Learning through volunteering:
skills, knowledge, attitudes.
Pat Green, Principal Lecturer,
Co-ordinator,
Dispelling the Myths
• Student Volunteering and UoW
• Community-based Learning
• Non Accredited Volunteering
Holistic model of learning
• Intellectual and expressive experience for
students
• Develops academic and theoretical learning
about volunteering and community engagement
• Integrates academic knowledge, skills
development, and learning ‘beyond the
classroom’
• Offers a two-way connection with communities
Holistic model of learning
• Empowers students to critically
understand and take advantage of
educational experiences
• Students articulate skills and experiences,
and critically reflect on their own learning
• Integrates students into the community
and promotes value change – i.e. critical
citizenship
• Enables development of ‘skills for life’
USEM model of employability
U:
Understanding subject matter
S:
Skilful practices
E:
Efficacy beliefs
M:
Metacognition
(Knight and Yorke, 2004:38)
Understanding subject matter
“If you put this on your CV then everybody is
going to want you because you are working with
the toughest children there could possibly be, so
it is really going to help with what I want to do”
“Volunteering gave me the opportunity to further
my basic skills of planning, organising,
motivating others, team work and
communication”
(first year students)
Skilful practices
•
Procedural knowledge
“I find I am picking up information I didn’t
know but also from me they’re picking up
information that they didn’t know – it’s a
two-way thing” (final year student)
Efficacy beliefs
“Students come out…with a greater sense
of the community…and have more of a
moral kind of culture to carry on to
whatever career they may have”
(Voluntary organisation representative)
Metacognition
“you can explore other attitudes, you can
change as a person”
“you kind of develop a bit more
empathy…it allows you to see from their
point of view”
Holistic model of learning
“these are skills are good for life in general
really…these skills that you can deal with
people, you can talk to people, you can
empathise with people, and I think you’ll
always use them in every aspect of
your life, no matter work or personal’
References
Knight, P & Yorke, M (2004) Learning,
Curriculum and Employability in Higher
Education
Matthews, N., Green, P., et al (2009) ‘The
Role of Volunteering in Transitions from
Higher Education to Work’ in Transitions
from Education to Work (ed. R. Brooks)
Palgrave Macmillan
Contact details:
Pat Green, Principal Lecturer,
01902 323413
[email protected]
www.wlv.ac.uk/activevol