Bringing Home Diversity: A Service-Learning Approach to Teaching Race and Ethnic Relations

Abstract

In this article, the author tests claims about students' development and sociological learning by comparing two classes of students enrolled in a race and ethnic relations course - one section that took the course as a service-learning course and another that took it as a lecture-discussion course with some required experiential exercises. Change in students' development over the course of the semester is examined in the areas of citizenship, empowerment, diversity awareness, leadership, moral development, and rejection of individualistic explanations of social problems. Based on results from changes in survey responses, service-learning pedagogy appears to have an advantage over experiential learning with respect to students' development in these six areas. Students enrolled in the service-learning section of race and ethnic Relations engaged in service-learning projects by either: (1) working as an intern at an appropriate site; (2) working on a group project-either working with a Latino agency to survey the community's health care needs, or compiling a curriculum for an educational initiative in a housing project, or testing local financial institutions to determine whether they were discriminating against Hispanic with respect to their fees for money-wiring services; or (3) working on a large, ongoing violence-prevention project.