Educating for Empathy

Service Learning in Public Policy Education

J J Woo

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9789811202803
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Policy

Service learning presents an experiential learning opportunity, particularly for students at higher education institutions. At the same time, it allows the university to engage communities and apply its considerable resources addressing community needs. This book, Educating for Empathy: Service Learning in Public Policy Education, will introduce readers to the concept of service learning and how it can be applied to higher education. While service learning has been recognized as a useful pedagogical tool that can enhance students' learning experience, the application and practice of service learning in Singapore has been limited.

The book will also provide a broad overview of service learning in the context of a service learning initiative that was conducted by the author under Nanyang Technological University (NTU)'s Public Policy & Global Affairs Programme, as well as the author's experience as NTU's inaugural Community Research Fellow. It will cover the policy, pedagogical, and socio-political aspects of service learning and include insights from students and stakeholders. In doing so, it aims to provide valuable insights into the role of service learning as a driver of civic education and grassroots volunteerism. The book will also provide both education and policy professionals a greater understanding of how their work can intersect, and provide students with a highly rewarding learning experience.

Contents:

• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• List of Contributors
• Introduction:
  • Service Learning and Public Policy Education (J J Woo)
• Theory and Concept:
  • NTU's Approaches in Local Community Engagement (Toh Kian Lam)
  • Service Learning: A Survey of the Literature (Kai Xiang Kwa)
  • Grassroots Volunteerism in Singapore: A Survey of the Literature (George Wong Boon Keng)
  • Examining the Role of MPs, Grassroot Organisations, and Volunteers in MPS from a Political and Policy Perspective (Michelle Chew)
  • Top–Down or Bottom–Up? Critiquing State Policy Implementation in Singapore (Chong Jing Yee)
• Faith:
  • Beyond the Naked Eye (Lee Zhe Feng)
  • This is Why We Need MPS (Candelyn Pong)
  • One Singapore, One Heart (Benjamin Ang)
  • Recurrent Themes in a Cosmopolitan State (Elango Gopalan)
  • On the Nature of the MPS (Anonymous)
• Hope:
  • The Value of Hope (Grace Fu)
  • Singapore Grassroots and the 'Business of Hope' (R Kumaran)
  • My Experience During Meet-The-People Sessions at Hong Kah North GRC (Natalie Loh Siew Ling)
  • Descent and Dissent: My Time at Kembangan–Chai Chee MPS (Tay Chu Yi)
  • Meritocracy and the Marginalised (Nicolette Wong Shu Yi)
• Love:
  • Perspective from a Mayor: Service Learning through Volunteerism and Community Service (Mayor Low Yen Ling)
  • A Twist of Fate: Reflections on Grassroots Involvement (Victoria Cahyani Tanggono)
  • Heart, Hands, and Hope: What Six Weeks in MPS Have Shown Me About Its Motivations, Mechanisms, and Meaning to a Community (Lum Hui Teng Cheryl)
  • Six Weeks in Pioneer: Service Learning Revitalised (Anderton Goh)
  • MPS: Singapore's Strive Towards Being a Welfare State (Josephine Sonia Shagar)
  • 'How May I Help You This Evening?' A Reflection from Meeting the People (Tew Weicong)
  • Employing Service Learning in Public Policy Education: An Instructor's Perspective (J J Woo)
• Epilogue

Readership: Students, educational professionals and industry professionals interested in the field of service learning and public policy education.Singapore;Service Learning;Higher Education;Grassroots Politics0 Key Features:

• Provides an in-depth understanding of service learning in university education, by focusing on its application in Singapore's Nanyang Technological University
• Includes the insights of participants in the initiative, such as students, instructors, and grassroots advisers
• Features contributions from key policy makers such as Minister Desmond Lee, Minister Grace Fu, and Mayor Low Yen Ling

PART 1

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

SERVICE LEARNING AND PUBLIC POLICY EDUCATION

J. J. Woo

Every experience is a moving force. Its value can be judged only on the ground of what it moves toward and into.

