An auto ethnographic reflection of service learning: A higher education perspective

Higher education institutions recognize the importance of committing, assimilating, and applying education for sustainable development (ESD) into their curriculum to realize the Sustainable Development Goals. The intention of such a commitment assists in creating a culture of students who are actively engaged. Committed to the notion of teaching and teacher education for social change, in this article, I discuss my conceptualization of service-learning through my experience in higher education. Service-learning has been defined as a mode of “experiential education that integrates meaningful community service into the curriculum” (Nives 2015, 1). My perception is that by adopting service-learning for pre-service commerce teachers, there will be a shift in how social justice issues (Frederick, Cave, and Perencevich 2010) can be infused as a meaningful community service approach within the curriculum. In undertaking such steps, I highlight the nuances of power in these programs in this article. Service-learning is adopted through constructive and cooperative strategies to address the engagement questions that underpin the modules. In the academic and method module, these approaches allow pre-service students to be aware and reflect on their prior encounters and experiences of social justice issues, such as poverty, to mention but one. Drawing on both Dewey and Gwele, this article highlights the lecturer’s experience of assisting students to deliberate service-learning and participate as democratic citizens. In this article, I unpack my notions of service-learning as a subjective experience of the processes and product of service-learning as a didactic approach. This article introduces a platform to re-think and reconnoitre service-learning in higher education through this complex story. The discussion and recommendations of engineering and reengineering the concept, process, and urgency of incorporating service-learning in Higher Education curricula are discussed, and recommendations for future research are made.