Reflect on instructional strategies and practices you are currently familiar with. Examples include asking students to find a partner? to complete a worksheet with, organizing students into

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Journal of Experiential Education 2021, Vol. 44(1) 50 –64

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Article

Exploring Elementary Student Perceptions of Experiential Learning Within Critical Service-Learning

Sara Gartland1

Abstract Background: Critical service-learning provides an opportunity for culturally sustaining and experiential learning across a variety of contexts. This study took place alongside a larger study examining the implementation of a year-long community- based critical service-learning initiative at an underresourced elementary school. While the larger study focused on the ways in which the teachers engaged with the framework, this study focuses on the students. Purpose: This study sought to explore third graders’ perceptions of their participation in developing, planning, and implementing a critical service-learning project. Methodology/Approach: Fieldnotes from classroom observations, co-planning and co-teaching sessions, transcripts from student focus groups, and other lesson artifacts were analyzed qualitatively. Findings/Conclusions: A case study of two third-grade students found that amplification of student voice associated with engaging in the critical service- learning fostered a sense of community within the classroom and increased student self-efficacy. Implications: These findings add to the literature on critical service- learning in K–12 public schools while also providing impetus to continue studying student perceptions of experiential learning.

Keywords critical service-learning, service-learning, community-based learning, primary school

Introduction

“Alright, Daysha! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Ms. Harris exclaimed. The energy in the room was contagious. As I recorded notes about the lesson in progress, I heard

1University of Delaware, Newark, USA

Corresponding Author: Sara Gartland, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716-5600, USA. Email: [email protected]

980786 JEEXXX10.1177/1053825920980786Journal of Experiential EducationGartland research-article2020

Gartland 51

celebratory high-fives ring out across the classroom. In that moment, I, too, smiled. This is what a classroom should feel like, I thought as I soaked in as much as I could about the overwhelmingly tangible sense of connection. Some students excitedly shared stories with anyone who passed by while others quietly focused on writing and others still alternated between the two. The students were writing Where I’m From Poems—poems that showcased the memories, thoughts, and relationships associated with each student’s sense of self—and they seemed to be completely engaged with the activity. They seemed to be having a good experience.

A few days prior, Ms. Harris and I met to plan the lesson described above. The purpose of implementing the lesson was to foster connection and community ahead of working together as a class to plan and implement a service-learning project. We sat at her elementary-school-sized student desks and discussed the Where I’m From Poem lesson template. We tried to think like the students. We discussed why she wanted to use this lesson, what she hoped to gain from it, and what she hoped her students would gain from it. She shared what she knew of her students from the first weeks of school as we used a sample lesson plan for the poem activity to guide our conversation. Ms. Harris wanted to work with me to adjust the lesson plan to provide the richest possible experience for her students—both in terms of moving forward with developing a ser- vice-learning project and in terms of building community within the classroom.

After the lesson, Ms. Harris enthusiastically explained how the lesson deepened her understanding of her students’ lives. The Where I’m From Poem activity allowed her to accomplish exactly what she hoped to accomplish. However, I wondered, as she excitedly reflected on the lesson: What sense did her students make of their engage- ment with this activity? What did they think of Ms. Harris and I asking them to com- plete these poems? Were they experiencing it in the same way that we were? Questions such as these highlighted that gathering and analyzing student perceptions of their experiences would be essential to fully understanding them. Thus, the study presented here set out to intentionally capture and analyze her students’ perceptions of the Where I’m From Poem activity and other lessons associated with a community-based critical service-learning framework over the course of a school year. Before presenting my methods and my findings, I share my positionality and supporting literature to help the reader interpret the results in the context of the study.

