Department of Linguistics & TESOL | The University of Texas at Arlington

Native American Languages of the Southwest

Service Learning

Service-learning pedagogy is a recent trend in higher education in the United States. This model offers a pedagogy ideally suited for implementing best practices in training students in ethics and language documentation. Service-learning pedagogy is also consistent with community-based or empowerment models of research (Rice 2006; Czaykowska-Higgins 2009).

Service-learning is characterized as as "a course-based, credit-bearing educational experience in which students (a) participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and (b) reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility" (Bringle and Hatcher 1995: 112). By adding reflective activities to a service project, a course develops into a service-learning offering.

To get a sense of some of the service-learning activities that are occurring under the auspices of research and outreach in Native American communities in the Southwest, see the links below.

Service Learning Activities in the Oklahoma Native Language Context

NSU: 40th Annual Symposium on the American Indian, Tahlequah OK (April 2012, 2010)
Chickasaw Language Revitalization Program, Ada OK (November 2011, February 2010)
Digitization and Archiving at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Norman, OK (October 2010)
Comanche Nation College, Lawton, OK (March 2011)
Oklahoma Native Language Association Workshop (October 2011)
Language Revitalization and Indigenous Language Documentation Seminar, Symposium on the American Indian, Tahlequah, OK (April 2011)

References

Bringle, Robert B., & Julie A. Hatcher. 1995. A service learning curriculum for faculty. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 2.112-122.

Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa. 2009. "Research Models, Community Engagement, and Linguistic Fieldwork: Reflections on Working within Canadian Indigenous Communities." Language Documentation & Conservation 3:1, 15-50. (http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4423)

Hinton, Leanne and Kenneth Hale, eds. 2001. The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. San Diego: Academic Press.

Rice, Keren. 2006. Ethical issues in linguistic fieldwork: An overview. Journal of Academic Ethics 4.123-155. (http://www.springerlink.com/content/x64771152670h271/)