Keywords

Service-Learning and Leadership

Service-learning is an instructional method incorporating meaningful community service into the curriculum (Dipadova-Stocks 2005). As Giles Jr and Eyler (1994) point out, service-learning emphasizes experience, inquiry, and reflection. Learning should not be restricted to the four walls of the classroom; learning needs to be applied to the real world. Service-learning provides ample opportunities for the integration of academic knowledge and real-world experiences. It offers students the platform to experience and validate the provisional truths they have acquired from the classroom and textbooks (Beatty 2010). As it is a time for testing and validation of what has been learned, self-reflection is a significant component in the process of service-learning. Self-reflection encourages students to incorporate thinking with experience for further development and change (Kenworthy-U’ren and Peterson 2005). Another significant component of service-learning is problem solving (Hecht 2003). Students are required to tackle real-life problems in authentic settings. They have to engage in a continuous process of analyses, planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Service-learning can be performed individually or in a group. In the former situation, students are assigned individually to different agencies in the community, whereas in the latter situation, students are sent as a team. Recently, team-based project in service-learning has received much attention. Papamarcos (2005) describes it as a new service-learning approach in which students are able to overcome the inherent uncertainty of real-world problems. This collaborative learning process promotes structural changes of mindset among students.

Research has demonstrated a wide range of positive influences of service-learning on students’ moral development, social responsibility, and leadership (Eyler et al. 2001; Lester et al. 2005). In the learning process of service-learning, students develop academic knowledge and skills, respect for others, and commitment to the common good. Students acquire critical knowledge and relate it to the curriculum. This learning process is also helpful in raising social conscience among students and prepares students to be truly effective leaders (Dipadova-Stocks 2005). In addition, collaborating with others in service-learning projects facilitates their team skills, leadership skills, and conflict resolution skills (Beatty 2010).

Service-learning highlights the application of academic knowledge that is context dependent. There is a growing trend urging higher education to connect academic knowledge to real-world experiences and address social problems by developing engaged citizenship (Boyte 2008; Reynolds and Vince 2004). Service-learning can supplement the acquirement of knowledge, thus overcoming the limitations of the traditional classroom. As Kenworthy-U’ren and Peterson (2005) put it, service-learning is often unattainable in the regular lecture format. With a person-centered approach, service-learning creates opportunities for students to be responsible for their own learning in authentic tasks and real-wold setting.

Leadership Development in Team-Based Community Service

Traditional leadership development focuses on leaders with formal positions and their roles to lead followers. To cope with the challenges in the twenty-first century, the traditional model is inadequate. It is important to develop self- and shared leadership in team-based projects (Pearce and Manz 2005). Distinct from the transactional or charismatic leadership approach where the leaders exert top-down influence (Avolio et al. 2009), the self- and shared leadership approach focuses on self-initiation and mutual support at a collective group work level.

Based on the concept that everyone can lead and manage oneself, self-leadership involves managing one’s behaviors to meet the existing goals. The process of developing self-leaders involves intrinsic motivation, self-influenced skill development, and strategic-oriented cognitions (Pearce and Manz 2005). Shared leadership highlights the interactive influence process within a group with shared or organizational goals (Pearce and Sims 2002). Social support is also an integral part of the team environment that facilitates shared leadership. Strong efforts should be made to provide emotional and psychological support to one another by team members so that the team can work together toward the same goals (Carson et al. 2007). By engaging all members of a team, shared leadership recognizes everyone’s unique contribution (Hernandez et al. 2011).

The Service Leadership Internship at the University of Hong Kong

The Service Leadership Internship (SLI) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) is an endeavor employing service-learning to develop self- and shared leadership among college students. With funding from the Hong Kong Institute of Service Leadership and Management (HKI-SLAM) and the Victor and William Fung Foundation, the SLI provides the students in social sciences and business a precious opportunity to hone their leadership skills in authentic services to the community. This program was first launched in the summer of 2012 as a credit-bearing course that spans 6–8 weeks. The enrollment is approximately 100, half from the School of Business and half from the Faculty of Social Sciences. The students are organized in teams of three to five members. Each team is sent to an agency in the community and designated to work on an assigned project under the supervision of a staff from the agency concerned.

