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Service-learning in teacher education:reflection as a catalyst for learningCatherine M. Castellan aa Teacher Education Department, Loyola University Maryland,Baltimore, United StatesPublished online: 30 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Catherine M. Castellan (2012) Service-learning in teacher education: reflectionas a catalyst for learning, Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives,13:6, 843-855, DOI: 10.1080/14623943.2012.732941

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2012.732941

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Service-learning in teacher education: reflection as a catalyst forlearning

Catherine M. Castellan*

Teacher Education Department, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, United States

(Received 18 January 2012; final version received 10 August 2012)

This article presents findings that pre-service elementary education majorslearned their course content while participating in service-learning experiences.This interpretive study on the sense making of these majors highlights the rolereflection played in the connection between content and experience, with someeducation majors recognizing the catalyst effect of reflection.

Keywords: reflection; teacher education; service-learning

Introduction

Clinical experiences that happen early and often in a teacher education program cre-ate a stronger link between theory and practice and provide pre-service teacherswith opportunities to better understand theories and ideas encountered in theircourses (Darling-Hammond, Grossman, Hammerness, Rust, & Shulman, 2005).Over several decades, service-learning, a specific type of clinical experience, hasincreasingly been included in teacher education courses. Service-learning, with itsgoal to enhance the learning of course content through service experiences byreflecting on the link between the two (Anderson, Swick, & Yff, 2001), is particu-larly well suited to creating these stronger links suggested by Darling-Hammondet al. (2005). Students’ participation in service and the connection of that service,through reflection, to course content has been shown to result in the acquisition andunderstanding of course content (Astin and Sax, 1998; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Jenkinsand Sheehey, 2009; Tannenbaum & Barrett, 2005) and in enhanced GPAs andimproved writing skills (Astin and Sax,1998; Vogelgesang and Astin, 2000).

Service also improved students’ critical thinking skills (Eyler & Giles, 1999;Vogelgesang and Astin, 2000), while service-learning, specifically, was found toassist students in making theory-to-practice connections (Brown, 2005; Dodd andLilly, 2000; Wade, 1995), while enhancing students’ application of knowledge(Abourezk and Patterson, 2003; Michael, 2005). With a focus on teacher education,service-learning helped students gain pedagogical knowledge (Cox-Petersen,Spencer, & Crawford, 2005), while transformed perspectives on teaching werereported by Malone, Jones and Stallings (2002).

Reflection, an essential component of service-learning, connects the coursecontent to the service-learning experience, resulting in a deeper understanding of

*Email: ccastellan@loyola.edu

Reflective PracticeVol. 13, No. 6, December 2012, 843–855

ISSN 1462-3943 print/ISSN 1470-1103 online� 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2012.732941http://www.tandfonline.com

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the course content (Anderson, Swick, & Yff, 2001). While Schon’s (1987) reflec-tion-in-action is an effective goal for teachers who reflect on their practice whilethey are teaching, Schon’s reflection-on-action can be seen as a tool for beginningpre-service teachers, through service-learning, to better understand their coursecontent and to begin to establish a lifelong habit of reflection.

While service-learning includes the servers, those being served, the service andthe outcomes of the service, this paper, based on a larger study, focused on the serversand studied the perspectives of these servers – freshman elementary education majorswho participated in service-learning experiences at Loyola University Maryland,USA. Guided by a constructivist perspective that promotes making sense of contentthrough understanding and meaningful learning (Brooks and Brooks, 1993), thepurpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the sense freshman elementaryeducation majors made of service-learning in their teacher education courses. Thequestion that guided this inquiry was: What sense did elementary education majorsmake of their service-learning experiences in their teacher education courses?

Theoretical perspective

The theoretical perspective for this study is based on dual constructs that arepertinent to this investigation. The first construct, the acquisition of knowledge, issignificant because it is the result of the central construct, reflection. According toDewey (1944), experience is an essential element of education. The acquisition ofknowledge occurs when both the body and the mind work together for meaningfullearning. Aristotle also holds that the body and mind work together, utilizinginductive and deductive reasoning processes, to acquire knowledge (Ozman andCraver, 1990). For both Dewey and Aristotle, the process of acquiring knowledgeis similar: the body receives particular data through sensory perception and themind, through reflection, connects and organizes this sensory data into generaliza-tions, which in turn become particulars for new generalizations. This processcontinues as particulars and generalizations develop and extend to form newknowledge. Reflection is the catalyst that cultivates connections and results in newknowledge (Dewey, 1944). Contemporary theories of constructivism are consistentwith these earlier perspectives. Constructivism describes the assimilation andaccommodation of new information into existing schema of prior knowledge toconstruct new knowledge (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Brooks andBrooks, 1993; Piaget, 1970; Shulman, 1999).

