Integrating Service Learning and Multicultural Education in Colleges and Universities

Carolyn R. O'Grady

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135666620
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The focus of this book is on the ways in which service learning and multicultural education can and should be integrated so that each may be strengthened and consequently have greater effect on educational and social conditions. It offers a significant attempt to forge a dialogue among practitioners of service learning and multicultural education. The overriding theme is that service learning without a focused attention to the complexity of racial and cultural differences can reinforce the dominant cultural ideology, but academic work that seeks to deconstruct these norms without providing a community-based touchstone isolates students and schools from the realities of the larger communities of which they are part. Although the chapter authors provide varied perspectives on the benefits and challenges of integrating multicultural education and service learning, they all are committed to a vision of education that synthesizes both action and reflection. None of the authors pretend to have all the answers to what this integration should look like, nor do they believe that today's social problems are easily ameliorated through education. Rather, they share theories, practices, failures, and triumphs in order to further the conversation about the importance of aligning what educators say about the world and how they act in and on it. These authors share the view that multicultural education is truly transformative for students only when it includes a community action component, and likewise, service learning is truly a catalyst for change only when it is done from a multicultural and socially just perspective. It is their hope that the ideas explored in this book will further the work of those who share a commitment to the integration of action and reflection.

1

Integrating Service Learning and Multicultural Education: An Overview

Carolyn O’Grady

Gastavus Adolphas College

I first heard the term multicultural education in 1986 when I signed up for a graduate course in what would become the winding road toward a doctorate in that field. By the time I took this course, my understanding of “culture” had expanded considerably beyond where it had been when I grew up in Idaho in the 1950s. I had lived for several years in New York City, and not long before taking the class, I had returned from more than 15 months of travel outside the United States. By 1986, I had learned through experience that there were a lot of different kinds of people in the world, and that my White, middle-class upbringing was not the “norm” for everyone. I had also begun to realize that some of the attitudes I had toward others whom I perceived as different from myself were based on prejudices I had absorbed growing up or had believed without examination (O’Grady, 1999). From the beginning, the theory and practice of multicultural education helped me make sense of the life experiences I had had, and reflect more critically on how my schooling had educated and mis-educated me about the world.

In my very first multicultural education class, we participated as a group in an antiapartheid rally. This was the first time I had ever been asked to take my learning outside the classroom and apply it in some community-based context. I have forgotten much of the reading we did in that class, but I will never forget the experiential component. I did not realize it at the time, but my participation in the rally bore similarities to more intentional service learning activities.

I first heard the term service learning in 1990 when I became friends with a teacher who was very involved in implementing service learning practices in education. Despite my positive reaction to the more experiential component of my multicultural education class, however, I initially dismissed the concept of service learning. Quite frankly, at the time it struck me as a nice way for well-intentioned White people to feel good about “helping” others. I had a hard time at first distinguishing the concept of service learning from that of volunteerism, and I knew nothing of the relevance service has historically had for many cultural groups. When I came to the college where I now teach, I was challenged by our then service learning director to view service learning as a vehicle for social justice. In collaboration with her, I began to research service learning and to implement it in my own classroom teaching. The results were mixed (O’Grady & Chappell, 1999), but the outcome was that I began to see the ways in which service learning and multicultural education had powerful theories and methods to offer each other.

My own experience in integrating service learning and multicultural education has led me to understand some of the challenges involved, but also how imperative it is for each approach to incorporate aspects of the other. To teach about multicultural issues from a theoretical perspective without incorporating a service learning component only widens the theory-practice split articulated by Gay (1995). However, this integration is problematic without both an understanding of the fundamental theories in each field and an analysis of the significant issues raised by such an integration. Points of convergence, as well as points of tension, are explored in this chapter as well as in those that follow.

EDUCATION AS CONTESTED TERRITORY

Before continuing, it is necessary to pause and remind ourselves of the contested nature of education. Education has always been “contested territory,” with conflicting and divergent interests competing for dominance. The history of public education in the United States is filled with conflicting demands over what should be taught, how, and by whom. Nieto (1996) described schooling as “a dynamic process in which competing interests and values are at work every day in complex and often contradictory ways” (p. 8). A key difference between service learning and multicultural education is that the latter grew out of an explicitly political movement for civil rights and is often accused of having a political agenda. This does not mean, however, that service learning is not political. Too often the term politics is believed to have negative connotations, and discussion of political motives in a movement or perspective is discouraged. Yet, as Morgan (1986) pointed out, the fundamental meaning of politics is the manner in which interests, conflict, and power are used to resolve differences among individuals or groups. Consequently, it is an exercise in tunnel vision to believe that decisions about education are politically neutral. Analyzing the interplay of competing interests that produce conflict among participants in an educational setting, and how power is used by those involved to achieve resolution, provides us with a deeper understanding of the ideology that governs behavior. In reality, all educational approaches can be seen as different avenues to resolving competing interests through the use of power (Morgan, 1986).