Positionality and Research Questions

Educational research tends to point out what is not working for students of color (Delpit, 2006; Kozol, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1995). More specifically, educational research tends to focus on the ways in which students of color do not perform like White students in the act of schooling (Paris & Alim, 2017). Despite good intentions of improving educational outcomes for students of color, this deficit view often serves the opposite purpose of perpetuating stereotypes and preventing meaningful change (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017). Rather than consistently asking ques- tions that highlight what fails, educational researchers have a responsibility to shift their perspective and report what works and why (Delpit, 2006). For this reason, I

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choose to celebrate the features of classrooms, instruction, and interactions with stu- dents that enable learning. Furthermore, I view experiential learning opportunities as a pivotal space for doing so.

Paris and Alim (2014, 2017) took a lovingly critical stance toward the various asset pedagogies—namely, culturally responsive and culturally relevant pedagogies—as a way to push the teaching of children of color forward. I take a similar approach to problematizing the way in which research typically depicts these students. Rather than comparing all students against the standards of the dominant, White, culture in the name of promoting equity and access (Dixson & Rousseau, 2005), I seek to under- stand and share the perspectives of students of color. I recognize that being a White researcher and educator means that I cannot claim to know or understand the experi- ence of students of color without listening to the ways in which they make sense of navigating education.

Finally, I rely on the tenets of Critical Race Theory to shape my research questions and my analysis (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). For example, I rely on the voices of students of color through counterstories, because counterstories support community- building while challenging “perceived wisdom of those at society’s center” (Yosso, 2006, p. 15). Furthermore, I feel it is essential to celebrate what works through the voices of those experiencing what works. Thus, the following research questions, focused on student voice, guided this study:

Research Question 1: What meanings do students make of their participation in critical service-learning? Research Question 2: What relationship, if any, is there between teachers’ attempts to amplify students’ voices and the students’ perceptions of their participation in critical service-learning?

Supporting Literature

This study takes a close look at a small part of the implementation of a community- based critical service-learning framework, the Need in Deed (NID) My VOICE frame- work (2017). In the following section, I present literature to help situate this critical service-learning framework as both a culturally sustaining and an experiential peda- gogy. Then, I provide explanations of my views on student voice and student percep- tions, and I make a case for investigating both.

NID My VOICE as a Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP)

CSP “seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural plu- ralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation” (Paris & Alim, 2017, p. 1). CSP moves beyond other conceptualizations of asset-based pedagogies by embrac- ing the dynamic nature of identities and cultures (Paris & Alim, 2014). Pedagogies labeled as culturally sustaining must be as fluid and intersectional as the students inter- acting with them (Paris & Alim, 2014, 2017).

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One such learning experience is provided by NID’s My VOICE framework, which is the pedagogical framework at the heart of this study. NID’s My VOICE framework guides teachers and students through the year-long development of a whole-class (or multiclass) critical service-learning project through lessons and activities (referred to as NID lessons or NID activities interchangeably in this article). The framework’s name, My VOICE, represents the phases of project development—Value Your Voice, Open the Issue, Identify Your Project, Conduct Meaningful Service, and Evaluate and Celebrate—and hints at the culturally sustaining practices embedded in the lessons within each phase (NID, 2017). CSP works to achieve equity and access “by centering the dynamic practices and selves of students and communities of color in a critical, additive, and expansive vision of schooling” (Paris & Alim, 2017, p. 3). NID’s My VOICE framework does just that by situating students as the curricular designers. Students drive not only the focus of the service-learning project but also day-to-day curricular choices such as topic selection, reading materials, community partner iden- tification, and service goals.

In addition, a hallmark of the My VOICE framework is that the service projects be informed by, and conducted in, the students’ community, or communities. This feature also positions the framework as a particularly powerful example of CSP because efforts to integrate students’ and community members’ funds of knowledge are embedded throughout (Moll et al., 1992). Students seek out and employ the expertise of community partners during multiple stages of the framework. By doing this, students build “flexible, adaptive, and active” networks for learning that pro- mote a view of education that positions the student as an “active participant” (Moll et al., 1992, pp. 133–134).

