Service Learning in an Urban Context: Pedagogy for Nurturing Empathy and Moral Development

Abstract

The article proposes the 4-Es (namely Exposure, Explanation, Experience, and Evaluation) pedagogical model in empathy building that can facilitate moral development in students. This research reveals that the 4-Es pedagogy, which has been adopted in a university’s service-learning course to study the living conditions of disadvantaged residents in urban Hong Kong, is largely effective as most students have expressed positive comments from their reflective journals and the pre- and post-program evaluation. Yet the actual efficacy is mediated by a number of factors which include the past experience of the students and the learning motivation.

Keywords

service learning empathy-building model moral development

Introduction

Empathy building is an indispensable aspect of moral development. Previous studies on empathy were focused on exploring the nature, mechanism, and function of empathy, which have been strictly confined to conceptual building (Decety & Lamm, 2006; Gerdes & Segal, 2011; Hoffman, 2000). They devoted little or no efforts in building a practical pedagogical model in nurturing empathy as a constituent part of moral development (Everhart, 2016; Maxwell & Racine, 2010). Although some research have been done to examine the impact of service learning on students’ moral development, most of these studies defined “moral development” narrowly as cognitive moral reasoning (Boss, 1994; Bowdon et al., 2015; Gorman et al., 1994). This research aims at proposing a pedagogical model for nurturing empathy of students by use of service learning delivered to disadvantaged households within an urban context. Through the study, it can facilitate moral development of students from a holistic perspective by going beyond moral reasoning to a deeper level, including the intention, motivation, and planning for future moral acts. Most previous studies on service learning only investigated its positive impacts on students, without exploring the factors that tend to affect these impacts and to what extent they do. This article attempts to fill in these research gaps by meeting the following objectives:

Proposing a pedagogical model in empathy nurturing which is essential for moral development on the part of students.

Evaluating the efficacy of the proposed model with respect to a service-learning course.

Identifying the possible different mediating factors that may moderate the outcomes of our proposed model, affecting the effectiveness of service learning (in empathy building and moral development).

To achieve the goal of this study, we examine a case study of a service-learning course by exploring the housing issue in the urban context. The provision of adequate housing has been the prime objective of many governments’ policy agenda, yet a substantial number of people around the world still live in inappropriate shelter (HKSAR, 2012; U.N. Habitat, 2009). The challenges of insufficient housing are not limited to developing areas, in metropolitan cities like New York, London and Hong Kong, disadvantaged households are also trapped in the low-end housing (Apple Daily, 2012–2014). Through community service and engagement, the service-learning course under discussion is tailored in an attempt to nurture empathy among undergraduate students majoring in building- and construction-related disciplines by examining the living conditions of the disadvantaged households facing the great housing disparity and social inequality in Hong Kong, a globalized city. This exploration of urban society outside the “ivory tower” complements the theoretical and technical education studies in traditional curriculum by building a dimension of social understanding, moral development as well as the nurturing of empathy and professional ethics.

Review on Empathy, Moral Development, and Community Service Learning in the Urban Context

Gerdes and Segal (2011) stated that empathy is a critical component in developing an understanding of people’s experiences. Hoffman (2000) advocated empathy as an innate and involuntary response to an affective signal, whereas behaviorists focus on empathy as a learned communication and a conscious role taking. Decety and Lamm (2006) advocated that, by linking the non-social-cognitive processes to social-cognitive processes, the three mandatory and functional components, namely affective-sharing, self-awareness, and mental flexibility, will interact dynamically to form the ingredients of empathy. Baker (2003) provides a broadly accepted definition for empathy being the act of perceiving, understanding, experiencing, and responding to the emotional state and ideas of another person. When people have better understanding of the conditions and needs of others, they are more apt to become socially involved and foster social change. Although empathy by itself is not an immediate remedy in solving problem or alleviating poverty of people, it can act as a metaphorical compass that guides people to pursue social and economic justice in the community. Thus, when equipped with the knowledge, values, and skills of empathy, students can consciously take empathic action, make their (moral) judgments, and render social and civic responsibilities and services to their community more effectively. Decety and Jackson (2004) argued that the conceptualization of empathy must involve a multidisciplinary analysis which includes developmental and social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical neuropsychology. They alluded that empathy can be defined as the natural ability to understand the emotions and feelings of others, whether or not one witnesses the scene, sees the photograph, reads it in fiction novel, or merely imagines it. The responses generate the three subjective experiences of (a) “feeling what the person is feeling,” (b) “knowing how the person is feeling,” and (c) “a willingness to respond to the distress of the person”; these three elements constitutes the three signature trilogy of empathy.