This relationship between interests, conflict, and power provides a context for the approach this book advocates of combining multicultural education with an activist component. Thus, while the original impetus for multicultural education emerged from a clearly political perspective (and has been unfairly maligned because of this), much of service learning also grew out of a different, but equally definitive, political ideology about the world. This ideology includes assumptions made by those in the field of service learning about the relationship between the individual and society, the role of democracy, the meaning of justice and compassion in alleviating suffering in the world, and about power, conflict, and group interest.

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

Christine Sleeter (1996) pointed out that one way to view multicultural education is as “a form of resistance to oppressive social relationships” (p. 10). Emerging from the civil rights movements of the 1960s, multicultural educators who focus on social justice as a goal have increasingly emphasized the role that oppression and social power play in perpetuating inequitable social arrangements. I follow Adams, Bell, and Griffin (1997) and use the term oppression rather than discrimination, bias, or prejudice “to emphasize the pervasive nature of social inequality woven throughout social institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness” (p. 4). Oppression is reinforced by the disempowerment of subordinated or targeted groups by members of dominant or privileged groups. Each of us participates in multiple group memberships based on our race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, and so forth, and to that degree, our personal and social power and privilege are relative. Nevertheless, each of us is also a member of a society founded on and perpetuating White male supremacist ideology and, depending on our social identities, some of us have greater access to power and privilege than others. Both the process and the goal of equal participation of all groups in society is the purpose of multicultural education.

Sleeter and Grant’s (1987) review of approaches to multicultural education is helpful in identifying the method used by those who claim to be multicultural educators. Teaching the Culturally Different focuses on the perceived needs of children of color or others who do not fit the standard cultural norm and emphasizes assimilation as a desirable goal. Human Relations emphasizes intergroup dynamics and “getting along” with others while avoiding broader issues of conflict. Often this approach can be identified by language that emphasizes similarities rather than differences. Each of these first two approaches stems from a political perspective based on a unitary view of society (Morgan, 1986). In this view, individuals are united under an umbrella of common interests, conflict is seen as negative and destructive, and the role of power differentials is largely ignored.

The third approach, Single Group Studies, teaches about a specific group’s history and culture and includes such programs as Black studies, women’s studies, and so on, often failing to articulate interconnections among groups. The Multicultural Education approach advocates reform of school processes to meet the interests of a pluralistic society but may overlook issues of conflict caused by structural power and oppression. These last two approaches are based on what Morgan (1986) termed “pluralist political views.” In this perspective, diversity is regarded as central to understanding individual and group interests, conflict is considered potentially positive, and power is regarded as a crucial variable through which conflicts of interest are alleviated or solved.

Although each of these four approaches to multicultural education can offer valuable strategies and perspectives for creating more equitable educational structures, they do not address underlying causes of social inequity. The fifth approach, Social Reconstructionist Multicultural Education, teaches directly about oppression, discrimination, social justice, and how to take action against these inequities. As Banks (1991) noted, “The knowledge that is institutionalized within the schools and the larger society neither enables students to become reflective and critical citizens nor helps them to participate effectively in their society in ways that will make it more democratic and just” (p. 125). Schooling, however, while usually legitimizing the status quo, can also “enlighten and emancipate, working with rather than against…efforts for liberation” (Sleeter, 1991, p. 2). This multicultural approach offers a visionary model for constructive change.

As a more explicit political perspective, it emphasizes conflict as inevitable and constructive, and suggests that more radical changes in social structure are necessary to achieve equity for all. This approach to multicultural education goes beyond a focus on curriculum to examining the societal structures that limit the freedom to learn (Montero-Sieburth, 1988; Sleeter & Grant, 1987). These limits may be especially pronounced for those students who do not fit the dominant “norm” reflected through the curriculum and the school structure, which tends to emphasize middle-class, European-American values. But as Nieto (1996) pointed out, multicultural education is important for all students, not only those who are perceived as “culturally different.” All students need to be able to see the world through a variety of lenses, without cultural blinders, and to be able to critically reflect on and analyze what they are learning and doing.