Critical Service-Learning Provides Rich Experiential Opportunity

NID’s My VOICE framework is also an example of critical service-learning. Critical service-learning differs from traditional service-learning in that it intentionally pro- motes awareness of reasons why the service is necessary, requires an analysis of power differentials and their root causes, and supports the development of skills that enable successful collaboration (Kahl, 2010; McKay, 2010; Mitchell, 2008; Morton & Bergbauer, 2015; Reed & Butler, 2015). Rather than conducting service for a community, students conduct service with a community, often by inviting commu- nity members to contribute to the service-learning in meaningful ways (Mitchell, 2008). Through the lessons within the My VOICE framework, students have the opportunity to question all aspects of the social issues they choose to investigate for the purpose of designing a service project. Also, the framework materials systemati- cally prepare teachers and students to recruit and collaborate with community mem- bers throughout the development and enactment of the service project. Thus, the My VOICE framework provides a structured and intentional approach to conducting critical service-learning in the K–12 setting that supports an experiential learning opportunity (Roberts, 2008).

Although the benefits of shifting from traditional service-learning to critical ser- vice-learning may be inferred, benefits for students have been empirically supported

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by research across various contexts and grade levels (Billig, 2017; Duncan-Andrade, 2007). Scholars of critical service-learning have shown that it motivates students to see themselves as “agents of social change” as they work to identify and solve prob- lems within their communities, and this process often leads to improved critical think- ing and reasoning skills, improved behavior and attendance, and improved relationships (Billig, 2017; Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007; Mitchell, 2007; Wang & Rodgers, 2006). Thus, an experience such as engaging with the My VOICE framework, which supports the implementation of critical service-learning, provides students with a rich opportunity for situating their academics in their lived experiences, a hallmark of experiential education more broadly.

Student Voice

Asset-based pedagogies, including CSP, point to the importance of student voice in the classroom (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 2014; Paris & Alim, 2017). I define student voice as meaningful student contributions to the context, content, and shape of learning opportunities. Lessons within the NID My VOICE framework require teachers to rely on student voice at every step. NID defines student voice in the context of their critical service-learning approach as “student-generated ideas, opin- ions, and initiatives [that] are used in meaningful ways to complete a service-learning project” (NID, 2017). As NID’s definition of student voice meshed well with mine, I determined that implementation of the framework could provide an opportunity to observe consistent use of student voice.

Student voice is often cited as an essential element in creating authentic and engag- ing community-based learning experiences (Billig, 2017; Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007), but it remains an understudied aspect of critical service-learning. For example, Morgan and Streb (2001) showed that students’ self-efficacy, personal competence, political attentiveness, and social action increase when students’ opinions and beliefs are meaningfully infused in their education. In addition, Ginwright and Cammarota (2007) explained that a pedagogy of critical civic praxis—or the development of criti- cal problem-solving skills specifically targeting oppressive conditions within a community—is most successful when centered on student voice. Both of these studies explore experiences that could be described as critical service-learning, but they do not specifically explore critical service-learning conducted by K–12 students during the school day, which is my context of interest. Furthermore, Billig (2017) noted that “youth voice is not well understood” (p. 87) in the school-based critical service-learn- ing literature despite including it as a standard for implementing high-quality service- learning. Thus, detailed accounts of the ways in which student voice shapes teaching and learning will add to the field’s understanding of a powerful, yet understudied construct.

Student Perceptions

To conclude this review of supporting literature, I present my rationale for exploring student perceptions of their experiences with the lessons and activities within the

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NID My VOICE framework. I define student perceptions as the understandings and interpretations of classroom activities that students develop through engagement with the classroom context. If student voice means that students are heard in the classroom on a deeper level, then why should they not be heard in research on a deeper level?

