Critical Service Learning

The Student Community Engagement Center (SCEC) is committed to creating engagement opportunities based on the idea that every member of our community has the power to be an agent of social change. According to Tania D. Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Minnesota, Critical Service Learning can be differentiated from traditional service learning by developing an explicit focus on social justice issues and centering community needs (2008). See Figure 1 for a visual representation of Dr. Mitchell’s model for Critical Service Learning.

Furthermore, effective agents of social change refrain from conflating community needs with community deficits. Rather, through community and civic engagement, students develop a critical lens, grounded in the idea that community needs arise from a complex history of systemic inequity. Programs are designed to pair service experiences with opportunities to explore these systems, and to learn how to interrupt them in community with others. At SCEC, community members engage in service with, rather than service for or to.

Below you’ll find an outline for how SCEC incorporates Critical Service Learning into some of its programming.

Student Leaders for Service (SLS): Through a Critical Service Learning Lens

A Social Change Orientation

Working to Redistribute Power

Developing Authentic Relationships

Community Component

Each partnership is carefully selected to be mutually beneficial and co-curricular in nature. Sites are diverse in the populations they serve, and in where they lie on the Continuum of Social Change. SLS Students may engage in direct service, mentorship, advocacy, or policy level work, depending on interests and community needs. Students work consistently with their community partners to identify community needs and to develop plans for authentic engagement.

SLS members learn to be aware of how the identities they hold inform the way they “show up” at their community partner sites. Students reflect on their positionality, receive coaching on centering community needs above their own, and articulate strategies for engaging in critical allyship. They then put these concepts into practice at their community sites, when working collaboratively in teams and when interacting with service users. Students learn that each member of our community is the expert on their own lives and their own needs.

The SLS program is designed for students to work with the same community partner for the entire academic year. During this time, students develop authentic relationships with their organization’s professional staff, with PSU students who engage with the organization via SLS-led service projects, and, as with the majority of our projects, with community members via direct service. SLS members learn that social change is only ethical when it stems from the building of community.

Classroom Component

SLS Curriculum is based on the Social Change Model of Leadership Development. We focus on the 7 C’s:

Consciousness of Self
Congruence
Commitment
Collaboration
Common Purpose
Controversy w/ Civility
Citizenship SLS Team Members develop their identities as agents of social change, and engage in ongoing assessment of goals, skills, positionalities, and practice capacities.

Meetings are designed for content to be accessible for multiple learning styles, with a POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) approach. Students reflect on their service learning in the context of broader social issues (e.g., power relationships, systems, and deconstructing privilege) using discussion, readings, and ePortfolio reflection assignments.Time is structured based on the idea that students learn better when they are working together in self-managed teams. Students provide feedback on the type of learning they’d like to engage in during SLS meetings, and also develop and present their own workshops.

SLS Facilitators (Including the SCEC Coordinator and, typically, one Graduate Intern), connect with SLS members consistently throughout each term to engage collaboratively in service event planning, to critically reflect upon experiences, and to provide support when needed. Community building, relationships, and the social and emotional health of team members are just as important as content. Each SLS meeting begins with a check-in, and students and staff engage in collaborative meaning making and perspective sharing, thereby developing strong interpersonal relationships.

Alternative Spring Break (ASB): Through a Critical Service Learning Lens

	A Social Change Orientation	Working to Redistribute Power	Developing Authentic Relationships
Community Component	ASB members learn that each role they take on during their service week, whether it be prepping food, painting a wall, or scrubbing floors, is part of a larger whole. Each service project has a small role in addressing a larger social inequity. As the group engages in direct service, they also take opportunities to learn about systemic issues at the community, organizational, and policy levels that create problems at the grassroots, as well as strategies for interrupting these systems.	Both ASB teams work to keep the cost of the trips affordable for any student who wishes to attend. Transportation, lodging, and meals are basic and communal. Students engage in service with communities while being deeply aware of the complex power relationships implicit in being part of a university community engagement program. Each group works to mitigate those power differentials in real time by sharing stories, meals, and experiences with members of the community we are visiting.	Many of the sites that groups serve with during ASB have been SCEC partners for years. In San Francisco, for example, participants work side by side with community members at GLIDE and Project Open Hand, prepping and serving food for those experiencing food insecurity and/or houselessness. The group learns about these issues from people who have lived experience, always in a spirit of mutual respect, and approaches each day as learners and aspiring allies.
Classroom Component	In monthly meetings leading up to the ASB Trip, team members discuss assigned readings and engage in conversations about assumptions and uncovering bias. This reflection extends to the trip itself in nightly reflections, in which team members discuss experience in the context of systemic inequity and engaging in authentic social change.	Each ASB trip is developed almost entirely by PSU students. Students engage in planning, logistics, budgeting, and connecting with community partner sites, while managing team selection and group preparation. Each member of the team works together to plan meals and reflections, while Team Leads work to negotiate the balance between delegating responsibility and managing major trip components.	After each ASB team is selected, the group meets at least once a month to engage in community building and trip planning. Each service opportunity during the week is chosen due to the collaborative nature of the project, and nightly reflections encourage honest sharing and supportive relationship building. Students travel together, make meals together, and engage in problem solving as a team.