Conference Agenda

In light of ongoing global transformation processes and increasing societal polarization, higher education is challenged to strengthen students’ civic responsibility and democratic competences. Service-learning offers a promising pedagogical approach by linking experiential, action-oriented learning with meaningful community engagement (Bringle & Clayton, 2012). Reflection, alongside real-world experience and reciprocity with community partners, is considered a core element in fostering such learning processes (Godfrey, Illes & Berry, 2005).

Based on the example of a service-learning module in a vocational teacher education program, the study focuses on how structured reflection supports students‘ competency development and civic attitudes. Using a formative reflection portfolio, the study addresses the following research questions:

- How do students perceive their own performance and competency development at different stages of the service learning process??

- How does students' attitude toward civil society change over the course of the semester?

The positive impact of service-learning on willingness to engage, attitudes toward social engagement, and self-efficacy has been empirically confirmed in several studies (Gerholz & Losch 2015; Slepcevic-Zach & Fernandez, 2021). Reflection is intended to enable students to consciously perceive and systematically analyze their actions (Godfrey, Illes & Berry, 2005). The goal is for students to recognize the connection between project work and their study program and to understand the development of their attitudes toward societal challenges.

In the module, the concept of reflection is implemented through a reflection portfolio consisting of guided initial, interim, and final reflections during the semester. This approach adopts a process-analytical perspective to address the research questions. Reflection prompts address both project-related experiences and students’ perceived roles within civil society. The data consist of reflection portfolios from two cohorts (n = 26), which are analyzed using content-structuring qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2018).

Preliminary findings indicate that at the beginning of the semester, students primarily focus on task-related aspects of their projects and often express uncertainty regarding their roles. Over time, reflections increasingly shift toward broader civic perspectives. In the final reflections, students demonstrate a more differentiated understanding of civil society and report changes in their self-perception as socially engaged actors. The study contributes to the empirical understanding of how reflection processes in service-learning can support the development of civic attitudes and democratic competences in teacher education. It highlights the importance of structured, longitudinal reflection formats for fostering transformative learning processes.

This contribution examines Service-Learning (SL) as a didactic procedure for democracy education, with particular attention to the reflection step, the moment when community engagement becomes explicit civic learning. Rather than presenting a single case study, the paper synthesises the procedural knowledge generated within the Erasmus+ GIRLS project, including the Service-Learning Course Handbook, curricular implementations in the partner countries, and the international activity carried out in Morelia and Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico.

The study is grounded in the GIRLS SL sequence: observation of community needs, preparation, action, reflection, data registration, evaluation, and recognition. This sequence was used to guide students from identifying authentic social needs to co-producing meaningful services with community partners. In Mexico, 20 students from Portugal, Spain, Romania, and Mexico, enrolled in engineering, health sciences, and language-related programmes, worked with local partners on public health education, kidney health awareness, water consumption issues, statistical analysis, and intercultural communication. Reflection was deliberately intensified through individual, small-group, and collective moments, following the Think-4-Share methodology, and generated a substantial corpus of written and oral data.

Methodologically, the paper combines reflective practice analysis with qualitative content analysis of student reflections and pedagogical artefacts produced during the GIRLS project. The analysis focuses on what students did for the community, and how the structured reflection step helped them reinterpret service experiences in terms of democratic competences: empathy, solidarity, critical awareness of inequality, intercultural dialogue, shared responsibility, communication, and civic agency.

The emerging results suggest that reflection operated as a transformative didactical device. In the Mexico corpus, students’ reflections evidenced learning outcomes, ethical awareness, perceived social impact, challenges and adaptation, cultural awareness, civic engagement, communication skills, and personal transformation. These outcomes indicate that democratic learning was not produced automatically by “being in the community” but by guided opportunities to question assumptions, listen to others, connect disciplinary knowledge with social vulnerability, and articulate responsibility towards collective well-being.

The paper contributes a transferable model for designing and assessing SL in higher education by showing how reflection prompts, dialogue routines, and learning rubrics can make democratic competences visible, discussable, and pedagogically intentional.

Within the teacher education program at Hogeschool PXL, service-learning is structurally embedded as a didactical approach to foster democratic competences in pre-service teachers. One long-running initiative is the project Leren Thuis Leren (learning to learn @ home), which has been active for nearly twenty years and involves approximately 150 students annually in collaboration with 35 secondary schools. Student teachers are individually paired with pupils from the first grade of secondary education who grow up in socially vulnerable contexts. Through ten structured home visits spread over the academic year, students support pupils’ study skills and well-being. Families, schools, and welfare partners are actively involved in the project.

From a didactical perspective, learning to learn @ home creates a powerful, authentic learning environment in which democratic competences are developed through practice rather than instruction. By entering pupils’ home contexts, students are confronted with diverse living conditions and value systems that often differ strongly from school culture. This situated learning experience stimulates critical awareness of social inequality, responsibility, and professional positioning.

Home contexts are highly diverse: some families face language barriers, others have recently arrived in Belgium or live in reception centres, while family structures may include newly formed or single-parent households. Through these encounters, students gain insight into diverse social and cultural contexts and develop international and intercultural competences.

A key pedagogical principle is sustained relationship-building. Students are guided to invest in trustful dialogue with pupils and parents and to recognize families as equal partners in the educational process. This approach fosters empathy, respectful communication, and inclusion—core elements of democratic culture. Reflection is structurally embedded through preparatory theoretical frameworks, intervision sessions, coaching, and portfolio work, enabling students to critically examine assumptions, power dynamics, and pedagogical choices.

In addition, approximately 100 physical education students participate annually in a community service sports project, developed in partnership with local youth organizations and sports services. Through group-based activities for children and young people in socially vulnerable situations, combined with intervision sessions on campus, students further reflect on their experiences and develop democratic values.

From the perspective of democracy education, these projects demonstrate how large-scale service-learning functions as an effective didactical method in teacher education. By engaging in dialogue with pupils, parents, schools, and external partners, student teachers learn to act as reflective, socially engaged professionals who contribute to inclusive and participatory educational practices.