Since this study was conducted at Loyola University Maryland, a Jesuit institu-tion of Higher Learning, it is essential to situate it within the university’s perspectiveon the acquisition of knowledge and reflection. According to Rev. Peter-Hans Kol-venbach, Superior General of the Jesuits, ‘the measure of Jesuit universities is notwhat our students do but who they become and the adult Christian responsibilitythey will exercise in future towards their neighbor and their world. For now, theactivities they engage in, even with much good effect, are for their formation. Thisdoes not make the university a training camp for social activists. Rather, the studentsneed close involvement with the poor and marginal now, in order to learn about real-ity and become adults of solidarity in the future “(Kolvenbach, 2000, n.p.). TheTeacher Education Program at Loyola, heeding the call of Rev. Kolvenbach, hasfreshmen elementary education majors participating in service-learning in an urbanschool at the beginning of their formation.

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Service-learning would meet the criteria of an effective clinical experience pro-posed by Darling-Hammond et al. (2005) and is defined by Loyola University as‘experiential learning within academic courses that is gained through structuredreflection on community-based service.’ Essential components include, ‘learningand service which enhance one another, reciprocal partnership with the community,and meaningful, structured reflection’ (as quoted in Committee on Engaged Schol-arship, 2004, n.p.). Loyola University’s perspective on reflection is borrowed fromEyler, Giles and Schmiede’s (1996) Practitioner’s guide to reflection in service-learning: Student voices and reflection: ‘Meaningful, structured reflection is theprimary link between service and learning in the course: it is the way in which stu-dents make the experience of service educative and connect it to course content’(n.p.). They further explain that meaningful structured reflection is continuous, con-nected, challenging and contextualized.

Methodology

This study on service-learning in teacher education was an in-depth qualitative studyusing grounded theory methodology. The purpose of this study, better understandinghow freshman elementary education majors made sense of their initial teacher educa-tion service-learning experiences, invited the use of this interpretive method, whichis described by Erickson (1986) as being appropriate for a study attempting to learnmore about ‘the meaning-perspectives of the particular actors in the particularevents’ (p. 121). Shulman (1986) similarly describes this type of study as focused on‘discovering the meanings constructed by the participants as they attempt to makesense of the circumstances they both encounter and create’ (p. 8).

The collected data are analyzed by the techniques and procedures of groundedtheory as described by Strauss and Corbin (1998). This method involves theinterplay between the researcher and data in which findings are systematically andinductively derived from data from the ground up. As the data are read and ana-lyzed, the researcher assigns codes reflecting ideas and themes that emerge, whichare then grouped together into larger categories that are integrated so as to developmore general assertions and principles that form the findings of the research.

Research design

This investigation was focused on the sense elementary education majors made ofservice-learning in their initial teacher education courses. Participants were enrolledin one of two sections of the Introduction to Elementary Education course in thefall and then one of two Learning Theory courses in the following spring of theirfreshman year. Their mandatory service-learning experiences were scheduled forone afternoon a week for three hours for the duration of the semester. The courseprofessor, also the researcher, met with the university graduate assistant liaison todiscuss the study. After soliciting input from the administrators and teachers at theelementary school to identify the needs of the school, the liaison worked with themajors to brainstorm possible ideas to meet the school defined needs. The freshmanmajors, with the assistance of the liaison, met with their mentoring teacher todevelop a specific plan to meet these needs of the school. (For clarity, hereafter thecollege elementary education majors are referred to as majors and the elementaryschool students are referred to as students.)

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Settings

This study was conducted at Loyola University Maryland, a Jesuit liberal arts uni-versity in Baltimore, MD. The University’s mission includes a focus on service witha goal to produce ‘men and women for and with others’. At the time of this study,there were about 3400 undergraduate students at the college and about 130 in theelementary education program.

