Reflect, Analyze, Act, Repeat: Creating Critical Consciousness through Critical Service-Learning at a Professional Development School

P Andrews,Susan Leonard

doi:10.3390/educsci8030148

Abstract

Universities engage students in traditional service-learning projects that often yield “good feelings”, even a savior mentality, but typically leave the root causes of social justice issues unexamined and untouched. In contrast to traditional service-learning, critical service-learning bridges this gap with an explicit focus on justice and equity, situating scholars’ work with the community rather than for it. A public university in the southeast offered a doctoral course that focused on critical service-learning in the context of a professional development school partnership. Designed as an ethnographic multi-case study, each graduate student in the on-site course represents a case. Data collection included interviews, observations, written reflections, and artefacts. The analysis revealed that developing critical service-learning projects with educators—rather than for them—supported participants’ critical consciousness. Findings and discussion highlight that facilitating community-engaged scholarship through critical service-learning impacts graduate students and middle-grades educators’ research interests, work, and future directions.

Highlights

IntroductionConceptualization of community-engaged scholarship to understand how engagement in a professional development school impacts middle-grades educators
This article describes a qualitative study designed to use Dewey’s [1] theories about the educational nature of experience, Freire’s [2] theory of critical consciousness, and Boyer’s [3]conceptualization of community-engaged scholarship to understand how engagement in a professional development school impacts middle-grades educators
The analysis revealed that developing critical service-learning projects with educators—rather than for them—supported participants’ critical consciousness

Summary

Introduction

Conceptualization of community-engaged scholarship to understand how engagement in a professional development school impacts middle-grades educators. Middle-grades educators are defined as those individuals whose work connects to middle-grades schooling, i.e., schooling offered to children in grades 4 through 9. Community-engaged scholarship (CES), another term for what Boyer [3] called the scholarship of engagement, centers on reflective practitioners who prioritize the following: (1) (2) (3) (4). Discovery to increase knowledge; integration of diverse disciplines; sharing knowledge through communication with peers and future scholars; application of knowledge to ensure relevance in their scholarship. Boyer [3] believed that “the academy must become a more vigorous partner in the search for answers to our most pressing social, civic, economic, and moral problems, and must reaffirm its historic commitment to what (he called) the.

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