It is often difficult to learn leadership, social awareness, and social responsibility within the regular lecture setting of a traditional classroom. Students cannot acquire these skills by simply sitting in a lecture hall listening to the experts. It takes an experiential learning process for the students to practice, consolidate, and master the skills learned in the classroom. In this process, students are required to actively integrate the academic component in the curriculum with their frontline experience. To develop students’ self- and shared leadership, students in the SLI are placed in the community to undertake different service tasks. They are expected to learn the values, knowledge, and skills involved in leadership with hands-on experience in a real-world setting.

The Objectives of the SLI

With reference to the advantages of community involvement in leadership training, the SLI at the University of Hong Kong aims to achieve the following four objectives:

  1. 1.

    To strengthen the students’ sense of social responsibilities in leadership

  2. 2.

    To assist the students to acquire the personal competencies required in leadership through the enhancement of:

    1. (a)

      Self-efficacy and abilities in tackling novel challenges and ill-defined issues

    2. (b)

      Resilience to setbacks

    3. (c)

      Critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills

    4. (d)

      Self-reflection on personal and professional growth

  3. 3.

    To help the students acquire the social competencies needed in leadership by enhancing their

    1. (a)

      Collective efficacy and team building skills

    2. (b)

      Collaboration and conflict resolution skills

    3. (c)

      Communication skills

  4. 4.

    To enable the students to hone their leadership skills in authentic services to the community. These skills include:

    1. (a)

      Organization and management skills

    2. (b)

      Planning and decision-making skills

    3. (c)

      Skills in exerting positive influence on others

These four objectives are in line with the core beliefs of the curriculum framework proposed by the HKI-SLAM. That being said, leadership is a service to the people who are being led. This service must be for the common good of the community. Therefore, the uppermost important objective of leadership training is the cultivation of social responsibility among the students as future leaders. In the SLI, students are expected to work for the betterment of human conditions through their services to the community. To do so, they need both personal and social competencies.

The SLI adopts a social-cognitive approach in motivation (Dweck 2006) as the theoretical basis for the enhancement of self-growth and personal competencies. Emphasis is placed on changing the mindset and promoting self-efficacy and self-resilience. Mindset denotes the implicit but powerful belief about the malleability of ability. Students with a growth mindset believe that ability is malleable, whereas students with a fixed mindset believe that ability is a fixed entity that is rarely changed. According to Dweck (2006), students with a growth mindset have stronger resilience after setbacks because they believe that failures cannot define them. They will continue to seek challenges to see continuous growth in themselves. In contrast, students with a fixed mindset tend to give up after setbacks because they believe that they cannot do much to enhance their ability and redeem themselves. In the pre-internship workshops, students are introduced to the concepts of growth and fixed mindsets. They are encouraged to examine their own mindset and the differential consequences of alternative mindsets.

A strong sense of social responsibility and sound personal competencies are the necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for reliable leadership. Effective leaders need to have social competencies and adequate skills in organization, management, and decision-making. Therefore, the third objective of the SLI is to promote social competencies of the students and the fourth objective is to hone the students’ skills in leadership. A team-based project provides an exceptional learning practice to achieve these two objectives because it requires collaboration. Indeed, the students have to work together for the same goals and resolve any interpersonal conflicts that deter them from task completion. A social-cognitive approach in motivation is adopted to aid the students to cope with interpersonal conflicts. In the pre-internship workshops, students are introduced to two attribution styles in interpersonal conflicts: situation-based attribution and trait-based attribution (Weiner 2001). People tend to attribute their own mistakes to situational factors and other people’s mistakes to personality factors. This fundamental attribution error is not conducive to conflict resolution. To avoid fundamental attribution error, students are encouraged to see interpersonal conflicts from other people’s perspectives. Past research has shown that a growth mindset can facilitate situation-based attribution and forgiveness in interpersonal conflicts (Chiu et al. 1997; Levy and Dweck 1998). Personal competencies and social competencies are not isolated. What students learn from the instruction on personal competencies is also related to social competencies.

