Meeting important educational goals for chemistry through service-learning

Abstract

This paper describes a service-learning course in Chemistry Honours at Rhodes University in South Africa. Students visit two schools in different settings, where they present a lecture-demonstration, entitled ‘A Pollutant's Tale’, and two hands-on experiments to school learners. The students are assessed on their learnings as seen through their own reflections on the activities in reflective journals. The reflections from 27 students over four years of the course were analysed to investigate to what extent the educational goals of the course were being met. Six broad themes emerged from student reflections: (1) social awareness; (2) civic responsibility; (3) challenging beliefs; (4) enhanced understanding of science communication and demonstration skills; (5) personal growth; and, (6) evaluating the service-learning experience. In our discussion of these themes, we suggest that through service-learning, students have learnt to do things differently in Chemistry: they have learnt about society beyond the laboratory and beyond their previous life-experiences. Importantly, the students have undergone personal development and picked up critical skills which they will need when traversing life and its challenges – such as, working with and learning from diverse groups of people, teamwork and learning to cope in stressful situations. The paper will be of particular interest to those who are involved in chemistry teaching in both schools and higher education institutions, as well as those interested in service-learning as a pedagogical tool, community and civic engagement and the development of transferable skills in chemistry students.