Transitioning from High School Service to College Service-Learning in a First-Year Seminar.

This article analyzes the challenges encountered in a first-year service-learning course in which students had high expectations for community involvement and a commitment to social responsibility, yet significant difficulty connecting their orientation to the intellectual inquiry expected of them at the college level. This conflict between making a difference and undertaking complementary academic work was evident in students' reflections, and in our own. As a result of this case study and secondary research, it appears that introductory service-learning courses may need to be reconceptualized for the increasing numbers of students who come to college with prior experiences and strong orientations toward social action. From Safe Service to Service-Learning American Freshmen Increase Commitment to Social and Civic Responsibility, asserts the headline in a widely-distributed report published by the Higher Education Research Institute (Pryor, Hurtado, Saenz, Lindholm, Korn, & Mahoney, 2005, p. 3). This report goes on to highlight the finding that an all-time high number of incoming college students have previous community experience, and describes an extremely high expectation among college students that they will continue to participate in community during college. These increased commitments and enhanced expectations for community involvement cannot help but have ramifications across the higher education spectrum, including for faculty teaching service-learning courses. This commitment to social and civic responsibility among incoming students may appear to be positive: if students arrive at college with the intent to continue to work in the community, motivating them to do so in the context of a service-learning class should be seamless. Moreover, students already familiar with community should be able to build upon their prior experiences and move into higher levels of engagement and leadership. The assumption is that high school service-learning experiences prepare them for a smoother transition to college life and ensure a more successful first-year (Furco, 2002, p. 3). Yet the problem we found was the difficulty these students had in combining with scholarly work appropriate to the college level. Activist students did not understand how academic knowledge could inform their commitment to social change. They wanted to act, not read or reflect. This did not result in a smooth transition; rather it created conflict and disengagement. We suggest that these students arrived at college thinking of school and as separate activities, with their identities rooted in their successes in each. These identities were challenged as the students were asked to unlearn their previous attitudes toward community and engage with theories concerning social change. We propose that they eventually transitioned from a mindset of safe service to one of reflective service-learning, yet this process was complicated and the difficulties unanticipated. We develop this perspective through a description and analysis of a first year seminar called Making a Difference. We explore the non-academic, action-oriented expectations that students brought to the course, and describe the challenges to these expectations that emerged as students realized that the course entailed a significant academic component. Given that they were activists, our students were outspoken when their expectations were not met. Because of our experience with participatory research, we were open to modifying the course and analyzing the issues in real time. The conflict and resolution that ensued destabilized both students and instructors, though in the end both groups found that learning outcomes were achieved. Our data sources include students' weekly reflection journals, our own reflections throughout the semester, students' statements of their 'making a difference' activities, a mid-semester course reflection process, and students' final reflection papers. …