Social Justice Through Service Learning: Community Colleges as Ground Zero

Abstract

Community colleges educate students from both oppressed and marginalized groups, yet there is almost no literature on community colleges and issues of social justice. Student participation in service learning has been tentatively linked to development of a social justice lens. In this study, I analyze community college students' post-course civic engagement surveys to investigate the effect of service learning experiences on the emergence of any of three types of citizenship: personally responsible citizenship, participatory citizenship, or justice-oriented citizenship. Findings were mixed for personally responsible citizenship, but there were significant data supporting the development of participatory citizenship and justice-oriented citizenship in students who had taken between two and five previous courses that had included service learning. These encouraging findings support the idea that service learning plays a role in helping community college students transform inequitable structures in their communities.