Skip to main content. You're using an out-of-date version of Internet Explorer. Log In Sign Up. A Chameleon with a Complex: Searching for Transformation in International Service-Learning. Searching for Transformation in International Service-Learning Richard Kiely University of Georgia This article reports findings from a longitudinal case study investigating how students experience per- spective transformation from their participation in international service-learning program with an explicit social justice orientation.
Findings indicate that each student experienced profound changes in their world-view in at least one of six dimensions: Importantly, the study found that students who initially expressed a willingness to change their lifestyle and work for social justice experienced ongoing conflict and struggle in their attempts to trans- late their critical awareness into meaningful action. The Nicaragua trip challenged my entire value Nicaragua, and also express rethinking their and belief system. I now have feelings of guilt lifestyle, career, relationships to others and a desire over having so much, of being privileged to advocate for Nicaraguans, and others living in enough to be born in a stable prosperous coun- poverty.
Such powerful expressions and actions try and into an educated White middle class suggest that for many undergraduate students, the family. Everyday I am unable to ignore a world international service-learning experience marks an of Maquiladoras, global commodity chains, and suffering due to the curse of bad luck, and important transformational event in their lives, one social and political events that have taken that will forever shape their sense of self, lifestyle, place in Nicaragua and the rest of the develop- connection to others, view of global problems and ing world.
Is this poverty the way it has to be? As the study findings the treatment of people in the third world fac- presented in this article illustrate, the long-term tories that are being used and abused. The cultural norms, and engage in social action is often Nicaragua trip planted the seed Because post-trip evaluation of spective; and of making decisions or otherwise student journals and final reflection papers tended acting on these new understandings.
He claims their daily lives had been sorely lacking. Findings from their and discourse. The main goal of transformational study indicate that students experience perspective learning is for learners to develop more valid transformation from their participation in service- meaning perspectives for interpreting experience learning as: For example, like constructive and solution to social problems as linked to exist- developmental models e.
