Democratic Dilemmas of Teaching Service-Learning: Curricular Strategies for Success

“This book provides faculty with thought provoking scenarios on how to address dilemmas encountered in implementing service learning. It provides useful illustrations on how “to handle” the dilemmas without infringing on intellectual freedom, values, or judgment of all parties involved by utilizing civil public discourse and reinforcing the importance of civic engagement. Excellent work by all the authors."―Lyvier Conss, Executive Director, MESA Community College National Center for Community Engagement

“Whether teaching a service-learning course for the first time or for decades, this book is a required resource to foster democratic, political engagement in our students.”―Dwight E. Giles, Jr, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Recognizing that teaching, in general, and service-learning, in particular, are inherently political, this book faces up to the resulting predicaments that inevitably arise in the classroom. By framing them as a vital and productive part of the process of teaching and learning for political engagement, this book offers the reader new ways to think about and address seemingly intractable ideological issues.

In over twenty chapters of case studies, faculty scholars from disciplines as varied as computer science, engineering, English, history, and sociology take readers on their and their students’ intellectual journeys, sharing their messy, unpredictable and often inspiring accounts of democratic tensions and trials inherent in teaching service-learning. Using real incidents, they explore the democratic intersections of various political beliefs along with race/ethnicity, class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and other conflicted issues that students and faculty experience in the classroom and community. They share their struggles of how to communicate and interact across the divide of viewpoints and experiences within an egalitarian and inclusive environment all the while managing interpersonal tensions

Christine M. Cress is Professor of Educational Leadership, Higher Education Policy, and Community Engagement at Portland State University. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She has conducted professional trainings on curricular integration and the scholarship of service-learning at scores of colleges in North America, Europe, Japan, India, and Nepal. Earlier in her career, she was an academic and career adviser at Western Washington University, Whatcom Community College, and Northwest Indian College. For the last twenty years at PSU, she has directed Master and Doctoral degrees and a fully on-line Graduate Certificate in Service-Learning including facilitation of short-term international service-learning and COIL/Virtual Exchange classes in India, Japan, Morocco, and Turkey. Her cultural privilege is primarily northern European American with Cherokee (non-tribal affiliation) and Sene-Gambian heritage. She is a first-generation college student, adoptee and adoptive parent, and member of a multi-racial lesbian family. These myriad social positions influence her scholarship which addresses intersectionality, systemic oppression, and equity-centered education and community engagement.

David M. Donahue is Director of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Services and the Common Good, and a professor of education at the School of Education at the University of San Francisco.

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