Critical Service Learning as a Tool for Identity Exploration

The role of identity in service learning raises an important question: Can students truly understand poverty if they do not also understand their own race, class, and gender identities in the context of systemic inequity? Service-learning practitioners should create spaces for students to explore how personal identity interacts with systems of wealth distribution, gentrification, living wages, and government policy to privilege some and marginalize others. Just as stocking shelves at a food pantry is easier than having conversations with community members as they pick up groceries, focusing on service learning as a way to help others or develop empathy is easier--and, we believe, less effective--than using service learning to raise critical questions about why inequalities exist and who benefits from them. Social identity is at the heart of these questions; an exploration of identity is necessary to critical service-learning pedagogy.