Weblogs transform service-learning reflection.

Abstract

In every service-learning project, the component of reflection is an integral aspect of the learning process. Intentional, systematic reflection of the experience must take place for students to make that critical connection between the service-learning experience and the theoretical objectives of the course. In this service-learning project, a blog was utilized for student reflection, giving them the opportunity to share their progress. This transformed the typical reflection between teacher and student into a learning community where the individual student's learning was impacted by other students.

Introduction

According to our university guidelines, service-learning is "a teaching method that uses community involvement to apply theories or skills being taught in a course. Service-learning furthers the learning objectives of the academic course, addresses community needs, and requires students to reflect on their activity in order to gain an appreciation for the relationship between civics and academics." There are seven criteria that the school designates that every course must meet in order to be service-learning, and one of those involves structured student reflection (University of Central Florida, n.d.).

Reflection in Service-learning

Reflection is what transforms experience into learning. Although the implementation of service-learning projects may vary in many respects, and Butin (2003) argues that the quality, conceptualization and assessment of service projects need further multivocality for better definition, the inclusion of a reflective piece is almost universal in every definition. When the National Center for Education Statistics surveyed K-12 schools about the extent of service projects nation-wide, they precluded that a systematic reflection or critical analysis piece must be present in the service project in order to be included in their survey (Skinner & Chapman, 1999). In looking at researched service projects across the curriculum from the elementary level (Werner & Voce, 2002;), high school level (Battistoni, 2004; Berman, 2004), undergraduate level (Blieszner & Artale, 2001; Lohman & Aitken, 2002; Morris, 2001), international level (Cowan, 2003), to teachers who reflected on their own projects (Clark, 2002), every project contained some type of reflection or dialogue as an integral part of the project. The reflection component of a service-learning project is that crux where student activity meets curricular goals. Without a reflection piece, students may never make the connection between class and service.

As Astin et al. (2000) reported on the affect of service learning on students, their research underscored "the power of reflection as a means of connecting the service experience to the academic material (p. iv). It is one of the vital steps in the learning process, so that students learn to monitor their own learning (Eyler, 2002). Students are encouraged to, and utilize their reflections for a diverse set of reasons, from questioning the service project itself and the impact on the community (Boyle-Baise, 2005) to questioning their place in world (Campbell, 2005). To encourage this kind of deep and transformational reflection in a service project, educators need to create ongoing reflection opportunities for their students, and in this research project, preservice teachers.

For preservice teachers, reflective practices are often integrated into many aspects of their curriculum (Korthagen, 2005), and as a necessary part of their professional development, reflection should be ongoing, meaningful, deep, and transformative. Students need to probe their personal involvement in their education, challenge their fundamental assumptions, and contemplate their impact on students and the community (Ward, 2004). Setting up reflective practices can help preservice teachers increase their knowledge of the ethnolinguistic diversity of public schools today (Dome et al., 2005), link theory and practice (Brown, & Howard, 2005), and demonstrate how they have impacted their students in service learning projects (Spencer et al., 2005). Further, this reflection on the part of students can be enhanced by shared reflection, often resulting in a much higher level of learning and a quality of presentation not normally present in a typical student presentation (Eyler, 2002, p. 530). Online tools are a valuable and viable way to implement this idea of shared reflection, and can result in greater reflection on the part of the student, and a more collaborative approach towards learning and teaching (Tucker et al., 2003). It is the idea of shared reflection that inspired the integration of a Blog to create a service-learning project shared reflection community.

A Blog for Service Learning Reflection

The undergraduate course involved in this service-learning project is the linguistics course for pre-service teachers. It is one of two required courses for pre-service teachers in elementary, exceptional, early childhood and language arts so that our teachers may now graduate with their English-for-Speakers-of-Other-Languages, or ESOL, endorsement. Considering that in our county the ESL population grew 256% last year, our preservice teachers are in dire need of training in how to teach ESL students.

Service Learning was introduced in this course in order to give students in that class more experience in working with ESL students, and specifically to give them the opportunity to implement the concepts they were learning in linguistics in a real setting. Ideas in morphology, syntax, and semantics are interesting, but it is often difficult for students to see the application to their work as a teachers. This program was designed to give them that connection. In this project, students volunteered in selected elementary schools, spending one-on-one time reading with ESL students who are struggling to read at grade level. After the pre-service teachers were paired one-on-one with ESL students, they worked once a week throughout the semester. The university students were encouraged to make the hour enjoyable, allowing the ESL student to read to them or reading to the ESL student, trying out some of the concepts they were learning in class, such as phonemic awareness and minimal pairs. As part of their assessment, students were required to post weekly, reflective comments on a private, university Blog site detailing their experience for that week. Students were encouraged to read and post responses to other Blog entries. At the end of the semester, students turned their postings into a paper to present to the rest of the class and to be evaluated by the instructor.

