Service Learning as an Anti-Bias Intervention Strategy for Undergraduate Students Working with At-Risk Families

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic -Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Abstract

Community-based experiential learning is essential for engaged scholarship while enhancing and building anti-bias education within the higher education classroom, increasing an overall understanding of social justice practice (Peterson,2009). Service-learning is an innovative, collaborative teaching and learning strategy designed to promote academic enhancement, personal growth, and civic engagement. Students have opportunities to experience meaningful service at sites that offer real-world manifestations of course material; reflect on their experiences with peers, individually, and as a class; and articulate the learning that they experience in personal growth, civic, and academic arenas. Service-learning experiences are designed to benefit both the student and the community partner; each contributing to the other’s development and learning. In order to strengthen and support student learning and engagement, it is essential for classroom work to theoretically ground real-world learning experiences of students, provide classroom curriculum that carefully examines intricacies of social justice and service, as well as encourage reciprocal, interactive relationship building, assessment, and communication of shared goals and values of the community-campus collaboration to support social change. When students engage in activities within and outside of the classroom, true integration of service learning with classroom activities occurs, promoting greater student understandings of community needs alongside the individual needs of people living within their own community. Thus, it is essential to incorporate service learning and theory as best pedagogical practices within curricula.
Participants included undergraduate students (N=28) at an all-female college who were enrolled in a family studies class. Students completed a survey on the first day of class, and again on the last day of class about their experiences, knowledge, and feelings about working with at-risk families in their communities. As part of class requirements, all students participated in mandatory service engagement projects, assigned on the first day of class. Settings of service engagement placements include organizations that serve families who are in stressful/crisis situations, including families who are homeless, crisis centers where families are fleeing domestic violence, and other organizations that work with families that are at-risk for other potential major life stressors. Simultaneously, during class time, students receive an anti-bias/social justice education through the lens of family systems and family stress theoretical frameworks, including group and self-work activities, learning about poverty, family risk, crisis, and resiliency while simultaneously receiving support for their service engagement experiences through trainings, journal writing, and discussions.
Surveys were coded for repeated themes. Prior to service engagement experiences, students reported hesitation, fears, and implicit/explicit biases for working directly with at-risk populations, while simultaneously requesting strategies for working with families in crisis. Personal journal reflections combined with in-class exercises are reported as beneficial strategies for students when supporting engagement between in-class and out-of-class activities. At the conclusion of the semester, students reported deeper understandings of family needs by being able to see family strengths rather than succumbing to prior biases towards vulnerable populations who live within their own community. Thus, service learning is one mechanism that can promote anti-bias/social justice learning experiences for undergraduate students and their skills for working with at-risk families.

Author

• Pamela Linton Norcross, Meredith College
  Presenting Author