Chapter 20: Mentoring Through Service Learning

This chapter explores the potential of service learning pedagogy as a mentoring modality, illustrated through the experiences of graduate student participants in a short-term study abroad program in Honduras. The student experiences are analyzed using Baxter Magolda’s (2001) self-authorship theory and the service learning course construction is described using Strange and Banning’s (2001) environment model and Parks’s (2000) concept of a mentoring environment. The goal of mentoring is described as transformational, borrowing from Kegan’s (1994) idea that development is holistic and that contemporary adult roles are complex and daunting, requiring structural complexity (as opposed to simply advanced skills) on the part of adults inhabiting those roles.

The chapter also includes the “Service Learning Mentoring Assessment,” a 37-item tool designed to measure the mentoring strength of service-learning programs. The assessment can be used as both a planning tool and a mechanism for conducting formative evaluations of service learning programs.