Ask me what I think - Service Learning and the development of civic skills in pre-service teachers' training

Service Learning (SL) is an approach particularly effective for the in-service teacher training because it allows future teachers. Firstly because it meets the European Commission recommendations about pre-service teachers’ training according to which the dialogue and collaboration between schools and universities are essential to promote effective pre-service teachers’ training (European Commission, 2014). Moreover, SL, promotes in future teachers a reflective attitude, making them discover that facing the real problems that characterise real educational contexts means being able to analyse their practical experience to evaluate theories of education rooted in experience, which are meaningful frameworks for practice (Mortari, 2017). And finally, SL helps pre-service teachers to understand what it means to act in a service-oriented manner, because service the “action” in SL is not simply the result if a “deal” between two parties (the pre-service teacher and the in-service teacher) but is the flourishing of a relationship that involves the whole community in which this experience is set, and this makes the SL a transformative moment not only for the teachers who are directly involved in it but also for the whole environment in which this experience. is set (Boyle‐Baise, 1998, European Commission, 2014). In conclusion SL is an experiential learning that helps to develop the profile of a teacher in which the professional skills are strictly connected to civic skills: for these reasons, University of Verona organizes for students of the Master’s Degree in Primary School Education a Service Learning program, aimed to enrich future teachers profile developing not only their professional skills bit also their civic skills, reading it in the light of the ethics of care. This program, which is currently at its second edition, involves senior students, in-service teachers in different schools and an academic team that assumes the role of supervisor. Future students define: (i) in cooperation with in-service teachers the needs of the contexts, (ii) in cooperation with the academic team the educative goals that they must reach and (iii) in cooperation with in-service teachers and the academic team the project aimed to suit the context’s needs and reach the student’s educative goals. At the end, every student realises a detailed record of every phase of the CSL and a dissertation that critically analyses service actions. This paper presents the first results of a research conducted on forty students involved in the SL program during the academic year 2017/2018. This study starts from a consideration: we have designed this program because we are convinced that a SL experience helps future teachers to develop skills essential for their professional profile (reflective skills, civic skills, teaching skills, etc.) but, starting from their experience, what the subjects involved in the SL experience think to have gained through this experience? To find an answer to this question we developed a study that follows an ecological paradigm, according to the idea that in order to throw light on something that happens in a real context you must ask to those who are involved in that real context (Merriam, 2002; Mortari, 2007). According to its aim, the study is set in a phenomenological framework because it is particularly suitable to explore the meanings that someone gives to his or her experience (Lincoln and Guba 1985; Mortari, 2007). The data are embodied by reflective texts written by the students about their SL experiences. The analysis, which is still ongoing, is conducted through the tool of content analysis because it allows to define and organize the meaning of a text to discover the core elements without losings its undertones (Elo & Kyngas, 2008; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005)