TPC Journal V8, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

148 The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 2 approaches are needed. The role of social justice advocacy has been conceptualized as central for counselors (Chang, Crethar, & Ratts, 2010; Lewis, Lewis, Daniels, & D’Andrea, 1998), yet few studies have demonstrated how to prepare students for this role. Service Learning: A Pedagogy for Counselor Education Defining Service Learning Teaching that is active, experiential, and addresses real-world problems is needed to meet the call to prepare students as social justice advocates in the context of rapidly changing and diversifying demographics (Bemak, Chung, Talleyrand, Jones, & Daquin, 2011; Constantine et al., 2007; Manis, 2012). As an experiential teaching strategy that combines academic content learned in the classroom with activities in the community that address “human and community needs” (Jacoby, 2015, p. 6), service learning provides a potential avenue for more adequately preparing counseling students for work in today’s pluralistic society. Although similar to experiential learning, service learning has a set of characteristics that make it distinct from internships and volunteerism (Furco, 2002). With an emphasis on collaboration with community partners (CPs) who represent historically marginalized communities, all participants enter the service-learning experience as learners and as contributors. Community members and students benefit from a collaborative learning partnership through which a solution to a community- articulated problem is developed (Warter & Grossman, 2002). Service learning can take two forms: placement-based and project-based. Placement-based service learning usually involves a requirement for students to spend a set number of hours at a community organization where a student completes agreed-upon tasks (Parker-Gwin & Mabry, 1998). In project- based service learning, small student groups work with CP organizations on specific projects that help to meet a need or solve a community-articulated problem (Hugg & Wurdinger, 2007). Service Learning in Counselor Education A growing number of counselor educators have called for the use of service learning within counselor education to provide students with an avenue for understanding complex systemic social inequities (Bemak & Chung, 2011; Bemak et al., 2011; Constantine et al., 2007; Manis, 2012). Additionally, the use of service learning within counselor education has been the focus of a limited number of studies. A qualitative study by Jett and Delgado-Romero (2009) focused on the impact of using service learning with pre-practicum counseling students. Results showed that service learning “was perceived to facilitate student counselors’ professional development” (p. 116) through promoting a deeper understanding of counselors’ roles and contexts. Exposure to counseling environments promoted student counselors’ understanding of what counseling is, as opposed to what they imagined it to be (Jett & Delgado-Romero, 2009). Service learning also has been found to increase multicultural competencies in counseling students. In utilizing service learning in a multicultural counseling class, Burnett, Hamel, and Long (2004) found that it provided “an opportunity to build community learning and cultural sensitivity” (p. 190). They found that service learning had merit in multicultural counseling competency training and in reducing a “missionary ideology” (p. 191) in students. These results suggest that service learning can be a useful strategy for helping students understand how to advocate with and on behalf of marginalized communities. In addition, service learning may give students the opportunity to practice advocacy skills in real-world contexts.