Changing Places: Theorizing Space and Power Dynamics in Service-Learning

Why ‘Where’ Matters: Exploring the Role of Space in Service-Learning

“…Because the tax site communities are seen as community partners in their own right, this research takes up Clark & Young's (2005) and Siemers, Harrison, Clayton, & Stanley's (2015) call to attend to the spatial effects of service-learning. It finds that the 'where' of service-learning matters as deeply as the 'what' given that service placements -particularly in hometowns or college communitiescause students to interact in the spaces served in new ways.…”

“…With the exception of Clark and Young's (2005) and Siemers, Harrison, Clayton, & Stanley's (2015) foregrounding of the places where service occurs, the notion of community has generally concerned interactions between individuals. The significance of the community to service-learning pedagogy has primarily focused on the people within communities rather than the educative value of places in their own right.…”

“…This research takes up Clark and Young's (2005) and Siemers et al's (2015) call to employ the spatial in theorizing about servicelearning efforts and attends to critical geography's desire for an education steeped in place and space in order to understand social processes and inequities. For example, a service-learning project in a rural school might consider not just the experiences of the students in the school but also how the very location of the school and geography of the community impact the educational clime or access to medical care.…”

“…Yet because these maps have very real economic and political consequences, servicelearning efforts concerned with developing an engaged citizenry must remain attentive to GibsonGraham's (2003) "ethics of the local" by attending to the particularities of the communities served. While Clark and Young (2005) call attention to the way that space/place shapes service-learning experiences and the communities in which those experiences occur, there is still a need for exploring the way that particular communities prompt particular learning experiences. Could service-learning experiences attending to space/place happen anywhere, or do community sites possess particular contexts that make possible particular mappings and re-mappings on the part of students engaging in service-learning?…”

“…Beyond Clark and Young's (2005) and Siemers et al's (2015) call for place to be studied in service-learning, there have been limited efforts to engage space/place in the theorization of servicelearning. In one example, Curry, Heffner, and Warners (2002) call for service-learning pedagogy to account for place in addition to people by noting that the campus community and the larger college town are necessarily entwined.…”