Why Reflection?

The preprofessional teacher realizes that she/he is in the initial stages of a life-long learning process and that self reflection is one of the key components of that process. While her/his concentration is, of necessity, inward and personal, the role of colleagues and school-based improvement activities increase as time passes. The teacher's continued professional improvement is characterized by self reflection, work with immediate colleagues and teammates, and meeting the goals of a personal professional development. By using shared reflection-in-action, students became a part of a learning community, where they could share their ongoing service experience. Because of time-constraints and curriculum obligations, it was not possible to accomplish this sharing within the classroom. The shared Blog allowed the students to write their reflections carefully and share them asynchronously online. They could read other students' work, think about it, and then respond to it in a thoughtful manner. Three criteria were set for the reflection component of the project to meet the goal of shared reflection-in-action:

* Critical reflection means students must think about the larger ethical implications of what they are doing.

* Ongoing reflection means they need to reflect on each experience throughout their program.

* Shared reflection means they need to be sharing and reacting to other students' work, creating a Learning Community where experiences are shared. It is not just an experience to be shared between the student and the instructor.

Why Blogs?

Blogs (web logs) are defined as a Website with dated entries, usually by a single author, often accompanied by links to other blogs that the site's editor visits on a regular basis. Think of a blog as one person's public diary or suggestion list. Early blogs were started by Web enthusiasts who would post links to cool stuff that they found on the Internet. They added commentary. They began posting daily. They read one another's blogs. A community culture took hold" (Cross, 2002). Blogs met one of our most important reflection goals--to have continuous, written, critical, and shared reflection of the program throughout the semester. The blog became a tool for students to not only reflect on their own learning, but to create a community of reflection. Blogs met these goals by:

* allowing students 24/7 access to both their and their fellow students' progress.

* providing an Internet-based format so students can post weekly and students can review those postings weekly.

* giving students an opportunity to track their own progress throughout the semester, and in the end have a final paper project to turn in.

* creating a learning community where students can address questions from other students and share their experiences.

* setting a user-friendly format structure, like a diary, rather than separated postings such as in a Discussion Board. The blog also creates a permanent site where future classes can visit, creating a long-term community of learners.

Blog Entries

Here are some sample postings that demonstrate the dynamic nature of the blog entries and how others learned from them. They have not been edited for content, spelling, or grammar, only for length.

Posting One

Today included one of those moments that only cements my desire to be a teacher. The past couple of weeks I have had J read aloud to me from a couple of books he enjoys. I thought he would enjoy something different today, so I brought him a word search i found in our (class) activities notebook in the office. It was a simple word search and included words from school like computers, teachers, and gym. J was intimidated right away when he saw it. He said, "I've never found the words. Someone always helps me." "Have you ever gone over the words before you look for them?" I asked. He shook his head. "No. Am I supposed to?"

We went over each of the words, him sounding them out and me realizing just how weird some of our English words are. Words like science seem to have no common rules about the sc- sound when there are flukes like scone. He knew what each word was, and was excited each time he know how to read it correctly. Then we started the puzzle. He was frustrated from the outset, so I let him in on my secret. I choose a word from my list, take the first letter, and go line by line through the puzzle to find it. He soon realized that he had to know how to spell the word, and after we found computers together, he started seeing the words quickly. He was so excited as he circled the words in green highlighter, and stared in concentration at the collection of letters when one word gave him trouble.

When I took him back to the classroom, he immediately bounded over to (the teacher) and declared, "I found the words all by myself!" He was so proud of himself, and knowing that he did something he had been unable to do before had me walking out of that school on cloud nine with the biggest grin on my face. I love seeing the light bulb go on, because it makes the child's smile that much brighter.

Posting Two

Today I started my session with S. by doing flashcards of words that she had trouble pronouncing the week before. Some of the words she stilled struggled with and some of them she knew right away. We then read one of the Read Well books. This one focused on the "N" sound. We both took turns reading and at the end I checked for comprehension. She did a great job! We then read the book Good Morning, Chick. One thing I did notice today with S. is that she likes to predict what is going to happen in the story before she is done reading it. I encourage her to do that and like to hear what she says. She seemed to like this book because she likes to read about animals, I do however think that this book was above her grade level. She started to get frustrated with it, so 1 told her we would take turns reading every other page. To end our session, I read the first chapter of her favorite book One-Man Band by Junie B. She was so excited to have me read this book to her and told me about some harmless trouble she got into that was similar to Junie B. She also told me that her mom and dad read to her a lot at home. It's nice to know that her parents are involved and helping her.

Replies to Posting Two: I really like how you recognize when the child is frustrated, and find ways to complete the activity anyway, just in a different way!! Nice tactic! I need to try that \"every other page\" thing with my student. He gets frustrated so easily and then just falls apart. He also likes when I read to him. I did it every session.

