Engaging Students in Policy Practice: Evaluation of Civic and Academic Outcomes

Background: This study measured the civic and academic outcomes of a service-learning social policy course with a sample of Master of Social Work (MSW) students at a southern state university. Engaging students in policy practice via service-learning can be extremely useful in courses across the social work curriculum, especially policy courses. What is less understood is just how useful service-learning is compared to traditional content delivery methods (i.e., traditional-learning) in conveying policy content. Measuring both the civic and academic outcomes of a service-learning section of a policy course in comparison with those of traditional-learning sections will provide insight for social work research, practice, and education.

Methods: Service-learning pedagogy was incorporated into a required Advanced Social Policy course during the spring 2015 semester. Data were collected, at the beginning and at the end of the semester, from 31 MSW students enrolled in the service-learning section and 67 in two traditional-learning sections. A local association of nonprofit organizations, United Way, and Campus Federal Credit Union served as the community partners and identified the underutilization of Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) services as a concern within the community. Therefore, the students in the service-learning section became VITA-certified volunteers; served low- and moderate-income individuals with tax preparation assistance at VITA sites; and educated human service workers, clients, and community partners on the benefits of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and VITA services. Students also gathered and presented research findings on the effectiveness of state EITC policies to the community partners.

The empirically-validated Virginia Tech Service-Learning Participant Profile scale was used to measure the five civic dependent variables—personal social responsibility, importance of community service, civic awareness, self-oriented motives, and service-oriented motives. Additionally, students’ responses to 12 course learning objectives were used to measure two academic outcomes—knowledge-oriented proficiency and advocacy (action)-oriented proficiency—based on confirmatory factor analysis. Two-sample t-tests were employed to compare group differences on the outcomes.

Results: The results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between four of the five civic outcomes. Means for social responsibility (t = 2.28, p = 0.00), importance of community service (t = 1.54, p = 0.04), service-oriented motives (t = -1.58, p = 0.03), and civic awareness (t = 1.24, p = 0.05) were significantly larger for the service-learning students than for the traditional-learning students. Results showed that knowledge-oriented proficiency (t = 2.44, p = 0.00) and advocacy-oriented proficiency (t = 3.15, p = 0.00) were significantly higher among service-learning students than traditional-learning students.

Implications: Results of the present study revealed that service-learning pedagogy compared to traditional-learning pedagogy better effected desired changes in students in several areas of civic outcomes. Service-learning pedagogy was also more effective in obtaining knowledge-oriented and advocacy-oriented course objectives than traditional-learning pedagogy. Professional values and attitudes toward social justice can influence not only social work students’ perceptions of policy practice but also their actual post-graduation involvement in policy practice (Rocha, 2000). Future studies measuring both civic and academic outcomes for service-learning vs traditional-learning using rigorous research designs are warranted.