There is no doubt that education is “contested territory,” with conflicting views about what is appropriate to teach and how. This very conflict about how the world can be interpreted, and by whom, should be grist for the mill in our classrooms, regardless of what students ultimately choose to do with that knowledge. When students can learn to analyze, to critically reflect on, and ultimately—if they choose to—to transform oppressive situations through action, they are engaged in a form of political activism inherent in social reconstructionist multicultural education. “Curriculum within this vein will emphasize reflection as leading to action and change (praxis). Curriculum will tend to critique the structures of oppression and ask why things are the way they are and what can be done” (MonteroSieburth, 1988, p. 9). This approach to education offers the most promise for enabling students and educators to examine oppressive social relations and to identify strategies for creating a more just and equitable world.

However, even multicultural educators who advocate social reconstructionism are often limited by the circumstances in which they teach. Cuts in funding to public education, increasing pressures on schools from politically and socially conservative organizations, and competition for scarce resources among political and cultural groups has made it very challenging for multicultural educators to implement their vision for schools.

A more disturbing challenge has been mounted by teachers and theorists who have adopted multicultural education as a strategy without understanding or embracing the need to examine fundamental issues of social power. As Densmore (1995) described, the reforms associated with multicultural education have been concentrated in the areas of curriculum and instruction with more emphasis given to individual attitudes than to systemic issues of oppression in society. Sleeter (1996) noted that multicultural education in the 1990s has moved far from its radical origins of the 1960s, and in the process, many teachers who currently describe themselves as multicultural educators are, with the best of intentions, doing little more than reproducing social norms that perpetuate oppressive social relations. As a result, multicultural education as a field, while continually fending off attacks from the conservative right, has also become fair game for critiques from the radical left, who see multicultural education as a way to reduce the threat of social conflict caused by racial and cultural tensions (Spring, 1998) and to pacify advocates of change without making any real systemic changes (Sleeter, 1996).

Service learning, when combined with social reconstructionist multicultural education, can potentially serve as the vehicle for creating systemic change. Although research on the value of field experiences has shown mixed results, multicultural field experiences in particular seem to positively influence prospective teachers’ attitudes toward individuals of a different cultural group (Grant & Tate, 1995; Powell, Zehn, & Garcia, 1996). Some of the growing research on service learning has indicated that this kind of community involvement reinforces students’ cognitive understandings of multicultural issues (Giles & Eyler, 1994; Wade, 1995). Service learning can help bridge the gap between multicultural education theory and practical experience (Michalec, 1994).

SERVICE LEARNING

The term service learning was coined in 1969 by members of the Southern Regional Education Board doing work in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who described it as “the accomplishment of tasks that meet genuine human needs in combination with conscious educational growth” (Stanton, Giles, & Cruz, 1999). However, the tradition of community service reaches back to early U.S. history, and people helping and caring for one another has been a part of American tradition and a practice in all cultural communities in the United States (Giles & Eyler, 1994; Kinsley & McPherson, 1995; O’Connell, 1990; Stanton, Giles, & Cruz, 1999). The notion of national service reaches from Roosevelt’s establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 through the Peace Corps and Vista programs begun in the 1960s, to the Youth Conservation Corps of the 1970s. These government-sponsored programs were the forerunners of the service learning programs that began to spread in K-12 schools and higher education in the 1980s (Wade, 1997). Today’s educational philosophy of service learning grows out of this heritage, added by the intellectual work of such educational theorists as John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and David Kolb (Kinsley & McPherson, 1995), with reinforcement from Paolo Freire’s pedagogy of the combination of action and reflection to create change (Galura, Howard, Waterhouse, & Ross, 1995). These educators laid the groundwork for integrating learning experiences into the curriculum.

Many terms have been used to describe the experiential nature of service learning: civic awareness, collaborative learning, community-based education, cooperative education, experiential education, field experiences, internships, public service, volunteerism, youth involvement, and youth service (Kendall & Associates, 1990). However, what moves service learning beyond just volunteerism or just community service is an intentional focus on the academic. In a service learning program, individuals engage in community activities in a context of rigorous academic experience. Service learning allows teachers to employ a variety of teaching strategies that emphasize student-centered,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Integrating Service Learning and Multicultural Education: An Overview
• Part I: Theoretical Frameworks
• Part II: Reports From the Field
• Part III: Integrating Service Learning and Multicultural Education in Higher Education: Promises and Possibilities
• Afterword
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Contributors