Unlike individual internships, team-based internships offer a unique opportunity for students to hone their leadership skills. An intern who is attached individually to an agency in the community is usually the most inexperienced and junior person. As the animal at the bottom of the totem pole, the intern can rarely assume a leadership role. In contrast, when interns are sent to the agency as a team and designated to work on a specific project, they must become responsible leaders in order to complete the task. In the process of working together as a team for a shared vision and mission, they master the skills of collaboration and instinctively improve their social competencies. Most importantly, they have a chance to sharpen their leadership skills through experiential learning in real community services.

Types of Projects

One core feature of the SLI at HKU is the integration of academic knowledge and practical work in experiential learning. Throughout the summer, the interns are organized into teams of three to five members to initiate, develop, and implement service tasks for their community partners. By making advantageous use of their multidisciplinary knowledge, the interns contribute as shared leaders to help their community partners to generate innovative solutions to authentic problems. Although the nature of the service varies across projects, all the tasks involved are realistic.

Sample Projects of the School of Business

The SLI teams from the School of Business are engaged in consultation services for small and medium enterprises or nongovernment organizations (NGO). Some sample consultation projects are listed below:

  • Promotion of fair trade. By comparing and analyzing fair trade and non-fair trade products, a team of interns suggested ways for a social enterprise to improve market competitiveness.

  • Advertising strategies. A team of interns used a wide range of marketing tools (e.g., marketing mix, PEST analysis, segmentation, targeting, and positioning) to understand the current trend and challenges of a company and to recommend a future marketing strategy.

  • Funeral planning services. To help an NGO that provided funeral services, a team of interns conducted comprehensive marketing research on the perception of pre-funeral planning and innovative funeral products, pricing, and choices. They also worked on a promotional plan for the current services of this NGO.

Sample Projects of the Faculty of Social Sciences

For the SLI teams from the Faculty of Social Sciences, all projects are organized in terms of five different themes: (1) clinical and educational services; (2) communication, media, and culture; (3) corporate social responsibility; (4) community or social services; and (5) research and policy analysis. During the summer of 2014, 57 students worked on 22 SLI projects involving 19 different community partners. Some examples are presented below:

  • Clinical and educational services. One team of interns supported young adult cancer patients by compiling a positive psychology program manual and creating a website with online resources and materials. Another team worked on an evaluation plan of a project supporting students with autistic spectrum disorder by conducting focus group interviews with different stakeholders.

  • Communication, media, and culture. A team of interns supported the cookbook project of a food bank by working on the liaison between professional chefs and nutritionists for recipe submission and publication.

  • Corporate social responsibility. Through preparation and participation in different programs, a team of interns promoted social enterprise development and devised a comprehensive program plan for the following year.

  • Community or social services. One team of interns conducted outreach interviews, distributed newsletters, and organized activities for the sex workers who often work in isolation. The purpose was to promote mutual support among them and enlighten awareness toward their uninformed rights. An additional team of interns were involved in an outreach program for drug prevention. The interns prepared the promotional and educational materials for the outreach program.

  • Research and policy analysis. One team of interns conducted a research analysis of working poverty. They reviewed relevant statistics and conducted a fieldwork survey with the low-income workers in Hong Kong. Another team of interns worked on an in-depth research project that involved data collection from various sources and comprehensive analysis. On the basis of the analysis, the interns advised the community partner about the immediate needs of the youth.

Preparation

Arranging SLI projects for 100 students over the summer requires careful preparation. Although the internship is launched in summer, preparatory work has to be undertaken 9 months prior. As early as September and October, the academic tutors of the SLI pay visits to different organizations and identify the appropriate community partners that would offer suitable internship sites. It is important to match the skills and interest of the interns with the projects offered by the community partners. The list of community partners is reviewed and revised every year. Feedback from the interns plays an important part in the review process.

