The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning

by Randy Stoecker (Editor), Elizabeth A. Tryon (Editor)

The Unheard Voices( Community Organizations and Service Learning) <> Paperback <> RandyStoecker <> TempleUniversityPress

Genres: Social Justice, Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2009

Reviews

[Cherice Bock · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was some really important stuff in this book regarding the way that community partners feel about and are impacted by service-learning projects. It's important for professors thinking about assigning a service-learning component of their course to take into account whether or not this is really beneficial to community partners, how much time and effort is required of agency staff, and communicating clearly with the student and the organization so that everyone understands the learning goals and the benefits to the agency. That said, some portions of the book were overly lengthy and there didn't need to be a whole chapter, or they went into detail on things that were self-explanatory while only briefly touching on the more complicated or difficult issues. They addressed the problem of power dynamics and privilege, which was good, but they didn't say a lot about how teachers can ensure that their students have the requisite cultural competency to go into settings that are different from their backgrounds in a way that is respectful. Most of this book could probably have been written as a journal article, but I did like that the authors had students involved in the project, and the students got to write chapters, and there were even some chapters written by community partners. The idea was that they were sharing the publishing credit broadly and making sure that the "unheard voices" are being heard. This is great in theory, but then it means having to read a whole book to get the info for one article. That said, you could probably get most of the info you needed by reading the first chapter, skimming through to see which other chapters you're unfamiliar with, and then reading the recommendations in the last chapter and epilogue.

[Eugenia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book asks difficult questions about service-learning, some of which are unanswerable. There's no good way to reconcile the academic calendar of universities with the K-12 calendar, and still less with the 12-month, never-ending calendar of real life. So if our university semester ends in late April, but a K-12 school has its big science fair or Shakespeare festival in May, undergraduates wind up abandoning the schools (and children who, in many cases, have become attached to them) just when they are needed most. At the same time, undergraduates have responsibilities on campus and at home as well as at the service-learning site, and financial constraints that make it hard for them to stay around after the end of a semester. Similarly, faculty who are budgeted for research and instruction, but not for service and outreach (especially at R1 institutions), find it difficult to commit time that would normally be dedicated to research or to supervising dissertation students to service, when such service will not be weighted in tenure, promotion, and awards decisions. Faculty also run into financial constraints: many are indebted from graduate school and can't take the financial hit of teaching a May/summer class for free when they could be teaching one for pay.

[sdw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This clearly written and well-organized book provides the community-organization perspective on service learning. The book discusses the pitfalls of poorly planned service learning and offers a series of best practices to increase the efficacy of institutions' and professors' relationships with community organizations. If you teach service learning or community-based learning classes or you might in the future, I highly recommend reading Stoecker's book first.

[Kara Poe Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book from the point of view of the community partners. Why is service-learning valuable to them? What is at stake for the community organizations and agencies who partner with students?