This micro level of analysis shows the richness of evidence of learning experienced by students who have undertaken ViC. Many demonstrate the motivation for this learning as a possible enabler of subsequent graduate employment. However, this is accompanied by a range of other, equally important, motivations such as the enjoyment and satisfaction of helping out, and the intrinsic reward this brings.
Important amongst these was reciprocity, which runs through sections 5.3., 5.4., 5.8., and 5.9., and explored through a number of
theoretical lens here. Benefits given and benefits received were identified as a particular strength in these commentaries and is evidence of the two-way street operating in these contributions to community-university engagement as well as the learning experience.
A striking number of students also recognised a further strength of the ViC programme in that they see it as being integral to subjects being studied. This is in line with Knight & Yorke’s (2004:38) ‘understanding of subject matter’ in the USEM model. Contextualising classroom
learning means that blended learning of the applied and the theoretical are identified by students, enriching both.
Transformation of the self is identified as a significant experience used by some students to learn not only about the wider context of their contribution, but about themselves too, identifying ‘efficacy beliefs’ (Knight & Yorke, 2004:38) in that they have developed the confidence to make an impact on what they now want their graduate futures to look like, and an awareness (metacognition) of the learning gained. The qualitative data which emerges from this micro level of analysis is at odds with the assumptions about volunteering offered by
institutional responses examined in chapter four. A more complex picture emerges, and brings us to the debate about the purposes of education. Schwartz (2003:1) quotes Cleveland in claiming that:
The outsiders want the students trained for their first job out of university, and the academics inside the system want the student educated for 50 years of
self-fulfilment. The trouble is that the students want
both.
The evidence drawn from student data validates the quotation above, and the pedagogic practice framework within ViC is shown to deliver it. The important issue to draw from this is that students do not
dominant discourse. They present a more complex and seamless understanding that fits more with the discourse of employability espoused by Knight & Yorke (2004). As Knight & Yorke, (2003b:9) argue:
We say that good subject matter understanding is compatable with employability policies, and that
employability and good learning are highly compatible. The neoliberal discourse which espouses and prioritises links between university education and ‘graduateness’ with the economy seem narrow compared to the enrichment that these students suggest is their
experience of ViC. McArthur (2011:738) argues that ‘the problem for higher education is not the trend towards it having an economic role, but rather the narrowness of the way in which that is conceptualised’. Thorson (2010:198/199) goes further by exploring the dangers of the neoliberal market economy in that it ‘inspires people to become
acquisitive and self-centred, and thus hampering their moral
development’. The evidence from students in this study shows that their experience of ViC provides an opportunity to give back to the community in which they live and study, and it is not only about self- interest and their own gain.
Bearing in mind the uneven playing field that is the differentially structured labour market (Morley, 2001; Blasko et al, 2002) and the perceived status and hierarchy of HEIs (Harvey et al, 2002; Moreau & Leathwood, 2006a) students from HEIs such as Wrottesley can be seen to be disadvantaged in terms of individual employment success. The ViC
model of academic provision is seen to best prepare students operating in, and meeting challenges faced by, an unequal graduate labour
market. In Holdsworth & Quinn’s (2012:403) terms, these students are able to deconstruct their experiences and recognise the benefit of being able to to ‘step outside of the protective space of the university, thus facilitating students’ awareness of social inequalities’.
Students in this study are far from rejecting ideas about graduate employment – indeed they welcome it as a part of their undergraduate learning and becoming. They present their understanding of their experience as seamless, and so the conceptual models of altruistic and self-interest measures which permeate the literature on volunteering are unhelpful in understanding student motivations in the context of this study.
Such learning opportunities are embedded within the ViC model, where the practical experience of volunteering is explicitly supported by
linking it to classroom learning. It can be seen how students identify with the benefits to themselves of this holistic model. This aligns with Brewis and Holdsworth’s (2011:174) work, when they argue that:
Students who are supported by their university to
volunteer report better experiences of volunteering and reflect more positively upon the benefits that accrue through volunteering than student volunteers who are non-supported.
Students in this study, like those in the Matthews et al (2005) study, were able to network with professionals, service users and other
volunteers, in ways that are not possible in a classroom only setting. This gives rise to another dimension in the Communities of Practice that students encounter, that of being uniquely placed in a learning environment, supported by academic tutors within the academy and professionals within the organisation. This is a provision that is not accessible to student volunteers who undertake non-accredited volunteering.
It is demonstrated that combining community-centred volunteering activity with theoretical classroom learning enhances the student experience. It provides the context where both internally driven learning (about the self, about ‘becoming’) and the externally driven learning of the prevailing social, political and economic conditions that set the scene for learning activities. It is this richness that could be harnessed in order to develop a wider institutional understanding of the reciprocal benefits of ViC, together with enhancing the connections with communities and their organisations amongst whom the
institution, both staff and students, live, work and study. This will be the focus of the final chapter, in order to draw out some of these complexities, and identify a range of academic and policy implications which emerge from the research findings.