Service-Learning: Creating Opportunities to Expand Students' Worldviews.

More literature is needed that focuses on the effectiveness of service learning projects in higher education, specifically how individual students are impacted. This study investigates the possible influence of an international service-learning experience on a student’s worldview. The International Service-Learning Inventory was used to ask students a variety of questions on social justice, intercultural competencies, diversity, global awareness, democracy, civic engagement, and transformative learning. The study was conducted with University of Central Florida student participants (N=9) enrolled in an international service-learning field experience in Botswana examining educational access and gender issues. The results demonstrated strong relationship among four factors: Community, Civic Engagement, Diversity, and Education & Leadership – of which were defined as a student’s worldview. In addition, there were interaction effects with the four factors and gender and ethnicity and main effect sizes with the four factors and first generational students, Pell Grant recipients, and those who have traveled abroad. Because of the large effect size in the small population, this “pilot” or “exploratory” research suggests to the reader significant results may be found when examining larger populations. Lauren I. Murray, Jarrad D. Plante, Thomas D. Cox, & Tom Owens Service-Learning: Creating Opportunities to Expand Students’ Worldviews 52 Journal of Learning in Higher Education 53 Fall 2015 (Volume 11 Issue 2) Purnell, & Villarruel, 2009), pharmacology (Coffey, Miller, Barnett, & Turberville-Vega, 2003), teacher education preparation (LaMaster, 2001), and social justice (Warren, 1998; Werner, Voce, Openshaw, & Simons, 2002). The benefits of service-learning activities have also been studied in many unique student populations, including honors students (Stewart, 2008), low-income and firstgeneration students (Yeh, 2010), and first-year students (Stavrianopoulos, 2008). The literature demonstrates that students participating in service show many positive effects on measures including academic performance (GPA, writing skills, critical thinking skills), values (commitment to activism and to promoting racial understanding), self-efficacy, leadership (leadership activities, self-rated leadership ability, interpersonal skills), choice of a service career, and plans to participate in service after college (Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda & Yee, 2000; Yeh, 2010). Other benefits of student participation in service-learning activities include increased attendance, further development of students’ personal and social responsibility, and, “the feelings of belonging to a peer group and greater connection to the institution” (Deeley, 2010; Kuh, et al.,, 2005; “What is Service-Learning,” n.d.). Low-income and first-generation students, often at greater risk of attrition than their peers, demonstrate increased educational resiliency, increased feelings of personal meaning, and enhanced critical consciousness by engaging in service learning experiences (Yeh, 2010). Service-learning also provides students the opportunity to face societal and personal ignorance, injustice, inequity, and prejudices while allowing them to expand upon their own goals of cultural adaptation, values, knowledge acquisition, and career plans (Aydlett, Randolph &Wells, 2010; Knuston & Gonzalez, 2009). International service-learning is a combination of study abroad experiences with those aspects of conventional service-learning and integrates a targeted culture into a student’s learning experience (Tonkin & Quiroga, 2004). These experiences develop and enhance students’ sense of global citizenship by immersing them in situations that involve interacting with community residents while carrying out a project intended to benefit the community (Prins &Webster, 2010). Although short-term programs such as these can reinforce stereotypes of the poor and simplify social problems, short-term international service projects can lead students to question consumerism, cultural norms, foreign policy, and even American cultural hegemony. Short-term experiences also enable students to step outside of their comfort zones and, in some cases, their own borders, to become aware of ideological identity both home and abroad (Prins & Webster, 2010). These trips are often transformative in nature, and enhance participants’ abilities to view their world from multiple perspectives (Knuston & Gonzalez, 2009). This study adds to this body of literature by through quantitative assessment of student expansion of students’ worldviews. For the purposes of this study, worldview is defined to be community, civic engagement, diversity, and education & leadership. Student expectations and concerns prior to the experience and reflections following the experience were analyzed to identify changes that occurred as a result of their participation. A review of the course and the service-learning experience establish the context for the study. The University of Central Florida defines service-learning as: A teaching method that uses community involvement to apply theories or skills being taught in a course. The institution believes that servicelearning furthers the learning objectives of the academic course, addresses community needs, and requires students to reflect on their activity in order to gain an appreciation for the relationship between civics and academics. (Service-Learning,