- Title
- The role of a service-learning project with young adults for the professional development of educational psychology master’s students : a case study
- Creator
- Damons, Venessa Merle
- Subject
- Educational psychology - Study and teaching (Higher) - South Africa, Young adults - Education - South Africa
- Date
- 2018
- Type
- Doctoral (Thesis)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10210/286389
- Identifier
- uj:30989
- Description
- Ph.D., Abstract: 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...
- Contributor
- Dunbar-Krige, H., Dr.
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Johannesburg
- Full Text
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