Academic Scientific JournalsService learning as boundary crossing in higher education pedagogy: a qualitative analysis of participants’ experiences in an interdisciplinary project
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26881/head.2025.3.15Keywords:
service learning, higher education, interdisciplinary collaboration, experiential learningAbstract
This article reports findings from a qualitative study of students’ experiences in ARTIS, an interdisciplinary service-learning initiative jointly implemented by the University of Gdansk and the Academy of Fine Arts, in partnership with an industrial stakeholder (a woodworking/furniture company) and Montessori schools. The empirical basis consists of eight learning diaries authored by pedagogy students. Using open coding (Charmaz), Kvale’s seven–step interpretive procedure, and reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke), we identified five interrelated categories: the learning situation, integrating theoretical knowledge with personal, market, and social needs, perceived benefits of service learning, emerging challenges, and logistical/organizational aspects of running the project. The results portray service learning as a collaboration laboratory and a boundary–crossing mechanism–between theory and practice, academia, and societal/market environments, and between traditional teacher–student roles. Participants reported increased agency, enhanced teamwork and critical reflection, and a stronger sense of purpose in their studies due to engagement with real users and iterative prototyping. In the discussion, we relate our findings to experiential learning scholarship and to debates on universities’ third mission and the more fluid notions of a fourth and fifth mission. We note the lack of consensual definitions for missions 4 and 5 yet underline their heuristic value for describing innovative pedagogy. We conclude that, as implemented in ARTIS, service learning operationalizes the third mission and may also enact selected aspects of a fourth mission (knowledge translation/market interfaces) and a fifth mission (innovation/social responsibility and digital transformation).
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