Connecting mind, heart, culture and activity in an undergraduate service-learning course

ABSTRACT

This manuscript reports on an educational project that was designed to closely link educational theory and practice – or mind, heart, culture, and activity – in a community-engagement course on sociocultural learning theory and ethnographic research. We identify patterned ways in how students connected theory and practice as revealed through an analysis of field notes written across three quarters of instruction about their experiences in an after-school program at an urban elementary school. We draw implications for how undergraduate education can better foster students’ ability to engage with theory in support of transformative educational practice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. (All names are pseudonyms. We made minor edits to students’ field notes to anonymize them and clarify meaning (indicated via parentheses), and for brevity (indicated via ellipses). We did not correct spelling or grammar. In class, we de-emphasized the importance of spelling and grammar, encouraging students to write without their editorial eye, which can interfere with the freshness and vividness of the notes.

2. Students were trained to write “Observer Comments” or “O.C.s” as reflections on their own notes.

3. Indeed, one student (Jacinta) reflected explicitly on this when she told us in a field note that she had been told by teacher that her academic writing was “too expressive;” she was happy to be in a class where she could “allow her thoughts and feelings to be expressed on paper, not hiding them” - an idea that she connected to Kleinsasser’s notion of writing to unlearn.

4. The three authors worked collaboratively and synergistically on all aspects of the analysis and write-up of this work, including working through multiple rounds of revision on a shared google doc. The first author was a research assistant at the after-school program and participated in guiding the undergraduates in the field. The second author was a student in one quarter of this class, then moved on to the research team. The third author was the instructor for the class and leader of the research team. Authorship is presented in alphabetical order.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the University-Community Links Program, UC Berkeley .