Mapping civic engagement: A case study of service-learning in Appalachia

Abstract

This study uses social cartography to map student perceptions of a co-curricular service-learning project in an impoverished rural community. As a complement to narrative discourse, mapping provides an opportunity to visualize not only the spatial nature of the educational experience but also, in this case, the benefits of civic engagement. The authors suggest that short-term immersion programs can provide students, regardless of their previous experiences with service, with opportunities to develop dispositions for active citizenship. Their maps, which envision a heterotopic space in two dimensions, examine the relationship between thought and action, specifically between empathy and apathy, and illustrate how what the students brought to the experience, in terms of their motivations and inclinations toward service-learning, as well as what they took away, in terms of their likelihood to participate in future service, ultimately led to individual growth and transformation.

Keywords

civic engagement higher education mapping service-learning social cartography

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ahmed

(2003) Mapping rural women’s perspectives on nonformal education experiences. In: Beauchamp

(ed.) Comparative Education Reader. New York: Routledge Falmer, 45–76.

Bowen

(2011) Fostering college students’ civic commitment through alternative breaks. Journal for Civic Commitment 16: 2–13.

Foucault

(1986) Of other spaces. Diacritics 16(1): 22–27.

Kahlenberg

(2011) The purposes of higher education. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Available at: http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-purposes-of-higher-education/30258 (accessed 27 August 2014).

Lather

(1996) Postcolonial feminism in an international frame: from mapping the researched to interrogating mapping. In: Paulston

(ed.) Social Cartography: Mapping Ways of Seeing Social and Educational Change. New York: Garland, 357–373.

Mayhew

Engberg

(2011) Promoting the development of civic responsibility: infusing service-learning practices in first-year ‘success’ courses. Journal of College Student Development 52(1): 20–38.

Mehta

(2009) Big stories, small stories: beyond disputatious theory toward ‘multilogue’. In: Cowen

Kazamias

(eds) International Handbook of Comparative Education. Dordrecht: Springer, 1189–1208.

Nicholson-Goodman

(1996) A ludic approach to mapping environmental education discourse. In: Paulston

(ed.) Social Cartography: Mapping Ways of Seeing Social and Educational Change. New York: Garland, pp. 307–326.

Nicholson-Goodman

(2012) Mapping the doctoral journey via autobiographical consciousness: locating self and finding voice in the academy. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 28(1): 242–259.

10.

Nicholson-Goodman

Garman

(2007) Mapping practitioner perceptions of ‘It’s research based’: scientific discourse, speech acts and the use and abuse of research. International Journal of Leadership in Education 10(3): 283–299.

11.

Paulston

(1996) Preface: four principals for a non-innocent social cartography. In: Paulston

(ed.) Social Cartography: Mapping Ways of Seeing Social and Educational Change. New York: Garland, pp. xv–xxiv.

12.

Paulston

(1999) Mapping comparative education after postmodernity. Comparative Education Review 43(4): 438–463.

13.

Paulston

(2000) Imagining comparative education: past, present, future. Compare 30(3): 353–367.

14.

Paulston

Liebman

(1994) An invitation to postmodern social cartography. Comparative Education Review 38(2): 215–232.

15.

Rhoads

Neururer

(1998) Alternative spring break: learning through community service. NASPA Journal 35(2): 100–118.

16.

Ruitenberg

(2007) Here be dragons: exploring cartography in educational theory and research. Complicity 4(1): 7–24.

17.

Stanton

Giles

Jr Cruz

(1999) Service-Learning: A Movement’s Pioneers Reflect on Its Origins, Practice, and Future. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

18.

Stromquist

(1996) Mapping gendered spaces in third world educational interventions. In: Paulston

(ed.) Social Cartography Mapping Ways of Seeing Social and Educational Change. New York: Garland, 223–247.

19.

Tello

Mainardes

(2012) The epistemological position of researchers in education policy: theoretical debates about the neo-Marxist, pluralist and post-structuralism perspectives. Education Policy Analysis Archives 20(9): 1–31.

20.

Watson

(1998) Review of mapping multiple perspectives and social cartography: mapping ways of seeing social and educational change. Comparative Education 34(1): 107–108.

21.

Welch

(2009) Moving from service-learning to civic engagement. In: Jacoby

and Associates (eds) Civic Engagement in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 174–194.