Citizenship Teaching & Learning - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2019

This study involved nursing (NSG) and optometry (OPT) students from the School of Health Sciences (HS), Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP), Singapore. It aimed to understand the effect of service-learning (SL) engagements on the social awareness of HSN and OPT students. The study examined two different modes of SL engagement: The first SL activity was a voluntary (outside of curriculum) Health and Eye Screening for migrant workers at their dormitory (N-118). The second SL activity was a compulsory (in-curriculum) social survey of foreign workers (FWs) (N-208) on their rest day outside of their dormitory. The quasi-experimental prepre test design was chosen where the two experimental groups served as their own control groups during the course of the research. The results of the study highlighted that not all SL activities were created equal in their impact on learning. Of the two experimental groups – Experimental Group 1 (compulsory) and Experimental Group 2 (voluntary), the nature of SL engagement indicated that there is a higher positive impact on the social awareness level of the former (Experimental Group 1). The mode of engagement is a very short engagement with the community-in-need (five hours). The results of this study help to throw up for discussion the potential benefits of a high-impact but extremely brief SL engagement by students. Pending further validation, this strategy might be a potential solution for educational institutions juggling the twin tensions of timetabling and meaningful SL activities to further their students’ learning experience.

Two types of small-scale food service business existing in Surabaya are hawker centres and depots. Generally, depots and hawker centres are managed unprofessionally as the owner does not pay much attention to the service quality. Conversely, nowadays customers pay more attention to the service quality. Based on a survey, it was identified that hawker centres and depots are lacking in three aspects: (1) hygiene and sanitation, and (2) poor knowledge among staff in terms of both service quality and (3) grooming. Training was provided to the staff on food and personal hygiene; knowledge of food safe packaging; and how to provide excellent services. On the basis of feedback from the owner and the customers, it was found that these activities had positive impacts on depots, hawker centres and the customers. Hawker centres and depots could improve their staffs’ service quality so that in the end, customers feel satisfied visiting them. Since students performed these activities, they have also had a positive impact on them. By interacting with the owner and the staff at the hawker centres and depots, the students learned to be humble and open-minded, to interact with people from different backgrounds of education and economy, to have self-motivation and to not underestimate other people. Most importantly, the students realized that they should be thankful for what they have.

International service-learning (ISL) programmes, grounded under the transformative learning theory, have long shown promising results in enhancing the development of college students. However, in recent years, scholars have begun to take notice of the number of conceptual and methodological deficiencies that the ISL body of research suffers from. Our study addresses this void by adopting a quasi-experimental design to understand the developmental benefits accrued by college students who joined one of three ISL programmes. More specifically, this study seeks to understand the role of service settings and social context in the transformative process. A pretest-posttest approach was used to examine students’ growth in three ISL programmes (one from Cambodia and two from Myanmar). A total of 31 college students completed the questionnaire before and after the ISL programmes. Analysing the data through repeated-measure ANCOVAs, all three ISL programmes were found to help students increase their personal insight (general and social self-efficacy), understanding of social issues (interpersonal and problem-solving skills and political awareness) and cognitive development (communication skills). Establishing a non-hierarchical relationship with the partner agency in the service setting, providing emotional counseling to the college students and organizing multiple community outreach opportunities were found to be particularly beneficial for facilitating these transformations. Building on the results, suggestions for ISL practice and research are provided.

The community outreach programme (COP) is one of the service-learning programmes in Petra Christian University involving many students from the university and abroad. The programme sends these students to live and conduct community developments in small villages in Indonesia. When I became a field supervisor of the COP in 2010 and 2016, I became aware of the multicultural relations among the students and the community. Although the COP mostly focuses on improving community welfare in terms of education, income, sanitation, etc., there are always multiple processes of cultural learning. This article is based on my experiences and personal reflections, supported by data through reflection review, field observation, informal interviews and interactions with the students and the community. For students, a multicultural environment not only provides different experiences but also life lessons in interacting with especially rural communities. Living within the community made the students more empathetic. In turn, the community mostly felt positive about the impact of the programme, which is real and substantial, and the unforgettable moments of interactions with international students. These multicultural relations reveal values of respecting other cultures, developing attitudes, and broadening beliefs between the students and the community.

This study aims at exploring the service-learning experiences and learning outcomes of service-learning curriculum for college students in Taiwan. The subjects are the students who participating service-learning curriculum in 2016, 84 in total. Questionnaires were used to collect data. The service-learning outcomes consisted of self-understanding, communication skills, general knowledge application, problem solving, civic engagement, team skills, self-reflection, caring for others and intercultural competence. The findings are as follows: All the outcomes of students have significant increases between pre and post test; Most outcomes of the high quality service-learning curriculum have significant increases than those of low quality service-learning curriculum. Finally, recommendations for college to implement high quality service-learning programme are presented.

A total of 38 students from my cultural studies research class participated in service-learning (SL) activities as one of the requirements of the course. They were divided into six groups, and each group worked with a group of approximately 15 to 30 young Indonesian elementary school children to do SL activities. They helped the children do their schoolwork, taught them English, played games and generally interacted with them. Students were also expected to present their reflections, starting from the initial encounter with the children and during the SL activities, at the end of the semester. The big sociocultural gap between the students and the children made students more aware of their lifestyles. These experiences apparently enhanced the students’ critical thinking towards others who are different. They also learned to share with and pay respect to one-another from their encounters with the children. Such awareness should be used as a way of enhancing students’ personal development and growth. It is also a way of building a more peaceful society, as they endeavour to understand others instead of judging them.