Service-Learning and Civic Engagement: Environmental Awareness in Hawai‘i

Abstract

While voter turnout is often seen as one definitive aspect of civic engagement, this paper argues that there are more nuanced ways to reflect on the impact of service-learning experiences on students’ environmental awareness and environmentally responsible behavior changes. Using course evaluation qualitative comments in environmental politics-themed courses that have used service-learning as a pedagogical tool for the past 8 years, this paper argues that environmental awareness and its subsequent application in activism reflect civic engagement through changes in environmental behavior. Service-learning enables students to make connections between the course material and real-world environmental issues, showing them how various communities are attempting to solve certain environmental problems. The focus on problem-solving skills in this particular domain enables students to see themselves as agents of change, though the long-term effects of these changes are difficult to ascertain. The Hawaiʻi context is particularly important due to the plethora of environmental problems we face, and the additional fact that we live both in somewhat of a closed and geographically isolated system as well as being susceptible to a variety of outside systemic influences and forces. If we are not enabling the next generation of environmental problem solvers through higher education, our “sea of islands” as aptly termed by scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa, has a lot to lose.

Keywords:

• Civic engagement
• environmentally responsible behavior
• service-learning

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monique Mironesco

Dr. Monique Mironesco is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu. She has been teaching there since 2004. Her research interests include the politics of the food system, as they relate both to gender and sustainability, though not always at the same time. She teaches a wide variety of courses in the Political Science program, focusing on distance education offerings. She started the first online Political Science program in Hawai‘i in 2008 in order to provide access to a Social Sciences Bachelor’s degree with a concentration in Political Science to neighbor island students.