Students’ reflection on their service-learning experience as a way of fostering critical thinking and as a peace building initiative

Abstract

A total of 38 students from my cultural studies research class participated in service-learning (SL) activities as one of the requirements of the course. They were divided into six groups, and each group worked with a group of approximately 15 to 30 young Indonesian elementary school children to do SL activities. They helped the children do their schoolwork, taught them English, played games and generally interacted with them. Students were also expected to present their reflections, starting from the initial encounter with the children and during the SL activities, at the end of the semester. The big sociocultural gap between the students and the children made students more aware of their lifestyles. These experiences apparently enhanced the students’ critical thinking towards others who are different. They also learned to share with and pay respect to one-another from their encounters with the children. Such awareness should be used as a way of enhancing students’ personal development and growth. It is also a way of building a more peaceful society, as they endeavour to understand others instead of judging them.

Methodologies for Fostering Critical Thinking Skills from University Students’ Points of View

“…The results revealed that students consider that critical thinking can be better developed with six different methodologies: Debates, PBL, practices in real contexts, doing research, cooperative learning, and case studies. These results are partially consistent with previous literature on the topic that, in order to develop critical thinking, highlighted the effectiveness of debates [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], project/problem-based learning [13,20,21] practices in real contexts [24,25,26], doing research [27], cooperative learning [13], and case studies [48]. Moreover, these results may be related to the knowledge that students perceive about these methodologies.…”

“…Amongst others, there is evidence of the effectiveness of debates or lecture discussions in fostering critical thinking [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. In addition, other studies analyze the advantages of applying the following methodologies: Project-based learning [13,20,21], simulations and practices in real contexts [22,23], service learning, in which students are exposed to authentic or situated problems [24][25][26], doing research [27], problem-based learning [28][29][30][31][32], cooperative learning [13,33], case studies or scenarios [34,35], feedback and assessment [13,36], roleplaying [13], reading [37], analyzing and synthesis of resources [38], writing assignments, essays or reports [18,39,40], conceptual and argument maps [31,41], oral presentations [18], flipped classroom [42], and master classes/storytelling [18].…”

Mixed methods research in service-learning: an integrative systematic review

“…Nonetheless, there is a broad consensus (Butin 2010;Puig 2009; Speck and Hoppe 2004) on the need to identify S-L methodology as an educational methodology that challenges traditional pedagogical discourses; a methodology that expands the scope of teaching activity beyond the classroom (Wang et al 2020), generates spaces for the development of social engagement (Marco-Gardoqui et al 2020) and ethical behaviours (Lee et al 2020), promotes autonomy, self-efficacy (Gerholz 2017), engagement (Folgueiras et al 2018) and critical thinking (Kuntjara 2019), generates satisfaction with the learning achieved (Lorenzo-Moledo et al 2021), and facilitates meaningful learning (Celio et al 2011). This methodology "is based on the idea that mutual assistance is a better mechanism for personal, economic, and social progress than competition and the obsessive pursuit of success" (Puig 2009: 10).…”

Aprendizaje-Servicio: un reto socioeducativo en educación musical universitaria - [Service-Learning: a socio-educational challenge in Higher Music Education]

“…Esta metodología da respuesta al Estatuto del Estudiante Universitario español, aprobado por Real Decreto 1791/2010, del 30 de diciembre, con la pretensión de combinar el aprendizaje académico con la realización de servicios a la comunidad, para mejorar la calidad educativa y la inclusión social. Guiados por una continua reflexión crítica (Kuntjara, 2019), los estudiantes desarrollan competencias curriculares y transversales (Mella-Núñez et al, 2015) a la vez que obtienen mejor rendimiento académico al estar más motivados e involucrados en su propio aprendizaje. No obstante, cabe destacar la complejidad del diseño e implementación de esta metodología, que se presenta como un reto, porque requiere un gran esfuerzo organizativo, contactos continuos con otras instituciones y adaptaciones curriculares (Harrop-Allin, 2017).…”