Cultivating Cultural Competence through Cultural Engagement: Experiences of Undergraduate Service Learning in a Play-Based AFTER-SCHOOL Program

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors illustrate how the use of ethnographic methods as a mode of cultural inquiry can support educators in developing students’ competencies to navigate in and across cultural contexts. The authors report on an undergraduate service learning course held at the University of California, Los Angeles, which combines attendance in a university class with weekly visits to a play-based after-school club located in a multicultural immigrant community. The chapter draws examples from the required field notes written by undergraduate students about their visits to the after-school club, as well as oral comments by the students gathered through interviews. As a way of offering practical engagement in the lifeworlds of the demographically diverse children attending the after-school club, the authors apply examples from the undergraduates’ statements to consider the value of the course – and the engagement it requires with anthropological methods and multilingual and multicultural children – in supporting students’ cultural competence. In doing so, the authors demonstrate what they believe to be a worthwhile approach for cultivating cultural competence in higher education in a socially just and culturally responsive manner.

Citation

Ángeles, S.L., Cone, L., Johnson, S.J. and Orellana, M.F. (2020), "Cultivating Cultural Competence through Cultural Engagement: Experiences of Undergraduate Service Learning in a Play-Based AFTER-SCHOOL Program", Puckett, T. and Lind, N. (Ed.) Cultural Competence in Higher Education (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 28), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 131-142. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120200000028014