Abstract
This study was designed to investigate pre-service teacher education students’ engagement in community service learning at a South African higher education institution. The study draws on literature in the fields of teacher education and community service learning and focuses on a poststructuralist framework for teacher education for the promotion of caring and social justice. The theoretical framework of sociocultural theory provided a broad platform from which to engage within the study. The investigation into students’ engagement with community service learning was conceptualised as a critical discourse analysis (CDA) study using the framework provided by Norman Fairclough. Concomitant with procedures for CDA, the study also made use of content analysis and a hybrid form of ethnomethodological analysis (EA). The integrated outcomes of the CDA and the EA enabled the discernment of students’ processes of “being” (according to the CDA frame of Fairclough) and how they “positioned” themselves in this process (according to the ethnomethodological frame). This in turn enabled the discernment of the realities students’ drew on in their meaning-making and how they revealed their search for position in engaging with community service learning...
D.Ed. (Higher Education)