In regard to moral development, Stephens (2009) defined morality as system of beliefs, values, or principles that prescribe positive actions to benefit others, or otherwise, that proscribe negative actions to harm others. Hult (2008) put morality in the societal context by stating morality as a “generally accepted standard or custom for right living in a society” (p.561). Essentially, morality is the set of behavior-governing rules and principles that facilitate human co-existence in a community. Academic discussions on moral development have been centered on the aspect of cognitive moral reasoning, viz a viz Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s works. The latter mainly focuses on justice-based cognitive moral reasoning which one undergoes in making moral judgments when presented with hypothetical moral dilemmas, for example, one should do good to avoid punishment or that one should do good because it is the right thing to do in hypothetical situations.

Nevertheless, there may be a gap between the moral reasoning (and judgment) in hypothetical situations and moral behavior in real-life situations. For instance, I may reason that in a hypothetical situation X, I will do A, given that it is the right thing to do. However, when I encounter the same situation X in real life, I may suffer from the “weakness of will” and become too frightened to do A; because it may involve risking my life. The fear is so real and imminent that I choose not to implement A, even when I do recognize that it is the right thing to do in such a situation. Thus, the moral development of a person is far beyond mere cognitive reasoning; it entails multifaceted dimensions (such as empathy, ethical sensitivity, moral motivation, and moral obligation) which are expressed in one’s morally significant behavior. Despite saying that, empathy building is an important dimension of moral development. As Maxwell and Racine (2010) pointed out, the development of empathy enhances moral sensitivity, facilitates moral judgment, motivates people to rectify their moral wrongs, and is an essential trait in a moral character. Empathy also encourages individual engagements in ethical reflections (Valaere et al., 2010), which underpin moral acts.

Although studies (for example, Boss, 1994; Gorman et al., 1994) have been conducted on the effect of service learning on students’ moral development, most of them are limited to cognitive moral reasoning. Among the limited study, Zlotkowski (1996) examines service learning and ethical behavior in a theoretical discussion, but his study lacks a systematic approach of data collection to substantiate its arguments. Furthermore, previous research on service learning in an urban context has focused on studies related to urban underprivileged such as the homeless, the visually impaired learners, and underserved communities in urban areas (Smith et al., 2017), no research can be found from the reviewed literature that has attempted to use building safety and housing well-being as service-learning foci to reveal the underpinning problem of housing disparity and inequitable access to safe and quality housing in the urban context. This research project is designed to more fully understand the nurturing of empathy among students majoring in building and construction-related disciplines by enhancing their education embedded with service-learning objectives.

Methodology

In cultivating empathy, Segal (2008) asserted that an individual’s empathy is gained through one’s personal development following a three-tiered model which involves:

Exposure—to become aware of the differences between you and others, and that this awareness is also the first step in exploring diversity and the experiences of others who lead different lives.

Explanation—to understand what makes people different, why they are different, and what these differences mean in explaining diversity.

Experience—to obtain a deeper understanding of others by participating in the daily living of others through actual experience.

Bogo and Vayda (1998) argued that continuous practice generates effective learning through two interlinked processes. One process is the subjective reflection of students’ understanding and reactions to the practice situation. The other process involves the conceptualization of the practice situation and interventions by making connections to theory with the guidance of the field instructor. The three-tiered model introduced by Segal: exposure, explanation, and experience, has been able to get students to apply theory to conceptualize the practice situation. However, the model lacks an explicit evaluation of students’ own understanding and reflection of their empathetic responses to the practice situation. To fill this gap, the present article builds on Segal’s model and proposes a four-tiered pedagogical model, recognized as the 4-Es Empathy-building Model, for cultivating empathy, thereby facilitating moral development at the end (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

4-Es empathy-building model.

As shown in Figure 1, the 4-Es Model promotes movement from each critical learning stage to a further stage by combining learning and experience in a highly structured pedagogical design, to enable the students in translating their learning into action through a learning-by-practice approach.

In the Exposure and Explanation Stages, aside from learning how people feel and looking for a diverse explanation with the help of instructors in the arranged seminars and workshops, students also learn to explore self-awareness and mental flexibility by processing voluntary mental thoughts from a perspective of participation (role-playing) and simulation. In empathy building, the best response to peoples’ distress may not be in feeling distressed too but a conscious effort to soothe that distress through empathic responses and pro-social actions.