Conclusion

A blog can be a powerful tool to foster ongoing, critical, and shared reflection. It takes the pressure off of valuable and limited class time, yet leaves an opportunity for students to share and reflect together on their experiences. These few sample postings only touch the surface of the learning, sharing, encouraging, and mentoring that occurred during the semester. Most postings reflect a change in thinking toward ESOL students and a reflection on the English language, putting the concept of teaching ESL students in a whole different perspective. "The continuous reflection prevents students from resisting the implications of the discrepancies between their assumptions and their current frames of reference. It helps them develop more adequate meaning structures in a variety of ways" (Eyler, 2002, p. 527). Blogs are just one of many tools at hand to foster a sense of lifelong reflection, learning, and community involvement for students in service-learning projects. For further research, it will be vital that the students are monitored for their continued use of reflection. As one student told me, "I had forgotten a lot of what I had done, so I went back to the blog and it reminded me of what I had learned, and what I did not want to forget!"

References

Astin, A. W., Vogelgesang, L. J., Ikeda, E. K., & Yee, J. A. (2000, January). How service learning affects students. Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA.

Battistoni, R. (2004). Student-powered solutions. Principal Leadership (High School Edition), 5(1), 22-24, 26.

Berman, S. H. (2004, September). Teaching Civics: A call to action. Principal Leadership, 5(1), 16-20.

Blieszner, R. & Artale, L. M. (2001). Benefits of intergenerational service-learning to human services majors. Educational Gerontology, 27, 71-87.

Boyle-Baise, M. (2005, November/December). Preparing community-oriented teachers: Reflections from a multicultural service-learning project. Journal of Teacher Education, 56, 446-458.

Brown, E. L. & Howard, B. R., II. (2005, Summer). Becoming culturally responsive teacher through service-learning: A case study of five novice classroom teachers. Multicultural Education, 12(4), 2-8.

Butin, D. W. (2003, December). Of what is it? Multiple conceptualizations of service learning within education. Teachers College Record, 105, 1674-1692.

Campbell, L. H. (2005). Spiritual reflective practice in preservice art education. Studies in Art Education, 47, 51-69.

Clark, C. T. (2002, December). Unfolding narratives of service learning: Reflections on teaching, literacy, and positioning in service relationships. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 46, 288-298.

Cowan, D. L. (2003). Serving a new community: A sustaining model for international service-learning. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, 95(2), 54-55.

Cross, J. (2002, April). Blogs: Learn to blog, blog to learn. Learning Circuits. Retrieved Sep 15, 2005 from http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/apr2002/ttools.html

Dome, N., Prado-Olmos, P., Ulanoff, S. H., Ramos, R. G., Vega-Castaneda, L., & Quiocho, A. M. L. (2005, Spring). "I don't like not knowing how the world works": examining preservice teachers' narrative reflections. Teacher Education Quarterly, 32, 63-83.

Eyler, J. (2002). Reflection: Linking service and learning-Linking students and communities. Journal of Social Issues, 58, 517-534.

Korthagen, F. (2005, February). Levels in reflection: Core reflection as a means to enhance professional growth. Teachers & Teaching, 11, 47-71.

Lohman, H. & Aitken, M. J. (2002). Occupational Therapy Students' Attitudes Toward Service Learning. Physical & Occupational Therapy in geriatrics, 20(3/4), 155-165.

Morris, F. (2001). Serving the community and learning a foreign language: Evaluating a service-learning programme. Language, Culture And Curriculum, 14, 244-255.

Skinner, R. & Chapman, C. (1999, September). Service learning and community service in K-12 public schools. Education Statistics Quarterly, 1(4). Downloaded from The National Center for Education Statistics on September 15, 2005 from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=1999043%20

Spencer, B. H., Cox-Peterson, A. M., & Crawford, T. (2005, Fall). Assessing the impact of service learning on preservice teachers in an after-school program. Teacher Education Quarterly, 32, 119-135.

Tucker, B., Jones, S., Straker, L., & Cole, J. (2003, Winter). Course Evaluation on the Web: Facilitating student and teacher reflection to improve learning. New Directions For Teaching Learning, 96, 81-93.

University of Central Florida's Service Learning website. (n.d.). Retrieved September 15, 2005, from http://www.servicelearning.ucf.edu/

Ward, J.R. (2004, April). Reflection as a visible outcome for preservice teachers. Teaching & Teacher Education, 20, 243-257.

Werner, C. M., Voce, R. & Openshaw, K. G. & Simons, M. (2002). Designing service-learning to empower students and community: Jackson Elementary builds a nature study center. The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, 58, 557-579.

Kerry Purmensky, The University of Central Florida

Kerry Purmensky, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of TESOL in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Central Florida.