Abstract
Students in service-learning courses often make well-intended but deficit-oriented comments about the communities with whom they are working. While service provides opportunities for student learning (e.g., developing civic commitments and academic skills and increasing awareness of discrimination), service can also reinforce deficit-oriented thinking. Further, students from marginalized backgrounds in service-learning classrooms can be negatively affected by deficit-oriented comments. Possible theories to confront such challenges include asset-based models of community development, critical service learning, and structural explanations for inequities. Teaching cases are a pedagogical device for supporting students in putting complex theories like these into practice. This article presents a teaching case—grounded in these critical theories—that can foster students’ abilities to develop responses to typical scenarios they might encounter at service-learning sites that are informed by structural understandings of social and racial inequities. Further, the case can be part of a classroom environment conducive to the learning of all students.
Highlights
Background on Critical Pedagogies in ServiceLearning SettingsService-learning courses generally include experiential learning, an individual reflection component, service to the community, and the integration of that service with academic learning (Eyler & Giles Jr., 1999; Jacoby, 2003; Mitchell, 2008; Rhoads, 1997; Seider, Rabinowicz, & Gillmor, 2011; Stanton, Giles Jr., & Cruz, 1999)
Through the teaching case, instructors can foster students’ abilities to develop explanations and responses to typical scenarios they might encounter at service-learning sites that are informed by structural understandings of social and racial inequities
Many in the service-learning field critique traditional service-learning approaches and instead encourage more asset-based or critical methodologies. Such methods recognize the expertise of community members and can simultaneously support both community development and student learning
Summary
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/jces. Recommended Citation da Cruz, Cynthia Gordon (2017) "Are We Really Helping Communities? A Teaching Case to Challenge Dominant Narratives about Sources of Inequity," Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship: Vol 10 : Iss. 1 , Article 11. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository.
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