In the Experience Stage, students are assigned to different districts to offer social services to disadvantaged households. The field experience provides students with the opportunities to cognitively modulate their experience of empathy and control their emotional state when connecting with people whose socio-economic and cultural background are different from theirs. During the fieldwork, students should be able to demonstrate their empathy by giving appropriate empathic responses and taking pro-social actions as moral acts, if required.

Upon completion of the field services, the Evaluation Stage follows. At this stage, students reflect upon their experiences in the community, synthesize the information collected, evaluate the situations encountered, and contextualize their empathic and moral responses both through seminars and reflections in assignments. Through these exercises, students can explicitly ascertain their role as a citizen or future service professionals, depending on their enrolled curriculum.

Case Study: “Housing for the Community” Service-Learning Course

To validate the 4-Es Model and assess its effectiveness in nurturing empathy, a service-learning course (entitled “Housing for the Community”) in serving the disadvantaged households living in districts with urban decay was developed at undergraduate level in a university in Hong Kong as a case study. The case study also allowed the analysis of any possible mediating factors that might have moderated the expected outcomes of the proposed model. Apart from reflection journals submitted by students, qualitative interviews with them were also used which would give the participants room and time for probing and explanation. Preprogram and postprogram questionnaire surveys were also conducted to enhance the validity of the findings synthesized from the interviews and the journals. The course was open to students of Faculty of Construction and Environment for selection. A total of 30 students with engineering/surveying background were enrolled in this course in 2014–15 academic year. In this course, students were required to visit households living in subdivided units¹ and elderly households living in government-subsidized public rental housing.² The students assessed the households’ needs during these visits and completed some small-scale household repairs under the expert advice and supervision of technicians as deemed appropriate, thereby providing services to improve the living condition, home safety, or general living standard of the household concerned, thus going beyond the act of visiting as a service by showing care and concern to the disadvantaged households.

By adopting the 4-Es Model, the first two Es, namely, the Exposure and Explanation stage, were integrated into the service-learning course. (a) Lectures were delivered by instructors to provide students with an understanding of the theories covering the conceptual framework of empathy and its core values in human services. (b) Seminars were also held by practitioners of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social groups to share their views about the undesirable living condition of the most vulnerable groups in Hong Kong urbanized society as well as the difficulties and social issues that they encountered. These were intended to trigger an involuntarily reaction of affective responses from students by feeling and mirroring the needs of the affected household in the community. (c) Collaborative workshops were organized with NGOs and social groups to equip students with a hands-on training before conducting the home visits. The workshops highlighted the specific needs of underprivileged households, thus preparing students intellectually and psychologically for the home visits. (d) Role-play was used as a pedagogical means to enable students to visualize the actual situations to face during home visits. It subjected the student to self-reflection by “viewing himself in the shoes” of the disadvantaged in his triggered response, thereby achieving empathy building and moral development. (e) Technical workshops on performing building inspections and small-scale repairs in an urban setting were also organized.

The third E, the Experience stage, is the most prominent in the entire empathy-building and moral development process in this course. It gives students first-hand experience on the precarious housing conditions in subdivided units and public rental housing. Apart from paying home visits to elderly households living in public rental housing as well as subdivided units, students were also required to conduct a survey of the district, carry out building inspections, and conduct interviews with the households to examine their living environment and habitation.

The fourth E is the Evaluation stage. Impact of the study was assessed by use of preprogram and postprogram surveys followed by reflective journals and interviews. Students were required to undergo an interactive session and reflect on, report, and contextualize their empathic responses in their field experience as well as assess their roles and responsibilities as undergraduates, future professional, a moral person and a responsible citizen. More important, with empathy, moral development and professional knowledge embedded in the curriculum design, this service-learning course would re-orient the students’ view of housing well-being from the perspective of the urban disadvantaged, thereby nurturing them to be potentially all-round better professionals with social understanding, sensitivity and compassion, rather than mere “technicians” with sheer possession of technical knowledge and skills.

Findings and Discussion: Efficacy of the Pedagogical Design of Service Learning

Apart from preprogram and postprogram questionnaire surveys, qualitative findings from the case study are organized in themes and subthemes identified in the data-analysis substantiated by excerpts from in-depth interviews or quotations from students’ reflection journals.

