Community service learning as a model approach in active teaching and learning.

Abstract

This article proposes developing curricula with multicultural community service learning components to enhance the process and quality of teaching and learning in graduate level educational settings. Program and curriculum examples that incorporate multicultural community service learning and multicultural program evaluation are presented. Outcomes from incorporating multicultural community service learning pedagogy in the curriculum include the development of cultural competency, increased knowledge to develop appropriate community based interventions and an increased awareness of social and economic issues as contributors to individual and group problems.

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There is a need for educational, health care, and mental health services as well as specialized training to provide services for underserved, ethnic and racial minority populations in multicultural communities. Low income ethnic and racial minority groups are over represented in low performing schools, have higher school dropout rates, and are more likely to be "at risk" for violence and substance abuse. These groups also have lower utilization rates of prevention and intervention programs and generally have less access to a quality education, health care, and mental health services. For example, in Colorado, at least 67,000 individuals in the high poverty range who had serious emotional disturbances and illnesses did not receive services (McGee, Holzer, Pandiani, & Banks 2002).

In order to increase availability of service to this population, mental health training and other programs that train service-providing professionals need to address these pressing issues. Educational and training programs could help increase the number of well-trained and culturally competent professionals to work with these underserved populations. However, most graduate students do not receive effective or even appropriate training to address the service needs of underserved ethnic and racial minority individuals in multicultural community settings. According to Cherniss (1999), only a very small percentage of training programs have gone further than brown bag lunch discussions, colloquia, research groups, and speaker series.

Professional service providers trained in traditional programs often fail to achieve cultural competence because of a dependence on education and instruction that is based upon a purely intellectual perspective without reference to sociopolitical and economic realities within the communities of ethnic and racial minority groups. Students graduate from their programs full of book knowledge, inadequate intervention skills, and a lack of experience about the diverse worldviews and real life problems of ethnic and racial minority groups (Ponterotto & Casas, 1991). Educators must look beyond the confines of their educational settings and intellectualized teaching and move toward developing a curriculum that addresses social and community issues of underserved ethnic and racial minority populations (Valdez, 2001 a).

We believe that one answer to the lack of sufficient number of culturally competent professionals is to incorporate a multicultural community service learning model to our current graduate training programs. Service learning refers to experiential educational and research training that addresses social issues and community needs (Keys, Horner-Johnson, Hernandez, & Vasiliauskas (1999). The model provides students with the opportunities to apply classroom knowledge to community settings. Service learning research has consistently demonstrated positive effects for student outcomes on social responsibility and civic engagement (Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda, & Yee, 2000; Stanton, 1991; Giles & Eyler, 1994; Roschelle, Turpin, & Elias, 2000).

Our model is similar to the integration of multicultural education and service learning (O'Grady, 2000) but within a different context. We propose the integration of graduate level education and training of professionals providing service to ethnic and racial minority clients in multicultural communities. Our model can apply to several service training areas but we are writing from teaching and training experiences in education, clinical and counseling psychology, and multicultural mental health with graduate students who will enter professional careers.

We support training programs at the university and graduate college level to become actively involved in curriculum development that addresses social justice issues within ethnic and racial minority multicultural communities. However, due in part to the bureaucratic complexities of institutions that tend to encourage the maintenance of a well-established status quo, we encourage individuals within these institutions to take a personal and active part in initiating constructive change (Valdez, 2001a).

Example #1: Multicultural Community Service Learning

In order to address the shortcomings and weaknesses of previous multicultural training, a multicultural community service learning type of program with outreach training was developed at a western Rocky Mountain region university. The training program is based on a community-academic partnership established with primary community support providers in the city's Latino/a community mental health and community medical services center for monolingual Spanish-speaking Latino/a immigrants. These partnerships operate according to a collaborative, interdisciplinary fashion where graduate students and university faculty work together with representatives from the community agencies to assess client service needs.

Goals and objectives that will contribute to the service delivery success of the organization, agency, or school are based upon program evaluation conducted by the agencies themselves and/or integrated with program evaluation work conducted by university graduate students, staff, and faculty. Graduate students and faculty conduct needs assessments through interviews with agency administrators, staff, and service users. Once service needs are identified and goals are established, collaborative work continues toward the establishment of more effective service delivery.

It must be pointed out here that implementing collaborative partnerships requires specialized instruction, training, and supervision in advocacy to ensure cultural competency when working with underserved clients (Moya, 1996; Ponterotto, 1998).

Our multicultural community service learning model includes a prerequisite that must be met before students are exposed to a new multicultural community context. Almost all students involved in multicultural community service learning activities are required to enroll in a seminar before venturing out into the community. The graduate seminar Psychosocial Issues in Multicultural Counseling is a graduate level course that is taught by the first author. The objective of the seminar is to help students become aware of their own ethnic and racial identities, unearned privileges, and biased assumptions that are in contrast with ethnic and racial minority individuals' oppressed experiences. The goal of the seminar is to go beyond teaching to achieve cognitive and intellectual changes, changes that may be impeded due to resistance, and instead aim to achieve a transformational type of learning (Mezirow, 1990, 1991; Valdez, 2000). Transformational pedagogy is a significant curriculum component of the seminar and is considered an essential prerequisite for multicultural community training.

