Implementing Critical Service Learning in the Undergraduate Nonprofit Classroom

• In Event: Critical Perspectives in Nonprofit Management Education

Abstract

While the value of service learning has been well-documented in nonprofit education curriculum and pedagogy (see Whitaker and Berner, 2004, and Weber & Witkowski, 2016 for examples), far fewer nonprofit instructors and researchers have investigated what it means to implement a critical approach to service learning, one that embraces a social justice orientation, aims to address systemic inequalities through a redistribution of power, and build authentic relationships (Mitchell, 2008). As Mitchell (2008) writes, “Developing experiences with greater attention to equality and shared power between all participants in the service experience and challenging students to analyze the interplay of power, privilege, and oppression at the service placement and their experience in that placement will ensure that a critical service-learning pedagogy questions and problematizes the status quo (p. 62). In short, critical service-learning not only requires extensive community participation as a component to learning course content, but also positions both students and educators as agents of social change both with and for the community.

Author

• Elizabeth J. Dale, Seattle University