Comparing the Intended and the Perceived: Administrator Expectations and Student Perceptions of Teacher Roles in Catholic Service-Learning

The classroom teacher plays a pivotal role in any formal educational environment. More specifically, how this individual is involved and how s/he structures activities and discussions about a topic depends on the preferred learning style, personal demeanor, and educational philosophy of the teacher. For teachers that employ service-learning pedagogy in their courses, these expectations and factors do not vary. Teachers motivate students, help them to make meaning of experiences, and assist them in making connections for future action. These roles become complicated, however, when novice teachers do not have sufficient pedagogical training and/or are not given ongoing guidance by administrators. Using data from interviews with students and administrators at an urban Catholic high school, the qualifications and roles of the service-learning teachers, and their intended roles as described by administrators, are compared to the perceived roles as voiced by students. Implications and recommendations are discussed with specific attention to administrator communication, types and frequency of reflection activities, and, as a result, tensions of service-based models of experiential education in Catholic schools vis-a-vis the development of social justice. Introduction Catholic schools have been the focus of considerable interest and controversy among educational researchers and policy makers since Coleman and Hoffer's (1987) and Greeley's (1982) studies linking the academic success of inner-city Black students to their attendance at Catholic schools. More recently, Catholic schools have found themselves under the lens of public school reform, specifically in terms of their role in the voucher system debate (i.e., the use of public tax dollars for private school education). Coupled with these discussions, however, have been criticisms over some religious and private schools' hiring of uncertified/untrained individuals to teach. The latter issue garners much concern if non-public schools are to be charged with the education of the general public toward a common good. Catholic education deserves specific attention with regard to the civic good because Catholicism teaches that one's faith and love for God is demonstrated most clearly in active service to others. By aspiring to the examples set by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, Catholics should understand that being agents of transformation and social justice is a duty of every Christian. In fact, according to Pope John Paul II (1995), the benefits of Catholic education's social justice component reach beyond the students who learn the required curriculum and those individuals oppressed by dominant groups: "Catholic education serves the future of all Americans by teaching and communicating the very virtues on which American democracy rests." In spite of this connection, the presence of a religious component in empirical studies of high school service-learning programs has been rare in recent literature, excluding Youniss and Yates' (1997) analysis of community service's beneficial effects when combined with a social justice class at a predominately Black, urban Catholic high school in Washington, D.C. This absence is even more bewildering given that community service-learning programs have been implemented at the secondary level for decades. With this in mind, studies that serve to extend the empirical foundations of both service-learning and Catholic education, especially the roles that teachers play in such programs and environments respectively, are creditable. This article examines the roles of teachers in a Catholic high school service-learning program, as compared through the intentions of program administrators and perceptions by students. Literature on civic engagement and religion, service-learning in Catholic schools, the role of teachers in service-learning, and reflection in experiential education frame a discussion of the findings and their implications. …