Individual Beliefs and Cultural Immersion in Service-Learning: Examination of a Reflection Process

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a set of reflection tools used with college students engaged in service-learning immersion trips. The tools were a set of writing and discussion activities that directed students to ask questions and make observations about the communities they were visiting and to connect those questions and observations to their own values, beliefs, and sources of beliefs. The tools evoked a greater depth of reflection on beliefs and a greater depth of immersion into communities for students. Students became more in tune with their beliefs, changed their beliefs, and articulated their beliefs more clearly through these service-learning immersions, and that process was facilitated by the reflection tools. Students also learned more about the communities that they visited, made personal connections to those communities, and had a greater sense of being immersed in those communities. This process was facilitated by the reflection tools.