The service-learning projects took place at Granger (pseudonym) Elementary/Middle School, an urban school where the vast majority of students and staff wereAfrican American. Granger students typically came from the underprivileged neigh-borhoods that bordered the middle- and upper-middle-income homes that made upthe community surrounding Loyola University. In contrast, the large majority of themostly white Loyola University elementary education majors came from middle-and upper-middle-class families, with a large concentration coming from theNortheastern states and a few from the Middle Atlantic region. For most, this wastheir first experience in an urban school setting.

Participants

Freshmen students in the fall Introduction to Education course who agreed to alsotake the Learning Theory course the following spring semester were eligible forparticipation in this study. Based on questionnaire responses, the six participantsselected for this study were college freshman aged over 18 years with no priorservice-learning experiences. They were chosen for diversity in ethnicity and prioreducational institution (public or private). Three were enrolled in one section ofIntroduction to Education and three were in a second section of the course:

• Cindi: 19, African American, public high school, New Jersey• Tammy: 18, white, private high school, New Hampshire• Mary: 18, white, private high school, Pennsylvania• Nina: 18, white, public high school, Connecticut• Deb: 18, white, public high school, New Jersey• Julie: 19, white, private high school, Pennsylvania.

Service-learning projects

One large project in the fall semester was an exercise video. The Loyola majors taughtmuscles and exercises to the fifth graders as part of their physical education curricu-lum and the majors created a video of the fifth graders talking about the muscles anddemonstrating exercises. The fifth graders then taught a second grade physical educa-tion class about the muscles and exercises using the video and live demonstrations.The physical education teacher continued to use the video for other classes.

A second large project conducted in the spring semester was a letter-writingcampaign for soldiers serving in Iraq. The majors taught the second graders how towrite letters and the geography on the Middle East and then assisted them as theywrote letters to soldiers. The majors and students then visited the other classroomsin the school where the second graders shared information on Iraq and the war andinvited the other classes to write letters to cheer-up the soldiers. Letters werecollected and sent to Iraq.

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Other projects that were identified by school personnel and conducted by themajors included tutoring, planning and teaching lessons, working with groups ofelementary students, grading, recording information, filing papers, designing anddisplaying bulletin boards, constructing instructional aids and organizing elementarystudents and materials.

Data collection and analysis

The data sources for this study included a series of in-depth interviews and writtenassignments. The interviews were conducted by a graduate student assistant (theliaison between the university and the elementary school) early in the first semes-ter, at semester mid-point, at the end of first semester, the beginning of the secondsemester and the end of the second semester. The first interview protocol askedparticipants to explain their understanding of learning, the role of teachers andservice-learning and to discuss both a positive and a difficult previous learningexperience. The subsequent interviews asked participants how their thinking aboutlearning, teaching and service-learning had changed since the previous interview,to describe a service-learning experience, and to discuss both what they hadlearned and what challenges they had faced and how they had dealt with them.Each interview took 30–40 minutes and was later transcribed. The written datasources included weekly field forms and reflections, an initial and end-of-termquestionnaire, mid-term exams, final reflections and concept organizers. In order toestablish credibility and avoid bias, interviews, questionnaires and coursedocuments were used to provide a methodological triangulation of the data(Denzin, 1978).

As mentioned above, data were analyzed in an inductive process from theground up as suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1998). The researcher, who alsotaught both sections of the teacher-education course each semester, read all thedocuments during the semester as course assignments and coded those of theparticipants as each was turned in. The interview transcripts were read and coded atthe conclusion of the second course.

The researcher first read through and coded the data from each of the sixparticipants in turn, looking for major themes and ideas about their service-learningexperiences that emerged from their responses and synthesizing those into catego-ries for each participant. Once that was done for each of the individual participants,the researcher then began to look for similarities, links and connections among theparticipants. The researcher then went through one participant’s data board at a timeand physically stuck together the sticky notes that seemed related to each other(e.g., grouped together four sticky notes from Cindi titled: urban schools, racial rolemodel, students’ background and open to difference). These were then placed on alarge board (science-fair display type). The researcher then moved on to otherparticipants and found similar ideas written on sticky notes (Mary had ‘differentbackground’, ‘stereotypes’, ‘minority’ etc.),which were then attached to the samelarge board next to the original posting of ‘urban schools’, for example, from thefirst participant, Cindi. The researcher then continued to connect and post each ideathat emerged from the data on the large board. When this sorting was complete forall six participants, 11 different categories had emerged: cascade, collaborate, com-munity, connect, course content, making a difference, meeting needs, planning/working together, reflection, urban schools/different background and two-way. After

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further analysis, these categories were organized into four main themes: Collabora-tion, Reciprocity, Connections and Diversity.

