Best Practices Conference in June, 2001

Participants:

• Joe Favazza
• Michael McLain

Project Title: Service-Learning Pedagogy as a Strategy for Intercultural Learning

Project Description:

Service-learning is a pedagogy that challenges both student and teacher to self-critical awareness of one's cultural location, the assumptions and values that inform that location, and the inescapable task of forming oneself in response to it. This sense of "locatedness," so critical to a successful service-learning course, also can function as a strategy to introduce students to learning in an intercultural setting. We wish to explore how other campuses have used or are using service-learning as part of a comprehensive and sustained experience to prepare students for study in international settings.

Participants:

Name: Joe Favazza

Title: Associate Professor of Religious Studies

E-mail: favazza@rhodes.edu

Presentation: Service Learning as Liberal Learning: The Theory and Application of S-L Pedagogy for Intercultural Learning in Memphis and Honduras, Saturday 1:30-3:00

Biographical Information: Joseph A. Favazza is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Interdisciplinary Humanities. He and Michael McLain coordinate the Rhodes service learning initiative. He recently spent five months in Romania as a Fulbright Senior Scholar and is the author of "The Pedagogy of Service Learning: Perspectives and Proposals" in Religious Studies News (September 1999).

Name: Michael McLain

Title: Professor of Religious Studies

E-mail: mmclain@rhodes.edu

Presentation: Service Learning as Liberal Learning: The Theory and Application of S-L Pedagogy for Intercultural Learning in Memphis and Honduras, Saturday 1:30-3:00

Biographical Information: F. Michael McLain is the R. A. Webb Professor of Religious Studies. He and Joseph A. Favazza coordinate the Rhodes service learning initiative. He founded the Associated Colleges of the South Service-Learning Maymester in Honduras and has led service-learning trips to South Africa. With Joseph Favazza and Richard Devine, he is an editor of the forthcoming volume on religious studies and service-learning in the AAHE series on service-learning and the disciplines.