Peer Facilitators as Border Crossers in Community Service Learning

Abstract

Community service learning offers students the opportunity to cross socially constructed and epistemological borders of power and privilege, allowing them to come into contact with groups of people who are different from themselves and to learn in different ways. Peer facilitators, undergraduate student instructional leaders who guide others through these encounters, often experience especially powerful border crossing experiences, both by virtue of their service site supervision and their seminar leadership roles. Using their own writings and interviews, we explore some of these peer facilitators' border crossing experiences in a community service learning course at a large midwestern research university. We focus on how peer facilitators encounter various issues as they guide discussion of the experiences students have at community service sites in reflective seminars. The findings suggest that such border crossing experiences can encourage peer facilitators to reflect on their own social group identity and position within the larger social structures of privilege and oppression, and on their own learning styles and engagement in the higher educational environment.

Reflections as near‐peer facilitators of an inquiry project for undergraduate anatomy: Successes and challenges from a term of trial‐and‐error

“…We grew in our roles as facilitators through the process of trial and error, which appears to be common of the student facilitator experience (Micari et al, ; Johnson and Loui, ; Peluso and Hafler, ). As Chesler et al () demonstrated, a formalized training and support program for peer facilitators is both feasible and valuable. Combining a series of pre‐semester retreats and in‐semester meetings, Chesler et al () implemented a wide range of skill development activities aimed at developing students' capacities and confidence as facilitators.…”

“…As Chesler et al () demonstrated, a formalized training and support program for peer facilitators is both feasible and valuable. Combining a series of pre‐semester retreats and in‐semester meetings, Chesler et al () implemented a wide range of skill development activities aimed at developing students' capacities and confidence as facilitators. Based on our own experiences, we recommend that formalized training programs for near‐peer facilitators be developed, focusing on the acquisition of skills related to the provision of effective guidance, the encouragement and stimulation of intrinsic motivation, and the fostering of creativity in learning.…”

Discourses of volunteer/service work and their discontents: Border crossing, construction of hierarchy, and paying dues

“…Some researchers critique the discourses of charity and leisure as reproducing relations of power between servers and the served and accept the discourses of citizenship and border crossing as something positive (Chesler et al, 2006; Rhoads and Neururer, 1998; Taylor, 2002). This article adds a critical reevaluation of these latter two discourses and suggests that all four discourses work to re-create the hierarchy between those who serve and the served.…”

Challenging pedagogy: an exploratory study of the work of community educators who seek to challenge oppressive relations

“…Lynn's excerpt also reveals that within her paid position, she saw a number of possibilities around using her academic education to work for social change in the community. The literature on community service learning highlights the opportunities for enriched practice that can emerge when academia and work in local organizations are partnered (Chesler et al, 2006;Rosner-Salazar, 2003;Lounsbury & Pollack, 2001;Hondagneu-Sotelo & Raskoff, 1994). This kind of learning has often been seen as a site of possibilities for college and university students to generate new understandings through crossing "pedagogical and epistemological borders between campus and community, between academic text and community experience, as sites and ways of learning" (Chesler et al, 2006:343).…”