Students had numerous opportunities to reflect throughout the semester andthese included both in- and out-of-class formats. Out-of-class weekly reflectionswere designed to have students answer the same four open-ended questions aftereach service-learning experience:

(1) What happened today? What did I do?(2) How did my service today make me feel?(3) What relationships am I building?(4) How does what I am observing/doing at my placement relate to the concepts

and ideas we are currently learning in class (be specific)?

These questions were designed for various reasons. The first question wasintended to have majors establish a habit of recording the facts of the situation. Thesecond question allowed for majors to recognize, own and explain their feelings.The third question was directed toward community building, while the fourthquestion facilitated majors’ reflection without explicitly telling them to reflect.Asking about feelings and relationships might implicitly indicate to majors thatthese concepts are significant in service-learning experiences.

In class, at the end of each unit in their text, majors developed a graphic orga-nizer that included a reflection on how their service-learning experiences connectedto the course content of the unit. For the final, out-of-class reflection, majors wererequired to look back on their semester and write about service-learning experiencesthat helped them learn about central themes of the course. All of these writtenreflections were collected as data for this study.

Limitations

This study was conducted at a Catholic, liberal arts university with majors frommiddle- and upper-middle-class families. Their experiences of a service-learningproject in an urban elementary school may differ from those who have more diversebackgrounds.

The researcher for this study was also the instructor for the service-learningcourses discussed here. The lens through which the data was viewed may bedifferent from that used by a researcher who has not experienced service-learningas an instructor.

At the time of this study, Loyola University had four service-learning courses inthe teacher education program and the courses studied here were the initial two forthe program. While the meanings constructed by participants in this study are pre-sented in the findings, these meanings may not have lasted beyond the boundariesof this study and may have changed since participants encountered at least twomore courses in the program with service-learning components.

Findings

Findings indicated that majors made sense of their service-learning projects byrecognizing that service-learning offered them the opportunity to establish cognitiverelationships that were initiated and assisted by reflection. Connections were formed

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between service-learning experiences and course content, resulting in majors learn-ing the course content.

The themes that emerged from the data included: generalized connections, con-tent-specific connections and the catalyst for all connections – reflection. Majorsaddressed reflection’s role in service-learning and the resulting knowledge acquisi-tion. The format used for the remainder of this paper to identify and discuss theseconnections includes the specific course content on the left, a hyphen in the middleand the service-learning experience on the right with all of these components initalics (e.g., course content–service-learning experience or content–experience).

Generalized connections

Generalized connections were those mentioned by majors who talked about the con-nection between course content and real life experiences (content-experience) with-out mentioning any specific content. Mary and Cindi briefly addressed theconnection between course content and service-learning experiences in generalizedterms. Mary described this connection by using an interesting verb: ‘The course(Introduction to Education) forced me to connect various aspects of service-learningto the topics discussed in class.’ Cindi offered a vague reference to ‘Learning The-ory’ content: ‘Working in the classroom, I was able to experience first hand manyof the topics regarding how students learn.’ Cindi and Mary claimed that theyexperienced topics, but they did not name the topics.

Deb and Julie offered their perspectives on the generalized connections betweencontent and experience. Deb suggested that you do not have to be in a classroom tolearn: ‘I know that you don’t just have to learn in a class room environment andsometime you learn better outside the classroom.’ Following this thought, Julieoffered: ‘My participation (in service-learning) brought the course content alive andmade it more tangible.’ This trend continued with more impetus as both Julie andDeb talked about a book–real-world action connection. Deb offered: ‘I think it isinteresting to read about something in a text book and then a couple of days later seethat idea/philosophy/concept in action.’ Julie referred to the same connection whenshe said that service-learning was educative because: ‘we can see what we are learn-ing and we can do it, and feel it, and try what we are learning in the books so itbecomes real, not just words on a page.’ Julie continues, but suggests that experiencesproviding this book–real-world connection can have an impact: ‘Service-learning is achance to put what we learn in the books into action and see it relate with what weare learning to the real world and real students and build on our experiences so everyexperience changes us.’ These examples illustrate how service-learning providedopportunities for majors to recognize the generalized connections between theircourse content and their service-learning projects.