Another training objective is to increase the cultural competency of our students by helping them learn and develop within a multicultural community context. Research has demonstrated a relationship between service learning and the development of cultural competency (Flannery & Ward, 1999). Competency in cultural, social, and economic issues by properly trained professionals increases the access of service agencies by underserved populations and helps to increase the effectiveness of programs treating these populations. (Moya, 1996; Pumariega, 1995; Boyle-Baise, 1997). The multicultural community context provides graduate students with an opportunity to learn in an experientially and affective level. The multicultural community service learning within an experiential context helps students put their previous assumptions within completely different situations that directly challenge their previous views. With reflective practice and supportive feedback and supervision, students can begin to question previous assumptions and move toward learning in a more significant and transformational manner (Mezirow, 1991).

Our multicultural service learning model is also based on social constructionist principles where meaning is created in context and students take an active role in learning. When applied to learning about different multicultural groups and systemic problems, these components are critical in promoting meaningful connections and a deeper level of understanding (Pumariega, 1995; Boyle-Baise, 1997).

Example #2: Integrating Multicultural Service Learning and Program Evaluation Curriculum

Social action research demonstrates the natural link between program development and evaluation and service learning. The technical method of applying service learning to curriculum development is similar to social action and community-based research in which the actual community context and population of interest serves as a virtual laboratory. In social action research, empirical research methods and qualitative measures are applied to the object of analysis (Wadsworth, 1997). In this way, students as researchers incorporate real world learning experiences to the theory and research studied. As a result, material learned is grounded in context and becomes much more rich and meaningful.

Formal teaching methods that are removed from context and promote objective analysis of theory produce equally distanced and socially uncommitted students. The lack of exposure of direct application opportunities when learning material out of context may be one of the primary reasons many students do not see meaning or value in many technical or theory based subjects.

Students tend to view program evaluation and the study of ethnic and racial minority issues as being too technical, or stereotypic and simply something they had to do because it was required. A solution for inadequate training is the implementation of community outreach teams. When service learning and experiential teaching methods are applied, this situation changes dramatically (Flannery & Ward, 1999).

In participatory action research, learning and meaning are co-constructed through collaborative community based research. In service learning experiences, learning is a bi-directional process where the student learns through action in context and the community group is empowered through the collaborative process. Much research has demonstrated the mutual benefits of service learning for both the student and the collaborative community group involved (Hardy & Schaen, 2000; Reeb, Sammon, & Issackson, 1999). De La Cancela & Guzman (1991) emphasized the importance of training programs teaching mental health professionals to work in natural support systems such as community agencies when working with minority clients. A crucial ingredient for the establishment of specialized multicultural clinical training programs includes extensive outreach and cultural diversity in the training curricula (Myers, Wohlford, Guzman, & Echemendia, 1991).

Program Development and Evaluation Techniques, a graduate course taught by the second author, integrates a service learning component into the curriculum. In this course, the major class assignment is to complete a group service learning community program development and evaluation project. In this capacity, students complete a segment of the development and evaluation process (i.e., needs assessment, grant writing, program evaluation) and apply each step in the entire process to their project. Community based projects were available in mental health centers, non-profit centers, and educational settings.

According to Valdez (2001b), multicultural skills can be enhanced through the use of journal writing and reflection. For this course, weekly reaction/reflection papers and application questions were assigned where students were required to apply the readings and theory directly to their service learning evaluation projects. This provided an opportunity for students to reflect and to apply theory directly to practice. Research in the service learning literature has demonstrated the importance of these types of structured reflection experiences in enhancing student learning (Ikeda, 2000).

Students were able to make meaningful connections between the theory and real life application of their projects. An evaluation at the end of class demonstrated enhanced learning and meaningful connections made between evaluation and diverse "at risk" populations and communities as a result of the service learning projects. This finding is also consistent with the research and the positive effects of service learning on civic engagement (Astin, et al., 2000; Roschelle, et al., 2000).

A course such as this, when taught primarily with traditional, formal teaching methods (i.e., texts and introduction to relevant theory and research in the field) does not provide the duration, context, or affective and experiential components necessary for effective learning. We propose that, if only one course in these areas is to be required, then there should also be a service learning and/or an experiential curriculum component.

Conclusion

Given our nation's increasingly diverse and multiethnic society, professionals providing services to these underserved groups need to have culturally competent training to provide appropriate services. Multicultural community service learning can provide a context for this type of learning to occur and in turn facilitate positive social outcomes. One alternative solution to ethnic and racial community service problems and the lack of effective multicultural training is to integrate multicultural community service learning into the curriculum. This model can be applied to enhancing existing curricula to develop outreach-training programs.

We are aware of the fact that current training programs already have too many course, practica, and internships requirements for degree completion. Thus, barriers for development of this type of curriculum need to be addressed in different ways. Our efforts to incorporate multicultural community service learning as part of our curriculum includes grant proposal development. Institutional acceptance and support of our efforts is enhanced by our efforts to obtain funding support and paid positions for our graduate students. Our grant writing efforts have also resulted as training and learning opportunities not only for faculty but for our students also.

References

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Jesse N. Valdez, University of Denver, CO Theresa A. Salazar, University of Denver, CO

Valdez, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor and Licensed Psychologist. Salazar, Psy.D., is Instructor College of Education and Research Associate/RMC Research Corporation.