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.

This work presents a reflective account of two service-learning (SL) experiences developed at the University of Granada, Spain, on the campuses of Melilla (African continent) and Granada (European continent), as a part of government-funded INCLUSO Project (Hooli et al., 2025). The aim is to explore how SL projects can be designed to strengthen students’ democratic competences, understood as a combination of social values, attitudes, skills, and knowledge (Council of Europe, 2016).

The participants were pre-service English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers (8 in Melilla and 41 in Granada) enrolled in a Primary Education degree. Both initiatives were part of English Didactics courses, in which students delivered EFL classes to adult migrants, recently arrived asylum seekers. The initiatives were grounded in participatory, group-based, and playful learning approaches, aimed at enhancing authentic communication and creating a stress-free learning environment.

The two initiatives were intentionally designed with different structures and contexts. In Melilla, the 10-week project involved weekly visits to the TSCI (Temporary Stay Centre for Immigrants; Government of Spain), situating learning within the migrants’ living environment. This model emphasized immersion, proximity, and sustained contact with the everyday realities of vulnerable groups, creating greater opportunities for future teachers to engage pedagogically while developing social and cultural awareness, as well as sensitivity to learners’ needs.

In contrast, in Granada the 8-week initiative brought migrants into the university classroom. This approach prioritized the creation of an inclusive space where migrants could participate in shared learning activities and strengthened sense of belonging in new society and community. Due to the larger group size, pre-service teachers alternated in leading sessions, allowing them to both facilitate and participate. This design fostered more horizontal and dialogic relationships, emphasizing mutual exchange, empathy, responsibility, and openness. It also supported relationship-building and integration, and reinforced the symbolic value of accessing the university environment.

In both experiences, reflective practices were integrated through weekly journals encouraging critical thinking, self-awareness, and deeper engagement with the experience.

Drawing on these initiatives, this work proposes several design recommendations for SL projects aimed at fostering democratic competences: prioritizing smaller groups to enhance interaction; incorporating playful, interactive and dynamic group activities; promoting reciprocal roles; ensuring authentic contact with community realities; and embedding structured reflection alongside opportunities for spontaneous dialogue.

The contribution reflects on the experiences of a collaborative project in which students developed educational material in partnership with the initiative “Konsumkritische Stadtführung Bamberg” (engl. sustainable city tours).

The collaboration aimed to link the theoretical knowledge on education for sustainable development with the in-depth practical application in a concrete project. By developing pedagogical material on various topics, the students acquired key competencies for teaching education for sustainable development (e.g. Rieckmann, 2012) and reflected on the challenges associated with sustainable development, such as e.g. how to deal with the overall complexity of the topics; how to address normativity without imposing a certain view and how encourage critical thinking and action-oriented competencies (Scheunpflug, 2023; Taube, 2023). Working in teams, the students developed and presented the material, repeatedly discussing their process and the difficulties encountered. The project became meaningful for the students because the material they developed was relevant to an actual project in the field of practice. They were able to actively contribute to shaping the educational landscape in Bamberg and engage with the vision of a more sustainable and future-oriented way of life.

This contribution shortly presents the project and reflects on challenges and potential regarding (1) the didactic method of team based work and (2) the role of the academic instructors. The entire seminar, conceptualised as part of a service-learning project, was based on the idea of learning as a self-directed, reflective process (e.g. Brown, 2015). Therefore, our role was to support the students’ learning process by providing feedback, suggestions and a space for open and fruitful discussion.

Within the workshop we will reflect on potentials and challenges of this conceptualisation of learning as a self-directed, reflective process in a collaborative setting and what it means for the academic instructors, particularly in the field of education for sustainable development and Higher Education.