Applying Students' Perspectives on Different Teaching Strategies: A Holistic View of Service-Learning Community Engagement

Abstract

From a university perspective, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) has been identified as a high-impact practice that offers advantages over traditional lecture and assignments, yet students do not always embrace SLCE courses. While most studies of undergraduate students’ perceptions of SLCE focus on particular experiences or on SLCE in general, contextualizing these findings within students’ perceptions of various teaching strategies and knowledge can better assist faculty in engaging students. Drawing on cognitive anthropology, this article is one of the first to conduct a cultural domain analysis to provide insights into how undergraduates conceptualize SLCE in relation to other teaching strategies. This broader analysis of the associations undergraduates make with SLCE reveals how these can carry ramifications for quality engagement with the project and community partners. The results include how faculty can design and scaffold SLCE into their courses in the absence of a centralized agency or formal campus-wide process for regulating SLCE experiences.