Conference Agenda

Several studies indicate that Service Learning (SL) with marginalized groups yields significant positive effects on students’ personal development, civic engagement, and attitudes toward marginalized populations. Researchers have found key practices as critical success factors enhancing civic learning and engagement, linking service to curriculum through an appropriate learning design, providing student voice in project design, ensuring meaningful community involvement, and incorporating structured reflection. (Christine I. Celio et al., 2011, Rubio Genesis et al., M. Streb 2018, K.H. Gerholz 2018 )

In our contribution we focus on the specific processes that may lead to such outcomes, by describing the trajectory of learning processes where students reach out to marginalized populations, in our case, through community placements in inclusive settings. We compare findings from a six-year longitudinal analysis of three SL-projects at EBS Universität (Germany): an inclusive grocery shop employing people with mental health condition(2023–2025), an inclusive forest pedagogy class for children with disabilities (2024–2026), and an inclusive community cinema (2020–2025). Drawing on nearly 90 student reflections and stakeholder interviews, we outline how students reflect on their attitudes and experiences, and what appears necessary for them to become active in addressing the problems that emerged through their social encounters as a three-dimensional approach. (Steven A. Meyers, 2009)

The findings reveal a developmental trajectory across projects, setting and cohorts: from emotional encounter (overcoming “fear of the unfamiliar”) through practical competence (developing inclusive practices) to structural critique (recognizing systemic inequalities). Three mechanisms drive this development: confrontation with radical difference, recognition as practice, and structural antinomies as learning opportunities. However, the analysis also shows that the third phase, structural critique, is not automatically reached. Without structured reflection and theoretical framing, students may remain emotionally or practically engaged but systemically naïve.

The paper argues that SL in inclusive settings functions as a “democratic microcosm”, a lived laboratory where students experience democracy as daily practice of recognition, dignity, and shared responsibility. Crucially, inclusive social enterprises resist easy solutions: students cannot “fix” the situation but must learn to listen and adapt. With some theoretical input the most advanced reflections move from private empathy to public advocacy, articulating demands for policy reform, recognizing inclusion as justice rather than charity.