Developing undergraduates' self-awareness and social-awareness through service-learning: Opportunities and challenges

In order to develop undergraduates’ core competences, since 2014-15, students of HKIEd have been required to complete a 3-credit Co-curricular and Service Learning (CSL) Course, in which students are involved in service-based activities. The current paper contributes to our knowledge about the relationship between undergraduates’ personal development and service learning with focusing on the change of self-awareness and social-awareness of a sample of HKIEd students who were enrolled in CSL courses in 2014-15. Pre and posttest surveys were employed to track participants’ change of self-awareness and social-awareness over one semester period. Two validated instruments, Situational Self-Awareness Scale and The Social Awareness Inventory, were employed to capture participants’ self-awareness and social-awareness development. Additionally, five subscales taken from the survey titled “Service-Learning Quality Indicators” were administered post-project to assess student participants’ evaluation of service-learning program quality. The findings will report participants’ change of self-awareness and social-awareness as well as the impacts the five factors of quality service-learning programs.