R.W. Hildreth
p. 19
Appendix A: Research Methods
It’s hard because in some way I think the skills that come out of a situation
like this are just difficult to define. Not even to define, but they’re
difficult to see because it’s not like one day I learned this specifically and
now I can do that specifically. It’s more through the 12 weeks, I learned
tiny little idiosyncrasies of how to work with these kids and now I feel
much more competent, but there wasn’t like a drastic turning point.
Isaac, Democracy and Education Student
This quote captures one of the important realities about the learning that occurs in
experientially based civic or political education efforts. Much of the learning that comes
from working with community members is difficult to name because it is situational,
emergent, and co-creative (for a discussion of this form of learning, see Wenger 1998).
Yet, it is this subtle and often messy work on “real” issues with community members that
students find exciting and meaningful. This ambiguity presents real difficulties to
researchers who seek to assess and measure academic and political engagement outcomes.
Thankfully, there have been important gains in the research on civic engagement and
service-learning over the past ten years documenting what students learn (for a review,
see Billig, 2000). Research has shown that service-learning, when properly implemented,
enhances academic learning and may foster political and civic engagement (e.g. Markus
et al 1993; Giles and Eyler 1997; Waterman 1997; Hepburn 2000; see also Niemi and
Junn 1998). Typically, this research tends to categorize learning into knowledge,
attitudes, skills, and dispositions (Patrick 2000). While these are important findings for
both research and practice (they offer proof to skeptical colleagues that these pedagogies
are academically rigorous), I always have the sense that this research misses something; it
misses the subtlety and richness of experience, it misses the how of learning. This study
Convention