John Dewey, Experience and Education

Introduction

Singapore is well reputed as a global education hub. This is evident in two important educational rankings. As of writing, two Singaporean universities are ranked among the top 20 of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2018, with the National University of Singapore (NUS) ranking 11th and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) placed at 12th position (Davie, 2018). In the latest iteration of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that is run by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Singapore students were ranked top in the world for mathematics, science, and reading (Davie, 2016).

These two rankings elucidate Singapore’s strengths in basic and higher education. Yet, despite the success of Singapore’s universities and its education system, there is a growing view that Singapore’s over-emphasis on academic grades has come at the expense of student well-being, creativity, and civic education (Siau, 2015; Teng, 2016; Toh, 2017). In response, the Singapore government has enacted key policy shifts to address this alleged imbalance in educational outcomes, such as broadening the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) scoring system (Khamid, 2016) or placing a greater emphasis on skills training and lifelong learning (Lee, 2017; Sung and Freebody, 2017).

While these efforts are commendable and will likely bring about significant improvements to the way that Singapore’s educational institutions assess and develop their students, there is also much that educators can do to enhance students’ learning experience through pedagogical innovations. This is especially the case with civic education. In this book, I focus on one potentially useful pedagogical innovation — service learning. While Kwa Kai Xiang provides a more in-depth discussion of service learning in Chapter 3, it is useful at this juncture to establish a broad definition of service learning.

According to the education scholars Robert Bringle and Julie Hatcher, service learning is:

[…] a credit-bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and 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, 1996).

The definition provided by Bringer and Hatcher encompasses three key definitional components of service learning:

•Being credit bearing, service learning is unlike extracurricular voluntary service.

•Service learning also differs from internships since students are not paid, nor does it involve the imparting of professional skills.

•Rather, service learning emphasizes encouraging civic responsibility, (Saltmarsh, 2005; Huda et al., 2018a, 2018b) thereby holding the potential for enhancing community development (Speck and Hoppe, 2004).

Hence, rather than being an educational supplement, service learning should be a core component of the curriculum. For the student, this, in turn, means that participation in service learning is not only compulsory but also graded. Certainly, this notion of graded community service poses challenges for the instructor, especially in terms of assessing students’ participation and performance in service learning. Indeed, how does one measure a student’s passion for community service? The same can be said for assessing the success of a particular service learning initiative. I will discuss these issues at greater length in the conclusion of this book.

Furthermore, service learning’s incorporation of community service into learning and curriculum also contributes to a more experiential and reflective approach to learning (Hesser, 1995; Hatcher and Bringle, 1997; Mooney and Edwards, 2001). This emphasis on experiential learning and reflective thinking can be traced back to the education philosopher and reformist, John Dewey, whose quote provides the opening to this chapter and whose work has inspired the service learning initiative that forms the crux of this book.

In his works, How We Think (1933) and Experience and Education (1938), John Dewey emphasizes the educational potential of experience — particularly, those experiences that inspire students and provide them with a positive effect on future experiences — and reflection, which provides the link between experience and the ways in which experiences are processed to produce learning (Giles and Eyler, 1994; Dewey, 1938).

Experiential learning is particularly important for social science disciplines that emphasize the transmission of civic or political values, such as sociology, political science, and public policy (Rocha, 2000; Mooney and Edwards, 2001). In describing a service learning initiative that she had implemented in a Public Policy undergraduate degree programme at the Department of Urban Studies of the University of Glasgow, Susan J. Deeley notes that:

The integration of service-learning into a Public Policy degree programme was highly appropriate in that its overall intended learning outcomes included students being able to critically analyse theory and practice in the field of public policy, and analyse the implications of active citizenship and civic responsibility, through students’ voluntary service in the community (Deeley, 2010).

