Service-Learning for Trust: Bridging Social and Political Divides
Timeline: 1/05/2027 – 31/10/2028
Project partners involved: LUMSA, MBU, UCSIA, UNIBO, UNIZG & UU
In a final phase of the SL4DC project, we will dive deeper into the relevance of service-learning to face the growing social and political divides in our contemporary societies. We will explore ways of inquiry-based learning to encourage key stakeholders in- and outside higher education to break out of bubbles and to generate new communities of understanding and reciprocity, even as disagreements persist.
We will do so by combining two different approaches that are mutually complementary but rarely fused: deliberative democracy and service-learning. Deliberative democracy is a model of democratic decision-making emphasizing the importance of discussion, reasoning and argumentation in political choices. Service-learning’s added value is its appreciative eye for personal and collective experiences of all participants in which intercultural competences are often crucial.
A key component is the piloting of the tools in real-world contexts focusing on the topic of migration as a test case, given its significance as a highly polarized issue in contemporary European discourse. Through collaboration with community partners, students participate in dialogues encouraging reciprocal learning and constructive engagement with differing viewpoints and experiences. This way, we will promote competences for democratic culture with a focus on building mutual trust, enhancing civic engagement and creating spaces for mutual respect and understanding, thereby strengthening democratic resilience in increasingly fragmented societies. Special attention will be paid to ABSL methods, as art can be a common language to bridge the social and political divides by creating bonds of trust. The results will create a scalable model for higher education, fostering civic trust, inclusive dialogue and democratic resilience.
Outputs
1) Framework on Service-Learning in Conjunction with Deliberative Democracy
We will develop a framework containing best practices and effective methods on how service-learning and deliberative democracy practices can reinforce each other. Particular attention will be paid to the relevance of ABSL methods for fostering constructive dialogue across different perspectives.
2) Co-creative Sessions for Developing Service-Learning Projects on the Topic of Migration
Higher education teachers, students and community partners will co-design service-learning projects fostering deliberative democracy to tackle polarization around the issue of migration. During these co-creative sessions, students and community stakeholders will establish a common understanding of the service-learning goals and desired outcomes of the pilots.
3) Service-Learning & Deliberative Democracy Pilots on Migration
Students and community members will engage in pilot projects to test and assess pedagogical tools for facilitating deliberative dialogue and intercultural competences in service-learning. In the process, students and community members enhance their skills and critical understanding of deliberative democracy and intercultural interaction, encouraging them to be reflective about different perspectives related to migration that divide society.
4) Practical Guidelines for HE Teachers & Community Organizations for Effective Use of Deliberative Democracy in Service-Learning
Experiences, feedback and lessons learned from the pilots will be bundled in practical guidelines for higher education teachers and community organizations that wish to develop projects that effectively integrate deliberative democracy with service-learning approaches as ways to bridge political and social divides, enhancing competences for deliberative and intercultural dialogue.