Because they have said so in their data entries, it might be easy to imply thatthe majors made connections between their course content and their service-learningexperiences. They talked about the book coming alive, relating content to the realworld and seeing class discussions in action. They used all the right words, butquestions remain unanswered. What in the book came alive and how? How andwhere was content seen in the real world? What actions brought to life the subjectof class discussions? These questions are answered in the next section, Content-specific connections, where majors gave specific details on how their course contentwas connected to their service-learning experiences.

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Content-specific connections

Moving more in-depth, majors described their content-experience connections byoffering specific content that they learned by connecting it to their experiences.Tammy and Cindi named specific course content that connected with their service-learning experiences. Tammy identified specific content from both the ‘Introductionto Education’ and the ‘Learning Theory’ courses that was experienced in the elemen-tary school. Personal management style and motivation were both concepts that wereintroduced in the ‘Introduction to Education’ course:

I have observed how the different teachers (classroom and gym) reflect their personalmanagement of the kids in the specific settings. Neither teacher yells and I think thatis very effective because some of the other Loyola peers have said the teachers theywork with yell but the kids keep misbehaving. I have also learned, after reading aboutmotivating the kids that you have to really find something that works for you andthem, for learning to occur.

When considering the ‘Learning Theory’ course content, Tammy talked about‘Brain-Based Learning’:

The other major aspect I have learned about is the brain. I have learned about neuronsand how they help the body and what happens that hurts neurons and the brain. Thegroups discussed how certain activities can bring about certain outcomes. I have wit-nessed and used the information about how to engage a student’s memory and interestin the activities that my group and I have organized. We appealed to our 5th graderswho had a need for help with fractions by bringing in goldfish crackers and a memorygame. The memory game allowed them to interact and help each other, and get toknow us. The goldfish sort of broke up the monotony of sitting, plus kids love food!By bringing the new activities and our individualized way of teaching them, we areable to meet a need (in this case help with math) in a way that otherwise would notget met, or would be difficult for one person to do. Combined with our knowledgethat we are gaining about how the brain works and that not all people will be reachedin the same way, with our individual ideas and opinions, we are able to successfullyhelp the school’s need.

‘Learning Theory’ concepts were the focus of Cindi’s connections between con-tent and experience as illustrated in her reference to Vygotsky’s theory and Behav-iorism. With a recognition of the impact culture may have on education, sheidentified with Vygotsky’s theory:

… in the school that I attended for service-learning, there is a much different culturethan that which I am used to. Here, I understand Vygotsky’s cultural cognitive theory.The way the students act and speak is directly linked to the culture in which they arebrought up, just like my actions and personality have been in many ways, determinedby my culture.

Behaviorist ideas came through when she talked about conditioning:

Skinner’s ideas of operant conditioning also appeared numerous times. With both kin-dergartners and 5th graders, students seemed to respond to punishment and reinforce-ment. When Kindergartners behaved poorly, they sat in time out. This made themupset, and made them behave better later on. The 5th graders responded well topositive reinforcement. Whenever they worked well, I gave them stickers, which madethem want to continue to work hard.

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Julie and Nina added specific content to their content-experience connections.Challenges Teachers Face was a topic covered in the ‘Introduction to Education’course and Julie recognized this at the elementary school:

With service-learning I was able to go to an actual school and work with childrenwho have faced some of the issues brought to my attention in the book. I especiallymade this realization in the chapter of the challenges that teachers face. Some of thechildren at the service-learning school may not have stable home lives or come fromthe traditional family setting. These children might be facing difficulties that I neverimagined at their age and still must go to school and continue their education.Service-learning has allowed me to see how to work with children of differentbackgrounds in an urban setting.

She continued with these connections when she talked about Learning Theoryconcepts of discovery and reception learning: ‘Learning about reception and dis-covery is helping me and my group to plan hands-on activities to teach aboutthe war and the soldiers, rather than simply doing reception learning. Thisdiscovery learning is making learning fun and easy for the students.’ These illus-trate how Julie connected her course content from courses, teachers’ challengesand discovery learning, to her service-learning experiences and made sense of thecontent:

Nina also addressed discovery learning and added direct instruction:

This project relates in some ways to discovery learning. The kids are learning aboutIraq, the war, and soldiers through this process of sending letters to them. Althoughwe are directly instructing the kids about many of the topics, the project allows themto discover and fully understand what we are doing.

