Course Director: Heike Schmidt-Felzmann
Module Title: "Service Learning Placement" in MA Ethics Culture and Global Change
Subject: Philosophy
Year: Taught MA
Participants: MA students of MA Ethics Culture and Global Change
Hours: 36 hours course, 100 hours Service (20 of which to be spent within organisation and/or with service users where appropriate)
Credits: 10
Length: Semester 1 & 2
Community Partners: No fixed partners; based on students projects and interests each year. Previous partners included e.g. Blue Teapot, Clarecare, Eglington Asylum Seekers Community, Galway One World Centre, Galway Refugee Support Group, Galway Simon Community, GSPCA, Harristown House, NUIG Organic Garden Society, Rape Crisis Network, REMEDI, UNICEF, Volunteering Ireland.
The programme is designed for students who wish to bring philosophical reflection to bear on global issues. Through a service learning underpinning, students will be encouraged to reflect on the significance of the theoretical concepts to pressing ethical issues today. The service learning element is linked to the entire MA programme content to allow students to engage in depth with those issues that are of particular interest to them, by combining theoretical work and practical experience. The main topic areas of the course are globalisation, intercultural communication, colonialism, conflict and violence, bioethics and professional ethics, and environmental ethics. In the process of their service, students are asked to reflect on the representation of ethical issues in their field of practice in the ethical literature and compare it with the issues they encountered in practice. At the same time, arising difficulties and conflicts are discussed and, where appropriate, put into the context of the professional and organisational ethics literature. Students are assessed by means of learning journals and a reflective ethics essay. The service learning support that students receive throughout the year includes a weekend away dedicated to organisational aspects, ongoing support to identify students' areas of interest and assist them with practical challenges in organising their placement, ongoing sharing and feedback on the placement experience and wrap-up at the end of the course. While some students choose to work in the area of service provision on the ground, others prepare reports, training materials or information materials for their host organisation. Past projects included e.g.: delivery of IT support for Eglington Asylum Seekers Community, school-based outreach activities on ethics in stem cell research, report on the costs of violence against women, report on children's rights and the situation of unaccompanied minors in Ireland, participation in newly established phone service for rural elderly in Clare, an analysis of media coverage of the majority (developing) world in local newspapers, development of information material on the situation of asylum seekers and their access to higher education in Ireland, provision of training in flower arrangement for groups with intellectual disability, development of information material for the GSPCA, development of a professional ethics information resource for Volunteering Ireland, creation of organic garden and Organic Garden Society in NUIG.