Pedagogical Approach to Service Learning at Tulane University: Intent Vs. Impact

Abstract: At Tulane, the intention behind the service-learning (SL) program is presented as a way to “enable students to apply academic knowledge and critical thinking skills to meet genuine community needs.” But it is important to investigate the impact of the program beyond its stated intention. Service-learning at Tulane, a predominantly white institution, is implemented into communities in New Orleans, a city that is majority people of color. Historically, dominate culture (white supremacy culture) centers intent - the feelings of white people - over impact - the feelings and experiences of people of color (Mitchell et al, 2012). Our abstract aims to explore the experience’s students, community organizations, staff, and faculty have with service-learning education at Tulane and how those experiences align and diverge from the intended framework and outcomes of the experience.

The conceptual framework of service learning identifies three main components (academic material, relevant service, and critical reflection) and four partners (students, faculty, staff, and community members) that comprise a service-learning course (Felten & Clayton, 2011). This exploratory study will investigate both the intent and impact of the three components in Tulane’s service-learning courses through eight interviews with two representatives from each group. Interview questions cover the intent and impact of the following topics: student preparation; conversations around race; experiences with community organizations; critical reflection during and after; overall adherence to recommended service-learning practices.

Narrative: Service-learning (SL) can be broadly defined as pedagogies that “link community service and academic study so that each strengthens the other” (Ehrlich, 1996). At Tulane University specifically, the intention behind SL is presented as a way to “enable students to apply academic knowledge and critical thinking skills to meet genuine community needs”. In order to successfully bridge this gap between academic learning and community service, the conceptual framework for SL identifies three main components: academic material, relevant service, and critical reflection (Felton & Clayton, 2011). To operationalize these components, four partners must be included in the programming: students, faculty, staff, and community members (Felton & Clayton, 2011).

The National Youth Leadership Council has developed a guide for these partners to successfully implement the three components mentioned into an SL program. They recommend meaningful service, links to curriculum, sufficient duration and intensity, reflection, youth voice, and progress monitoring “to ensure high-quality service-learning experiences”. A meta-analysis of the impact of service-learning students found that the inclusion of recommended practices aligning SL programs with curricula, providing a strong student voice in the SL program, and developing community partnerships that solicit and accept community input are associated with more benefits for the students involved (Celio et al., 2011).

While a framework and recommended practices for a successful service-learning program has been established, there is still much left about the role of SL to improve and investigate. Existing research has focused primarily on the impact of service learning on students, so there is “scant research on how community organizations benefit from service-learning" (Shek et al. 2020). There are also few validated tools and a lack of well-articulated theoretical models for evaluating a service-learning program (Shek et al. 2020). This points to a long-standing issue of service-learning being a “pedagogy of whiteness” (Mitchell, Donahue, & Young-Law, 2012). Whiteness can be defined by Mitchell et al. (2012) as “a social construct that remains invisible to white people but conveys to them normative privileges based on such color blindness.” Historically, whiteness centers intent - the feelings of white people - over impact - the feelings and experiences of people of color (Mitchell et al, 2012). The dearth of research focusing on the impact of SL on the community organizations involved and the development of evaluation tools compared to the extensive focus of the impact on students and the development of best practice recommendations for SL reflects this prioritization of intent over impact.

It is especially important to have a critical focus of race at Tulane University, a predominantly white institution, as the service-learning program is implemented into communities in New Orleans, a city that is majority people of color. SL without this focus can end up reinforcing socially constructed understandings of whiteness (Mitchell et al, 2012). Language such as “underprivileged” or “at risk”, automatically deeming white, middle-class students as capable of serving, not considering the strengths of the community’s being served, and presenting social problems as a result of individual choices instead of being part of larger political and social frameworks are all examples of how SL can reinforce whiteness if a proper evaluation of the program’s impact is not considered (Mitchell et al, 2012).

This exploratory study seeks to investigate the impact of Tulane’s service-learning program by exploring the experiences of the four partners identified in SL’s conceptual framework and how those experiences align and diverge from the intended framework and outcomes of SL. Eight 30-minute to an hour-long semi-structured interviews will be conducted with two representatives from each partner group – students, faculty, staff, and community organization. Questions used to guide these interviews are developed from the three content areas, academic material, relevant service, and critical reflection, described in the conceptual framework as well as recommended practices and critical focus on race.

Interview questions will cover the intent and impact of the following topics: student preparation; conversations around race; experiences with community organizations; critical reflection during and after; overall adherence to recommended service-learning practices. The questions will be asking what the participant experienced regarding each of the topics in their respective role with Tulane’s SL program, what they think the University’s intent was behind their actions for each topic, and how they feel their partner group fits within the service-learning program. Questions may vary slightly to accommodate the different role each participant plays in the program, but the main topics investigated will remain the same across all interviews. For example, students will be asked what they received in preparation before they entered the service-learning environment, while community organizers will be asked about how prepared they found the students they worked with.

These interviews will be recorded and analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis. Researchers will draw out themes surrounding the perceived intent of Tulane University as well as the impact experienced by representatives in each of the partner groups. Comparing and contrasting the themes found in each partner group will provide critical information regarding the true impact Tulane’s service-learning program has on all partners involved - not just students. This study will provide the ground work for more in-depth evaluations of the SL program, showing us what issues and strengths there are in Tulane’s service-learning and what needs to be investigated more. This way we can begin filling in the gaps in service-learning research around community impact and the lack of evaluation tools, and move away from the long-standing prioritization of intent over impact.