She also included another reference to ‘Learning Theory’ content related tobehaviorism and again, conditioning:

Today’s class made me really think about the different learning theories. When I wascalling on kids in class I was thinking about the verbal reinforcement. If a kid saidsomething that was completely wrong, instead of saying ‘No’, I would say ‘Not quite’,but it could be if … and I would give a reason why. This way I didn’t discouragethem from answering questions, but at the same time, I didn’t let them think thewrong thing.

The four majors discussed in this section made specific content-experienceconnections.

These connections have been summarized in this way to point out that all ofthese connections are accurate in nature. The experiences that majors connected totheir course content are appropriate and demonstrate that majors were effectivelymaking connections. Service-learning provided majors with the opportunity to accu-rately connect their course content to their service-learning experiences resulting inthe content being learned.

Reflection connections

All six majors addressed reflection, although within varied contexts. Cindi, Maryand Deb introduced reflection as a think-about-service activity. Tammy, Julie andNina indicated that reflection was a catalyst for connecting.

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Cindi addressed reflection as a part of the service process:

First, you have to plan what you are going to do. And just understanding why exactlyyou are providing the service is what your goal is. Then you have to do it and justprovide the service and once it’s over just reflect on it and think of what kind of ser-vice you provided and if the other people got anything out of it.

Mary weighed in with the same thinking perspective: ‘Service-learning is when stu-dents go out into the community to help in some way and then reflect upon theiractions outside the classroom.’ Mary also spoke about reflection when she referredto how the majors talked and discussed things on their walk to campus from theelementary school. Walking back to campus was the best for her because the majorsin her group would talk and share their perspectives on their service-learningexperience. Deb named reflection as an activity for the kids so that the majors couldget students’ point of view on what they were doing. She described gym classprocedures as: warm-up, game, exercises in groups, return to big circle and thenthey reviewed everything.

This is our time with the kids to reflect and get their perspectives on what we aredoing (what they liked, didn’t like, etc.). Then we can incorporate that into the nextday’s events. Kind of like our evaluation part of service-learning.

Reflection for Deb provided a lead into evaluation, another component of service-learning projects.

Tammy provided a more complex perspective on reflection. She actually namedreflection and implied that it was the catalyst for making the connection betweencontent and experience: ‘The reflections helped me draw connections between howreal the topics we are learning about come into real action in the schools’. She talksabout the content-experience connection in general, but adds an interesting insightto summarize:

I would say, first of all, we take stuff we learn in class and apply it to real life andthen by reflecting on it, it makes it deeper in our mind of what we are actually doingand then I think the kids see us helping them and it might carry through that theymight want to help somebody eventually.

Nina and Julie also saw reflection as a catalyst to connecting. Nina spoke of theintegration of content and experience:

Collaboration or working with others helps students learn by integrating what is taughtin the classroom with what happens in the community. The best way to learn isthrough doing and thus, gaining experience with community activities. The best wayto learn from experience is by reflecting on what happens.

Julie offers: ‘and then after we are done the service learning experience, we reflectupon it and see how our experiences tie into what we are learning’. Tammy, Nina andJulie saw reflection as facilitating the connection between content and experience.

Two types of reflection seemed to have emerged from the data. The lesscomplex, think-about-service type and the more-involved, catalyst type of reflection.The think-about service type is basic to service-learning and might have been

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implied by Cindi, Mary and Deb to be the catalyst type, but they did not name it assuch. They referred mainly to reflection as a thinking process and did not elaboratefurther. Tammy, Nina and Julie, on the other hand, named reflection as the catalystfor creating the connection between content and experience. Service-learning pro-vided opportunities for majors to think about their experiences while completingreflection assignments with some majors naming reflection as the catalyst formaking connections.

