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'I Can Never Turn My Back On That': Liminality And The Impact Of Class On Service0learning Experience, Sue Ellen Henry

Sue Ellen Henry

Service-learning is often framed as a pedagogical perspective and instructional tool that can help “privileged” students gain greater insight into the life experience and perspectives of “others,” namely those “served” in the service-learning arrangement. Central to this positive conception of service-learning is a binary between “privileged server” and “underprivileged recipient” or an “us/them” dichotomy. Recently, this dichotomy has been questioned by some researchers as problematic to a transformative understanding of service-learning (Hourigan 1998; Flower 2002; Novek 2000).

Central to the critique of the binary of “server/served” is its overly simplistic approach to understanding those involved in the service-learning relationship. Rather …