Background/Purpose Service learning has two pedagogical goals: increasing civic responsibility and facilitating academic objectives. It may also positively affect students' personal and social development. The purpose of this study was to examine what undergraduate students learning to teach young adults with disabilities consider meaningful and how perceptions regarding disabilities evolve during a field experience that incorporates service learning and critical reflection.
Method The participants were 50 undergraduate students enrolled in an Adapted Physical Education course. The service learning included students delivering health and fitness instruction on an individual basis to 24 young adults with disabilities over a semester (total of 384 sessions). The instructional groups remained constant. Data collection included critical incident reflections (400), formal interviews (50), and document analysis (50 fitness evaluations). Grounded theory approach guided data analysis, and we performed content analysis with subsequent data triangulation.
Analysis/Results The results suggest that students progressed through three stages of development: shock, normalization, and engagement. However, the duration of each phase seemed to be unique to each student. Students considered establishing and developing relationships with young adults with disabilities as their most meaningful experiences. The major difficulties were (a) communication and (b) implementing effective teaching strategies for each individual's unique needs.
Conclusions Service learning seems to be an effective avenue for students to master course content in a way that meaningfully integrates classroom and field experiences. The reflections are critical for students to push through the shock and normalization phases to engagement, which constitutes a change, not only in attitude and understanding, but in behavior.