The list of community partners is usually confirmed by the beginning of the spring semester. An internship fair is organized in January in order to notify the students of what internship opportunities are available. The internship fair is a highly interactive process where prospective interns can receive useful information regarding different projects. Past interns and community partners are on site to share information and past experiences as well as clarify any concerns or questions. The nature of the various projects and the requirements from different community partners are displayed on exhibition boards. Each prospective intern is provided with a brochure containing information about the available projects.

Three weeks after the internship fair, the students apply for their preferred projects using an online system. They indicate their preferences by means of a priority list. From March to May, the supervisors of the community partners contact the interns directly for interviews in several rounds of matching. If some students do not receive an offer in the first round of interviews, the academic tutors will meet with them and provide advice about how to proceed with their priority list and the next round of interviews. The academic tutors will help every student to secure an offer as the total number of posts available outnumbers the total number of applicants. In other words, all the students will be able to find a job by the end of May.

Learning Process

Pre-internship Workshops

Five mandatory pre-internship workshops are organized to equip students with the basic knowledge, skills, and values before commencing with project teams.

  • Workshop 1. The first workshop focuses on team building. In this kickoff activity, students form into teams and learn how to play African drums. This is a playful and energizing start-up that most students enjoy. For some teams, it is the first time the members meet each other.

  • Workshop 2. The second workshop focuses on service-learning and leadership. After watching videos of companies and social enterprises, the students are asked to reflect on the significance of social responsibility and how it is related to transactional leadership, transformational leadership, shared leadership, servant leadership, and self-leadership.

  • Workshop 3. The third workshop focuses on personal competencies within the theoretical framework of social-cognitive approaches in motivation. Through interactive activities, the students learn how different goal orientations and mindsets influence their self-efficacy and resilience to setbacks. Students also reflect on their own mindsets after exposure to different scenarios.

  • Workshop 4. The fourth workshop focuses on social competencies in leadership. Through a series of simulated games, students learn how attribution affects interpersonal interactions. They also learn how to resolve conflicts.

  • Workshop 5. The last workshop focuses on academic outcomes; support is provided to students so that they can integrate academic knowledge with experiential learning.

The five workshops offer the necessary provision to the students before they embark upon their internship. It is noteworthy that the themes in Workshops 2, 3, and 4 are social responsibility, personal competencies, and social competencies, respectively. They are in correspondence with the objectives of the SLI described earlier.

Ongoing Support

In addition to the pre-internship training, ongoing support and guidance are provided to students throughout the internship. Each team of students is assigned a supervisor from the community partner and an academic tutor from the university. Regular meetings are held among these three parties. The supervisor monitors their progress at work and provides feedback to the team. The academic tutors pay visits to the internship site and observe how the students are performing their service tasks.

The students are invited to come back to the campus to share their experiences with the other teams. This provides an opportunity for problem solving and alternative perspectives. The academic tutors are available for further consultation.

Assessment for Learning Outcomes

Multiple assessment methods are structured in the program for evaluation of achievement relative to the expected learning outcomes. In the first 2 weeks of internship, students are required to submit a background report of the organization and a project proposal. A self-reflection journal is required along with the submission of an integrated report, which is to be completed by the end of the internship. A poster conference is held a week after the internship is completed in celebration of the students’ accomplishments. This presentation allows the students to share the valuable knowledge they have gained with the other teams. The students’ achievement is evaluated by community partners, academic tutors, peers, and the students themselves.

