A Case Study to Explore Spirituality Among Service-learning Instructors at a Land Grant University
type: CreativeWork
description: The purpose of this study is to explore why academic faculty opt to incorporate service-learning into their coursework for students and how individual spirituality at work contributes to SL design in experiences. A qualitative single case study design was used. Publicly available documents, syllabi, and semi-structured interviews with 20 previous and current service-learning instructors were the sources of data for this case. Among the participants, 16 identified as spiritual and eight shared that spirituality influenced their decision to use service-learning. Research Question One asked how spirituality contributed to faculty decision to pursue SL designation. Overall, while instructors identify as spiritual in motivation, they may not differ greatly on the choice to designate their course. Some cited spiritual motivation while others shared that the rigorous academic framework lends itself to effective teaching and course design. Research Question Two asked how spirituality contributed to course design and results reflect that creating SL curriculum aligns with general course design. Those who cited spiritual motivations included the following spiritual aspects infused in course design: practicality, reciprocity, empathy/compassion, helping people, and social justice. Research Question Three asked how spiritual faculty navigate their spirituality in their role in academia. Spiritual faculty reported navigation of academia as categorized into three types of values alignment: alignment, misalignment, and hacking alignment. Instructors shared methods of negative and positive coping regarding misalignment. Hacking alignment was for those who felt misaligned in the academy, but found ways to align their spirituality with their work. A discussion of the above-mentioned findings, implications for practice and recommendations for future research are provided.
abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore why academic faculty opt to incorporate service-learning into their coursework for students and how individual spirituality at work contributes to SL design in experiences. A qualitative single case study design was used. Publicly available documents, syllabi, and semi-structured interviews with 20 previous and current service-learning instructors were the sources of data for this case. Among the participants, 16 identified as spiritual and eight shared that spirituality influenced their decision to use service-learning. Research Question One asked how spirituality contributed to faculty decision to pursue SL designation. Overall, while instructors identify as spiritual in motivation, they may not differ greatly on the choice to designate their course. Some cited spiritual motivation while others shared that the rigorous academic framework lends itself to effective teaching and course design. Research Question Two asked how spirituality contributed to course design and results reflect that creating SL curriculum aligns with general course design. Those who cited spiritual motivations included the following spiritual aspects infused in course design: practicality, reciprocity, empathy/compassion, helping people, and social justice. Research Question Three asked how spiritual faculty navigate their spirituality in their role in academia. Spiritual faculty reported navigation of academia as categorized into three types of values alignment: alignment, misalignment, and hacking alignment. Instructors shared methods of negative and positive coping regarding misalignment. Hacking alignment was for those who felt misaligned in the academy, but found ways to align their spirituality with their work. A discussion of the above-mentioned findings, implications for practice and recommendations for future research are provided.
author: Pennell, Shawn Guard Lady
keywords: Experiential Education, Faculty, Service-learning, University Faculty
date published: 2024
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:47:58Z
provider: University of Nevada - Reno
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Nevada, Reno