Structured+for+success

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**Structured for success: Autoethnographic reflections on interdisciplinary service-learning ** Nancy Van Styvendale, Assistant Professor, University of Saskatchewan [n.vanstyvendale@usask.ca]


 * Keywords:** Autoethnographic research, interdisciplinary service-learning, institutional structures


 * Track:** Organizational change and sustainability


 * Format:** Poster presentation

This paper draws on the experiences of a faculty member and a staff coordinator in the development and delivery of a co-curricular, immersive, locally-based alternative break program and the course created to expand on the experiences and concepts of that program. Employing a retrospective autoethnographic approach, which encourages a rigorous examination of the ideological assumptions that inform service-learning practice (Tilley-Lubbs, 2009), the authors address the question, “How do institutional structures,specifically administrative and disciplinary divisions and training,shape the development and delivery of interdisciplinary service-learning?”
 * Summary**

Phaedra, the community service-learning coordinator, and Nancy, the course instructor, have had very different experiences in approaching the structure of both the program and course as well as the interdisciplinarity of each. We thus use the methodology of research through reflection (Bowl, Cooke, & Hockings, 2008; Holt, 2003; Ortlip, 2008; Whitney & Clayton, 2010), turning the reflection skills we teach our students back on ourselves. We conclude that the administrative and disciplinary structures of the university influence how service-learning, as a “cross-disciplinary” approach (Deans, 1997), must either mould itself to the assumptions of individual disciplines or struggle for institutional validity. In instances where service-learning is not discipline specific, the language of interdisciplinarity provides a theoretical framework to describe how service-learning can address themes and practices, such as community involvement, that require a holistic analysis. Interdisciplinary service-learning has the potential to enhance knowledge production and practitioner pedagogy by connecting diverse disciplinary knowledges.

Interdisciplinary service-learning is a growing trend. An exploration of the import and impact of institutional structures on both curricular and co-curricular interdisciplinary service-learning may assist staff and faculty in shifting structures, if they have the power to do so, or working within extant structures. By maintaining program and course focus on an issue, challenge, or success that can be best addressed through interdisciplinarity, and by utilizing the strengths of disciplines which may otherwise seem to challenge the import of interdisciplinary service-learning, we believe that interdisciplinary service-learning can build the solid foundations needed to sustain itself on what may otherwise have remained the shaky ground of siloed institutional structures.

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