We started researching in this area with a small scale study on one of our international SL subjects which demonstrated that international service-learning could enhance students’ intercultural effectiveness development, as expected. However, it did not achieve significant increase of their global civic responsibility and global civic engagement scores. When we received the initial results from the study, it was quite an unpleasant experience to see the strikingly negative results on global engagement, even though the rest of the results were quite encouraging. It was particularly disappointing because our teaching team had put a lot of efforts into designing the project for a foreign country, preparing the students for the project meticulously, overcoming a lot of logistical and technical challenges and implementing the project successfully. We were achieving good learning outcomes relevant to service-learning overall, and very encouraging feedback from our overseas partners. Upon reflection, we realised that it did serve as a good reminder of the necessity to not take things for granted, and of continuous monitoring and evaluation. Besides, wide variations in students’ learning gains were observed across different international service-learning projects.
Subsequently, in 2016, we successfully secured a grant to carry out a larger scale follow-up, two-year, action research study. The study involved five service-learning subjects covering nine offshore projects from a broad spectrum of disciplines. The subjects were taught by the same subject teachers and conducted at the same service sites over the two years, to ensure that the consecutive cohorts are comparable as much as possible. The nature of the service projects varied among the subjects, ranging from English teaching, public health promotion, to installation of small-scale energy systems using solar panels. Those projects served a variety of different types of communities, ranging from primary school village children, to households in deprived urban areas, and rural village dwellers. The offshore service sites were in Cambodia, Vietnam, Rwanda, and Mainland China. Data were collected in two cycles, in the 2016/17 and 2017/18 academic years. with enrolments of 319 and 312, respectively. The study made use of quantitative and qualitative methods.
The quantitative and qualitative results from the first cycle of studies on the 2016/17 cohort were analysed and disseminated to all members of the research team. We wanted to test the commonly-held belief that international service-learning facilitates students’ global citizenship development. The data from the first cohort validates only partially that belief. There was indeed a significant increase in the students’ overall Global Citizenship Scale score. But the increase was mainly attributable to the large increase in the Global Competence sub-scale score. There were no significant increases in the Social Responsibility and Global Civic Engagement sub-scales. We were somewhat surprised to learn from the qualitative interviews with students that many did not know what global citizenship was and very few of them reported improvements in this aspect. Upon closer inspection, however, this phenomenon was not that surprising since the students were not taught explicitly those concepts in their classes. Results from the first cohort confirmed the difficulty in changing students’ attitudes and beliefs in a short period of time - teaching/learning a skill (competency) is much easier than changing a deep-seated attitude (responsibility and engagement).
Furthermore, although global citizenship is deemed an important goal of international service-learning, many teachers participating in the study admitted that they had not explicitly included global citizenship in the intended learning outcomes or the syllabus of their subjects. They also made little conscious effort to actually foster its development through the international service-learning experience. That could be due to the common but implicit belief that an immersive international experience will automatically engender much of the desired outcomes. In addition, it is believed that some items on the measurement of the global civic engagement dimension might not be suitable for Hong Kong. Civic engagement may take many different forms in different communities. The tools were believed to have been developed in an American context. It may need some adjustments for the Asian/Hong Kong context. Further investigation is necessary.
The results from the first cohort were discussed extensively in our community. Practices, experiences, problems and observations in the first round were shared among the subject teachers. Possible ways to improve students’ learning in the areas where the expected results were not achieved in the next round were proposed. One critical finding was that while all teachers favoured the nurturing of global citizenship and intercultural effectiveness through ISL, these were generally not consciously and explicitly incorporated in their teaching practice. There was a lack of awareness or understanding of civic learning outcomes, global citizenship and intercultural effectiveness as important goals of international service-learning and how these can be achieved. In some cases. there was also only limited understanding of the history and culture of the served community, and little opportunity to interact closely with local people of the served community.
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