Discussion

Consistent with the findings of Eyler and Giles (1999), Jenkins and Sheehey (2009)and Tannenbaum and Barrett (2005), service-learning provided majors with opportu-nities to connect their course content with their experiences resulting in majorslearning the course content. Four majors shared their perspectives on generalizedconnections and four majors shared their perspectives and accurately connectedspecific course content with experiences. All six majors provided their perspectiveson reflection with three focusing on the reflection as thinking-about-service formatand the other three named and described reflection, like Andersin, Swick and Yff(2001), as the catalyst for making connections. The significance of connectingcourse content and service-learning experiences came through in the data where themajors named outcomes of that connecting process and also made theory to practiceconnection as similarly described by Brown (2005), Dodd and Lilly (2000) andWade (1995).

The most commonly appearing outcome was ‘learn’ – majors claimed to learncourse content through reflecting on their service-learning experiences. After that,but not as often, ‘understand’, ‘gain knowledge’, ‘fully comprehend’, ‘reinforce’,‘retain information’ and ‘deeper in our minds’ were named as outcomes. Theseoutcomes were part of the description of the connecting process, not the focus ofthe description. Majors were focused on writing about connections and that camethrough in the data. They were focused on the nuts and bolts of the connectingprocess, the content and the experiences. Outcomes were mentioned almost as anatural part of the process of connecting. It would seem, from the perspectives ofall six majors that some content-experience connections resulted in learning,understanding and/or gaining knowledge.

This claim of learning, understanding or gaining knowledge is supported bythe content-specific connections described by the majors previously in the sectionby that name. They did not just say that they had learned course content –evidence of learning was offered when they made accurate connections betweenthe content and experiences. Observing punishment and reinforcement and thenrecognizing that it makes sense to connect these to operant conditioning clarifiesthe accuracy of the connection and strengthens the learning. According to majors’perspectives, service-learning provided them with an opportunity to accuratelyconnect, through reflection, their experiences to specific course content whichproduced outcomes of learning the content. Cindi offered: ‘Because of my service-learning over the past two semesters, I feel that I have a better understanding ofmajor learning theories and why students learn the way they do.’ That connectionbetween content and experience, provided by participation in service-learningprojects and the integral reflection process was instrumental in building a betterunderstanding of that content.

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Conclusion

Findings indicate that what was suggested by Darling-Hammond et al. (2005), thatclinical experiences should help pre-service teachers make more sense of their aca-demic work, and their academic work, in turn, should help them make sense ofwhat they encounter in their clinical experiences, is viable through service-learningexperiences. When pre-service teachers participated in service-learning projects, theinformation they perceived from what they saw, heard, felt and did found aconnection, through reflection, to some aspect of the course content already residingthere. The outcome of this connection was a better understanding of the content.Content was identified, majors participated in service, they reflected on connectionsbetween the two, and learning occurred. The process flows: content-service-reflection-learning. At times it may have been that experience came first and thencontent was introduced in class that was reflected upon and resulted in learning,therefore: experience-content-reflection-learning.

As previously stated, the participants in this study were freshmen from somewhat‘privileged’ backgrounds. This was their first experience in an urban setting and withservice-learning. Reflection was introduced to them at the beginning of the semesteras the way to make a connection between their course content and their experiencethrough Dewey’s progressivist ideas on learning through experience. Reflection wasnot the focus of the course nor was it the focus of this study, but it did emerge andbecome central, in students’ minds as the catalyst for helping them make connectionsbetween course content and their experiences in an urban setting. This focus onreflection came from them cognitively processing their own experiences. They offeredreflection as the means that allowed them to first become aware of differences – incultures and experiences. Some even developmentally matured to the level of ques-tioning how and why there were differences. From a developmental perspective, it isusually not until later service-learning courses in the elementary education program atLoyola University where students really grapple with more significant questions suchas equity and social justice. It is they who inductively recognized that reflectionguided their learning and progression through different developmental levels. Thiswould reinforce Kolvebach’s (2000) perspective that students have to developthrough formative experiences before they are fully able to engage in the world.

In their ‘Introduction to Education’ and ‘Learning Theory’ courses in the first andsecond semesters of their freshman year, elementary education majors were requiredto reflect, both in and out of class, on their service-learning experiences as they relatedto their course content. While there were a limited number of participants in thisstudy, the evidence indicates that reflection was the catalyst for learning course con-tent when connected to service-learning experiences, so a more comprehensive studyon the effects of service-learning on elementary education majors may be warranted.

Notes on contributorCatherine M. Castellan is an assistant professor in the Teacher Education Department atLoyola University Maryland. Her research interests include service-learning in teachereducation and mathematics methods for the elementary school.

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