Similarly, a service learning initiative implemented in an advanced policy course under a Master in Social Work programme at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, revealed that students who had undergone the service learning programme were more likely to perceive themselves as competent policy practitioners, and also more likely to participate in policy-related work or activities after graduation (Rocha, 2000).

Along with the others that will be discussed in the rest of this book, these two examples show how service learning can contribute immensely to public policy education by fostering positive educational outcomes, such as encouraging active citizenship and greater civic consciousness, generating passion and interest in policy work, as well as enhancing students’ analytical abilities. In short, service learning in public policy education can help develop more capable and passionate policymakers and public servants.

In light of these advantages and positive outcomes, I decided to incorporate a service learning component into a first-year public policy core course that I was teaching in NTU. However, before describing this service learning initiative, there is a need to discuss the context within which the service learning initiative took place, namely NTU’s ongoing efforts to introduce and expand its public policy education offerings. I will now provide a broad overview of public policy education in NTU, discussing its components as well as situating it in Singapore’s broader public policy education landscape.

Public Policy Education in NTU

The public policy education landscape has expanded tremendously over the years, with key institutions and programmes such as the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Nanyang Technological University’s Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme (PPGA), and the Singapore Management University’s second major programme in Public Policy and Public Management, providing the Singaporean student population with a good range of options in public policy education. Given that the service learning initiative discussed in this book was conducted in my capacity as a PPGA faculty member, it is instructive to discuss NTU’s role in public policy education.

First of all, it is important to note that PPGA is not NTU’s first foray into public policy education — far from it. Indeed, efforts at introducing public policy education in the university can be traced back to NTU’s earlier incarnation as Nanyang University, a Chinese-medium university that was established in the 1950s, but which was subsequently merged with the University of Singapore to form the National University of Singapore (NUS), and on whose grounds stand the current NTU. The transfer of the Nanyang University alumni rolls to NTU (then known as Nanyang Technological Institute) in 1987 would complete the genealogical realignment of NTU, in spirit at least, with its geographical predecessor.

In any case, Nanyang University hosted a Department of Government and Public Administration, which was shut down with the merger of the university in 1980. It would be another 25 years before public administration would re-emerge in NTU, with the creation of a Master of Public Administration (MPA) programme in 2005 that catered to mainland Chinese mayors and senior public officials. The programme would be expanded with the formation of a Nanyang Centre for Public Administration (NCPA) in 2009 and the introduction of an English language MPA programme in 2016. However, the NCPA’s role in public policy education in NTU remains largely focused on adult and executive education.

With growing demand for public policy education among local students, especially those who harbour ambitions for public service, NTU began offering undergraduate courses in public policy. This began with the introduction of an undergraduate Minor in Public Administration programme in 2005, under the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, culminating in the creation of a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Public Policy and Global Affairs in 2013, administered by PPGA under the recently restructured School of Social Sciences (Nanyang Technological University, 2017).

Aside from the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Public Policy and Global Affairs, PPGA also offers a second major as well as a minor in Public Policy and Global Affairs, and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme. Hence, with the formation of PPGA, NTU has established a comprehensive programme in public policy, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Given its location within a top Singaporean university, PPGA courses have also tended to incorporate a strong focus on Singapore’s political and policy processes.

As a Singaporean faculty member, I was tasked with teaching two Singapore-centric courses:

•HA1011 Politics of Singapore

•HA3014 Singapore’s Foreign Policy.

It was under the core course HA1011 Politics of Singapore that I introduced the service learning initiative that underpins the discussions in this book. I will now proceed to discuss this initiative.

Service Learning Initiative

A core aspect of Singapore’s approach to politics and governance is its strong focus on the grassroots sector (Haque, 1996; Tan and Tan, 2003). While much of the existing literature tends to caricaturise Singapore as a semi-authoritarian “developmental state” that practices a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• List of Contributors
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Theory and Concept
• Part 3A Faith
• Part 3B Hope
• Part 3C Love
• Epilogue