Abstract
Ph.D.
Service-learning is widely used in professional graduate programmes. However, most service-learning research has focused on undergraduate university students and secondary school students. Little has been written about the role of service-learning components in the curriculum of an Educational Psychology master’s programme. Thus, the main research question that guided this inquiry was: What is the role of a service-learning project with young adults in the professional development of Educational Psychology master’s students? To achieve the aim of the study, a number of objectives were formulated. The first was to determine/capture what the Educational Psychology master’s students’ reflections and artefacts revealed about the contribution of a service-learning project to their knowledge of the young adult. The second objective was to explore and describe what and how the service-learning project contributes to Educational Psychology students’ professional development. I argued that the unique nature of a service-learning project in an educational excursion for first year teacher-students or young adults could serve as a vehicle for the accomplishment of the professional development of Educational Psychology master’s students. Drawing on literature in the fields of psychology and community psychology, I further argued that the traditional training provided in Educational Psychology has limitations pertaining to its status as pedagogy for bringing change in the practice of educational psychologists and promoting a more transformative approach to their role in society which a service-learning approach helps to achieve. Ultimately, I argued for the integration of service-learning into a course curriculum because of its link to the learning objectives set in the curriculum. In the resulting integrative course, service and learning are interrelated.
In this study, a qualitative case study research design was employed as an enquiry strategy. The focus was on specific people (Educational Psychology master’s students) who were in a specific place (Achterbergh) and were engaged in a specific activity (service learning) at a specific time (April 2013). All these specificities constituted the boundaries of the case. The study was naturalistic as it occurred in a real-world setting, rather than a laboratory. The site of learning was situated in a small town in South Africa...