summer service learning program. Drawing on a series of interviews conducted with student interns exploring the complex interplay between service learning curriculum, personal perspectives, and urban environments. We discuss the implications of these findings for service learning curriculum in higher education. Key findings include the role of place-based service on interns’ evolving and complicated relationship with place that led to shifting assumptions about places where middle school students learn in urban schools, changing perspectives on public policy and the places it impacts, and their own assumptions about places they study and live within.

Authors

• Samuel Burmester, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Rachel Talbert, Teachers College, Columbia University