Program Evaluation

In general, the students find their involvement in the SLI rewarding. The followings are comments from some students

This SLI was honestly one of the best internships I have ever done … Along the way, I learned an enormous amount about project management, effective communications both within the team and with external parties. I also had fun working with a great team. I have learned many new cooking tips, and discovered numerous new restaurants! (Comment from an intern in the food bank)

It was an inspiring and fulfilling journey. It provided me with ample opportunities in understanding the true nature of the sex industry and sex workers … Another valuable gain for me from the SLI was the experience of teamwork. We worked closely and solved problems effectively. The process and experience of shared leadership let me further explore my strengths and weaknesses. (Comment from an intern in an NGO for sex workers)

The above anecdotal comments may illustrate how some students felt about their experience in the SLI. However, the students were not well positioned to provide objective feedback about the effectiveness of SLI in achieving its program aims. Therefore, an evaluation study was conducted with the students who took the SLI in summer, 2013. Change in mindset and attribution styles, gains in social responsibility, personal competencies, social competencies, and shared-leadership skills were investigated.

Participants

The experimental group consisted of 98 students who participated in the SLI group matched with the control group consisting of 99 students who participated in another internship provided in the Faculty of Social Sciences during the same period. The latter internship also required the students to work in the community for 8 weeks; however, they did not work as a team and a leadership component was not involved. The interns in the control group were sent individually to the community partners. Most of the students within both groups were students who had just finished their first year of college study. Females made up 63 % and 75 % of the experimental group and control group, respectively. The difference was not significant: χ 2 = 3.23, df = 1, p = .07

Procedures

Before and after the internship, students from both groups completed a questionnaire that measured their mindset, attribution style, tendency to forgive in social conflicts, and perception of gains from the internship. In the fourth week of the internship, the students in the SLI also completed a peer evaluation questionnaire on shared-leadership skills.

Measures

Mindset

The students’ mindset was measured by six items of the implicit theories scale developed by Dweck, Chiu, and Hong (1995). Students were asked to indicate their agreement to the items (e.g., “Everyone is a certain kind of person and there is not much that can be done to really change that”) on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). A high score indicated a high endorsement for a person’s intelligence and personality being fixed entities that would not alter significantly due to the experiences of the internship (α = .87).

Attribution Style

The students’ attribution style was measured by their responses to four scenarios of social conflicts (e.g., “A friend betrayed the trust you had in her/him”). The students were asked to indicate how much they thought each scenario was caused by the personality of this friend on a 6-point scale (1 = not at all, 6 = very much). A high score indicated a high tendency to adopt a trait-based attribution (α = .70). They were also asked to indicate how much they thought each scenario was caused by many factors in the situation on the same rating scale. A high score indicated high tendency to adopt situation-based attribution (α = .70).

Forgiveness

The students’ tendency to forgive was also measured by their responses to the above scenarios. They were asked to indicate how likely they would forgive this friend (1 = not likely, 6 = very likely). A high score indicated a high tendency to forgive (α = .76).

Social Responsibility and Personal and Social Competencies

At the end of the internship, the students evaluated how much they gained from the internship regarding social responsibility, personal competencies, and social competencies. The scale of social responsibility was composed of six items (e.g., “I had an opportunity to develop social responsibility and citizenship skills”), α = .84. The scale of personal competencies was composed of six items (e.g., “I had an opportunity to experience personal growth”), α = .86. The social competencies scale was composed of four items (e.g., “I had an opportunity to enhance my interpersonal skills”), α = .84. The students were asked to indicate their agreement to these items on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree).

Shared Leadership

In the fourth week of the internship, the students in the SLI were asked to evaluate the shared-leadership skills of them and their peers in the same team with the scale developed by Small and Rentsch (2010). The scale consists of 12 items (e.g., “Member X treated all group members as his/her equals; acknowledged and considered suggestions from all team members”). The students were asked to evaluate each team member including themselves on a 5-point scale (1 = never, 5 = always). A high score indicated a high evaluation of shared-leadership skills (α = .93).