Research has shown that service-learning experiences are associated with increased self-efficacy, increased sense of belonging, and increased sense of community largely through the use of interviews or questionnaires designed to elicit student perceptions (Astin et al., 2000; Billig, 2017; Clayton et al., 2010; Duncan-Andrade, 2007; Farber & Bishop, 2018; Felten & Clayton, 2011; Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007; Sprague Martinez et al., 2017). However, I have yet to locate similar research focused explic- itly and specifically on critical service-learning occurring at the K–12 level during the regular school day. Thus, this study not only addresses a gap in the literature in terms of the location of the critical service-learning work (i.e., K–12 school-based learning rather than out-of-school programs that may have links to school experi- ences), this study also seeks to build knowledge of, in the students own words, the ways in which critical service-learning is experienced by those whose education it aims to enhance. In addition, continuing to explore the ways in which students make sense of and understand their participation in critical service-learning will likely yield insights that would not be unearthed through an overreliance on teachers’ or research- ers’ assumptions and attributions.

Method

This year-long qualitative study was nested within a larger project (Soslau & Gartland, in press) seeking to identify teachers’ successes and challenges as they worked to understand and implement a critical service-learning framework. For the larger proj- ect, teachers received lesson materials and professional development provided by NID staff as they worked to implement the NID My VOICE framework. In addition to the support provided by NID, the teachers worked closely with my co-researcher-practi- tioner and I through regularly scheduled peer-sharing sessions designed to foster open communication about the curriculum implementation process. I conducted the study presented in this article in conjunction with the work I did for the larger study, which will be described in more detail below. While the larger project focused on the teach- ers, this study explores students’ perceptions of their first-time engagement in critical service-learning, as reflected in the research questions. Both the larger study and the study described in this article received institutional review board (IRB) approval from the University of Delaware.

Research Context

The setting for this study was an underresourced public elementary school located in a mid-size urban center in the northeastern United States. The school serves approxi- mately 450 students enrolled in Grades 3 to 5, of which 98% identify as Black or

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Hispanic and less than 2% identify as White (numbers rounded for confidentiality). In addition, the students are frequently characterized by researchers, administrators, community members, and teachers as being affected by trauma associated with experi- ences such as witnessing violence or experiencing homelessness.

Six teachers participated in the larger study, and I developed a strong relationship with one of the teachers, Ms. Harris (teacher and student names are pseudonyms), in the early stage of the larger study. For example, we worked closely together to co-plan and co-implement lessons as depicted in the introduction. As a result of this relation- ship, I was able to gain insider access to data that was not possible across all classes participating in the larger study, such as data related to student perceptions that could be analyzed with an intimate knowledge of the activities that the students engaged with in Ms. Harris’s class. Therefore, this article presents a case study (Creswell, 1998; Yin, 2003) of two of Ms. Harris’s third-grade students’ reflective self-reports about their participation in the critical service-learning that took place in their class.

Participants

Participants for this study include Ms. Harris, the third-grade teacher, and two of her 20 students. Ms. Harris self-identified as a Black female and had 5 years of teaching experience at the time of this study. The two focal students, Somah and Daysha, were chosen from Ms. Harris’s class based on researcher observations and teacher observa- tions of engagement with NID lessons, student attendance, and receipt of both student assent and parent consent forms. Researcher and teacher observations served to iden- tify students perceived to be actively engaging with and having positive experiences with the NID lessons. Both focal students, Somah and Daysha, self-identified as Black females. In addition, both students were present for all NID lessons on which I asked students to reflect, including classroom community-building lessons, community part- ner visits, planning the service project, and conducting service. Finally, both students were representative of the class in terms of teacher- and researcher-perceived engage- ment with the NID lessons.

My Role as a Researcher-Practitioner

Throughout the year, I took on a very active role as a researcher-practitioner in multi- ple classrooms for the larger project. I spent more than 80 hours at the school as part of the larger study co-planning and co-teaching NID lessons, participating in NID professional development, connecting students with community partners, helping con- duct service, and supporting teachers. Early in the year, Ms. Harris invited me to co- teach NID lessons focused on building community within the classroom, which sparked the close working relationship referenced above. Ms. Harris and I participated in the NID lessons focused on community-building, such as the Where I’m From Poem activity described earlier, alongside the students, which allowed me to also build authentic and strong relationships with the students in her class. Thus, I became a part of the school community and a part of Ms. Harris’s classroom community.

