Journal of Experiential Education

Background: Benefits of community-based learning for students in higher education are well documented. Comparatively less is known about the community partner experience. Purpose: The community partner perspective is explored to (a) confirm and expand recent findings regarding community partners’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of working with colleges and universities and (b) present community partners’ views on how faculty can help improve community–university collaborations. Methodology/Approach: Dual-rater axial and open coding qualitative analysis methods were used to identify key themes in community partners’ responses in an on-line survey. Participants (n = 201) represented community partners from a broad range of fields, regions, and partnership types (e.g., volunteer, internship, service-learning). Findings/Conclusions: Although community partners identify a number of benefits to their collaborations with academic institutions, they also encounter critical challenges (e.g., faculty engagement, communication, student preparation). Partner recommendations include additional faculty attention to student knowledge of content, skills, and professionalism, as well as increased faculty engagement in all aspects of the collaboration. Implications: From a community perspective, faculty have an important role to play in facilitating true community–university partnerships that are equitable, reciprocal, and mutually beneficial.

Background: Health care today is presented with a complex set of circumstances requiring exploration of new and varied teaching methodologies to produce requisite student reasoning and prepare them for professional practice. Health care practitioners require high-level clinical reasoning skills to practice, skills traditionally achieved through clinical experiences. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of a community service learning clinical experience on the clinical reasoning skills of pre-licensure nursing students. Methodology/Approach: A sample of junior-level nursing students was recruited and given the Health Science Reasoning Test pre-test. Participants then completed a community service learning clinical experience, after which they took a post-test and completed a reflective journal entry. Findings/Conclusions: Quantitative data analysis was inconclusive due to limitations. Qualitative data analysis suggested that clinical reasoning skills were affected and identified major themes (communication, holistic care, and knowledge and skills). Implications: Community service learning clinical experiences have the potential to enhance clinical reasoning skills and should be further evaluated for inclusion in today’s nursing programs.

Background: Higher education policy increasingly conceptualizes industry-linked, service, and place-based forms of education in terms of experiential education. Although potentially promising, this turn toward experience risks instrumentalizing and marketizing experience, which is exacerbated by individualized theories of experiential learning. Purpose: Some scholars have therefore called for more sociological accounts of experiential learning, inviting deeper consideration of how individual experience is connected to social, cultural, or environmental factors. Methodology/Approach: This article responds to that call by explicating the praxis of Gestalt therapy, often associated with the individualistic human potential movement, but which nevertheless offers a framework for reconceptualizing theory and pedagogy of experiential education in more sociological terms. A brief history of Gestalt therapy foregrounding its sociological and experiential basis is followed by explanation of the three pillars of Gestalt therapy (commitment to dialogue, phenomenology, and field theory). Findings/Conclusions: This framework is shown to support a more sociologically oriented theory and praxis of experiential education that also integrates divergent understandings of experience. Implications: Given the turn toward experience in higher education and contemporary flourishing of cooperative social processes in general, defining experiential education more explicitly in terms of Gestalt praxis promises a timely enhancement of both, in the service of socially responsible objectives.

Background: Employers consider strong leadership skills among highly desirable qualities for new hires. To meet the needs of today’s complex workforce, colleges and universities have increased opportunities for experiential learning for students. However, it is not known how students make meaning of these experiences in context with their personal backgrounds and experiences. Purpose: This study examines how women and men in college make meaning of leadership and leaders through experiential community-based mentoring participation. Methodology/Approach: A two-step qualitative content analysis of reflective journals, with a sample of 20 students utilizing the constant comparative method, is used to generate overarching themes. A second qualitative analysis compares how men and women understand leadership differently. Findings/Conclusions: Findings reveal that, despite a shift in the leadership literature away from hierarchical or trait models toward transformational, relational models that are typically more inclusive of women, our participants still made meaning of leadership and leaders in ways that were more closely aligned with antiquated understandings of leadership. Implications: Recommendations including use of experiential learning as a tool to intentionally increase leadership development and efficacy for women and men in college are discussed.

Background: The 4-week-long College Orientation Workshop (COW) is an experiential education program that combines physical and mental challenges with classroom instruction to promote self-confidence, self-control, wellness, and life success in promising male youth facing challenges to reaching their full potential. Purpose: This was an exploratory study to assess whether young men who completed the program manifested psychological and/or physical changes. Methodology/Approach: Sixteen young men were assessed at the beginning and end of the program. Physical measures included fitness test scores (pull-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, 1.5 mile run time), resting blood pressure, and pulse rate. Psychological variables included positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, self-esteem, self-efficacy, perceived control, self-control, impulsivity, social support, and subjective socioeconomic status. Findings/Conclusions: From pre- to post-COW, there were significant increases in self-esteem, positive affect, and sit-ups completed as well as significant decreases in run times, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate. Several nonsignificant trends were also detected. Associations of psychological variables with fitness/health measures suggest that changes in the latter may be partly due to changes in the former. Implications: The COW Program may be an effective experiential education program. Follow-up studies with program participants are currently underway to determine longer term outcomes.