Results

Mindset

To test whether the SLI had changed the mindset of the students, a mixed-model ANOVA was performed on the mindset scores with time as the within-subject variable (pre vs. post) and condition as between-subject variable (experimental vs. control). A significant interaction effect between time and condition was found, F (1,143) = 6.49, p = .012, ŋ 2 = .043. To decompose the interaction effect, two post hoc t tests were performed. As shown in Fig. 1, the two groups were not different in their fixed mindset scores (3.30 vs. 3.32) before the internship, t = −.14, df = 143, p = . 87. However, the experimental group had lower scores in the fixed mindset (M = 3.08, SD = .86) than the control group (M = 3.32, SD = .89) after the internship, t = 2.33, df = 143, p = .02.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The fixed mindset of the control and experimental groups before and after the internship

Full size image

Attribution Style and Forgiveness

Students with a less-fixed mindset at the end of the program tended to be more forgiving (r = −.30, p = .02). They also tended not to attribute their friends’ minor transgressions to a personality trait (r = .29, p = .02). In addition, students who attributed the transgressions of their friends to a personality trait tended to be less forgiving (r = −.42, p = .001). In contrast, students who attributed the transgressions of their friends to factors in the situation tended to be more forgiving (r = 31, p = .02).

Social Responsibility, Personal and Social Competencies, and Shared Leadership

There was no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in their perceived gains in social responsibility (M Exp = 4.50, SDExp = .67; M Con = 4.51, SDCon = .82; t = .03, df = 143, p = .97), personal competencies (M Exp = 4.78, SDExp = .56; M Con = 4.80, SDCon = .84; t = .15, df = 143, p = .89), and social competencies (M Exp = 4.85, SDExp = .61; M Con = 4.76, SDCon = .82; t = −.71, df = 143, p = .48). Nevertheless, the students in the experimental group received a high evaluation from their teammate on shared leadership (M = 4.25, SD = .43). One sample t-test indicated that it was significantly higher than 3, the midpoint (t = 27, df = 86, p < .001).

Future Directions

The SLI at the University of Hong Kong has contributed to the field by integrating service-learning into leadership training in the Hong Kong context. Instead of lecturing the students about leadership skills and social responsibility in the classroom, the SLI involves students in authentic team-based project work. They initiate, develop, and implement service tasks for different organizations in the community contributing as shared leaders. The program evaluation indicated positive changes among students in shared-leadership skills, growth mindset, and forgiving behaviors that are conducive to conflict resolution.

Although the program evaluation indicated positive results, there is room for improvement of the study. First, the program evaluation procedure can be improved by including more control groups. The SLI should not only be compared to another internship that does not involve team projects but also to other different modes of instructions, e.g., lectures. Second, as the SLI provides a platform for students to work as shared leaders, it would be beneficial for future studies to study the team environment (Carson et al. 2007) and investigate the factors contributing to the developmental cycles of teams. Last but not least, as the SLI aims at nurturing responsible leaders with social awareness, it will be instrumental in conducting a longitudinal study to scrutinize the long-term impact of the experience across different aspects of students’ lives.

As for the future development for SLI at the University of Hong Kong, one possible direction is to go beyond the territory of Hong Kong. To nurture global leaders, it is worthwhile to send students to community development projects beyond the border of Hong Kong. Through authentic team-based service-learning in developing countries, students will acquire not only knowledge related to being an integral part of a real context but also the social awareness that arises through interconnectedness across countries. Service-learning is different from volunteering because it promotes the highest ideal of social change (Morton 1995). The social change is not restricted to Hong Kong. Another possible direction is the involvement of students from more disciplines other than those in the Faculty of Social Sciences and the School of Business. The skills acquired in an interdisciplinary team will be helpful for the students in their future endeavors.

Conclusion

The SLI at the University of Hong Kong sheds light on leadership training in higher education by using community-based service-learning to nurture future leaders. With the support of community partners from different service sectors, students have the opportunity to enhance both their personal and social competencies. Students are able to become competent leaders through the team-based platform and the application of academic knowledge in real-life arenas utilizing self- and shared leadership skills. Most importantly, they work together for the betterment of human conditions through their service to the community.