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Due to the depth and consistency of the relationships that I established with this particular group of students, it was comfortable and natural for students to meet with me in small groups during lunch as they would with other adult members of classroom communities throughout the school. My engagement with Ms. Harris and her students allowed me to blend my research with this type of meeting, called a “chat and chew.” Students and staff at the school referred to lunch meetings between adults and students in this way and regularly engaged in such meetings for the purpose of fostering rela- tionships between students and adults at the school.

Data Sources

One set of data came from student focus groups. The focal students from Ms. Harris’s class were invited to participate in three “chat and chew” focus group meetings held in the fall, winter, and spring. Both focal students participated in the first two focus groups. The final focus group became a semi-structured interview, because only one student was present and time constraints for all parties, such as the state standardized testing window, prevented rescheduling. During each focus group session, I asked the students to describe the NID lessons they had participated in to that point and how participating in those lessons made them feel. Each focus group session was audio- recorded and transcribed. I also took fieldnotes.

A second set of data came from the classroom activities. I took detailed field notes during all NID co-planning sessions and co-teaching sessions with Ms. Harris. Artifacts such as student work generated by the two focal students during NID lessons and documents used for the lessons were collected for analysis. In addition, field notes were recorded during observations of NID activities in Ms. Harris’s class, such as community partner visits, and one non-NID-related mathe- matics lesson.

Analysis

Transcripts and field notes were analyzed qualitatively using case study methods (Yin, 2003). Analysis was conducted to develop a single case bounded by classroom, mean- ing that I only focused on Ms. Harris’s class for this study. The unit of analysis within the case was individual students. All data were coded using an open coding process in which the codes listed in Table 1 were developed and refined (Emerson et al., 2011). At multiple points during data analysis, I engaged in reflective memo-writing and member-checking.

Findings

Analysis revealed two salient themes. The students reported an increased sense of community in their classroom through a strengthened kinship with their classmates, and a greater sense of self-efficacy, or the self-belief that with effort, success can be achieved. Furthermore, they credited their engagement in lessons from the NID My

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VOICE framework for the increased sense of community and boosts in self-efficacy. Importantly, these two positive outcomes carried over into non-NID lessons, a devel- opment that was both self-reported by the students and observed in the classroom.

Community

Both Somah and Daysha expressed the feeling that their voices were amplified in Ms. Harris’s class, meaning that their voices had meaningful impacts on lessons and choices to be made by the class within the NID My VOICE framework. In turn, their perceptions of this amplification were that it served to foster a sense of community

Table 1. Description of Codes.

Code Definition Example

Use of student voice

Ms. Harris uses student opinions, ideas, or initiatives in to shape, direct, or otherwise influence an NID lesson

Students expressed concerns about their safety in neighborhood playgrounds which lead to a community anti- violence advocate being invited to the class to help brainstorm solutions (field notes, 05/01)

Amplification of student voice

Ms. Harris gives ownership of an opinion, idea, or initiative to a student or students and acknowledges students as co-constructors of the NID activities

Ms. Harris repeated student contributions along with the name of the student who made the contribution in every observation

Example: “Alright, so Daysha, when I passed her desk, she recommended that we make a list of all our ideas.” (Ms. Harris, field notes, 10/04)

Community Student reports of comfort and community-building in the classroom during, or as the result of, NID activities

“I like the different questions that I never hear. Like from other people. ’Cause it’s personal. But, I’m glad that I get to share it so I don’t have to be . . . weird.” (Daysha, focus group, 03/20)

Confidence/ self-efficacy

Student reports of NID activities influencing sense of confidence and ability to accomplish a task now or in the future

“It made me feel good to get to, um, explain to our teacher and other people how we felt about our neighborhood . . . and I could make a project about that.” (Somah, focus group, 05/15)

Note. NID = Need in Deed.

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within their classroom. To explain their views, they drew on accounts of their partici- pation in various NID activities. These self-reported accounts aligned with observed participation in the classroom and a depth to the observations that is unattainable with- out hearing a