Learning from the unfamiliar: How does working with people who use mental health services impact on students’ learning and development?

Abstract

Service learning is an experiential pedagogic approach that is predicated on students learning in authentic situations. It is often problem-orientated and provides opportunities for community engagement in ways that enhance a student’s capacity as a socially aware individual. There is evidence that such learning opportunities can enhance personal development, team and collaborative skills as well as improve self-confidence. This article reports on a qualitative research project that explored the experience of a group of students who worked in a service learning project with users of mental health services. Using the lifeworld as a means to analyse the data provided a rich description of the impact it had on their learning. Three themes are portrayed: being together, encounters in the real world, and becoming. Important aspects of the findings include: the opportunity to learn without the constraint of pre-determined learning outcomes, learning through uncertainty and learning from those who are different and unfamiliar. Considering the data from the perspective of a Jarvis’s learning theory, we explore how particular situations stimulated disjuncture, those uncomfortable moments that instigate learning. The article concludes by highlighting the benefits of a tight–loose design to pedagogic approaches, and emphasising how learning from those who are different provides students with opportunities to engage with the messiness of the real world.