Evaluation of the 4-Es Pedagogy

The 4-Es pedagogy in empathy building and moral development, being built into the “Community Housing” service-learning course, yields the desired expectation (in meeting objective 2). Students agreed that the first two stages in the 4-Es Model (Exposure and Explanation) were helpful in giving them technical and psychological preparation for their home-visit fieldwork conducted:

The workshops are helpful because the lecturers gave highlights of problems you can observe when you visit elderly people. And the building inspection, the workshops enlightened us what we have to mark down or what kind of problems we need to examine. Also, the participation [triggered empathic response], I think it’s quite good, allowing you to try beforehand how to talk to elderly people. . . . Knowing that we would meet with elderly people, I made psychological preparation. (Case 8, Female, Living in private housing with a room of her own)

Home visits (i.e., the Experience stage) also served as an eye-opener to students and gave them a “shocking” experience. The visits provided students with a firsthand and face-to-face experience of the plight of the disadvantaged households in the urban setting. This experience is more gruesome than what is portrayed in the media, and it stimulates self-reflection and reflection upon the situation concerned which are portrayed in the following excerpt:

[This service-learning experience] acts as both an eye-opener and gives a shocking experience . . . .before now, I did not quite go to public rental housing or view sub-divided units. This activity allows me to go there for first-hand experience, understand peoples housing needs, difficulties and what problems they are facing. The shocking aspect is that picture displayed in television, even high-definition television still cannot simulate—there is still a distance between me and the [sub-divided unit] household. This [service-learning] activity gives a face-to-face experience. This is very shocking. (Case 4, Male, Living in a subsidized home-ownership flat)

This “shocking” experience, on the part of students, might represent a mild empathic distress which was more related to pro-social motive that made them feel compelled to help and engage in pro-social acts as discussed earlier, rather than bringing great unbearable distress and anxiety. Furthermore, most students reported that the living condition and environment of elderly households in public rental are generally satisfactory, whereas those living in subdivided units were found far from desirable.

The above findings are also in line with the results collected from the postprogram survey on the efficacy of the pedagogical design shown in Table 1. The results reveal that students treasured the learning experience with a high average score of 4.44 (E8) of which they were able to apply their professional knowledge and skills that they learned in the services (4.13 in E9). Furthermore, they become more aware of the needs in the community and their social responsibility (4.44 in E4 and 4.63 in E5, respectively) upon completion of the course.

Table 1.

Efficacy of the Pedagogical Design.

	Efficacy of pedagogical design	Rating
E1	Become more involved in the community	4.25
E2	Will continue my involvement in community services	4.44
E3	My work benefited to the community	4.44
E4	Be more aware of the community’s needs	4.44
E5	Have the social responsibility to serve the community	4.63
E7	Can make a difference in the community	4.13
E8	Satisfied with the service-learning subject/project	4.44
E9	Can apply the knowledge learnt to the project	4.13

Note. Students were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of their service-learning experience in achieving the pedagogical goals on a 5-point scale, with 1 being “least effective” and 5 being “most effective.”

In regard to nurturing of empathy, students showed signs of reflection, they contextualize their empathy, and indicate signs of future moral actions, as expressed in the following excerpts from students’ assignments:

Nevertheless, empathy is developed. Before the project, we may have known the situation of [the] underprivileged through newspaper or medias [sic], but we don’t really get into their situations or consider them from their perspectives, especially the subdivided flat residents. After the project, we are likely to concern the issues in Hong Kong and think about the ways to help them improve their living standards. (Final Report of Group 1)

To be honest, I also think that we cannot really help her so much. It is quite depressing. There are a lot of cases worse than Miss XXX’s family but what can we do actually? We can provide care to her but this won’t fix the problem. The one who can give a hand to help these people is the government. It does not mean that none is of our business. We could cooperate with NGOs and voice out for them so as strike a better living for the underprivileged. (Reflection of Student X in the Final Report of Group 4)

The above findings are also supported by the preprogram and postprogram surveys as shown in Table 2. Upon completion of the course, students are more concerned about the well-being of people in the community with an increased rating of 8.72% (PP2). They are more willing to help others even if they don’t get paid for it (PP3 and PP4), and they are more confident in dealing with people from different background (PP5 and PP6).

Table 2.

Preprogram and Postprogram Evaluation on Nurturing of Empathy.

	Nurturing of Empathy and Moral Development	Preprogram	Postprogram	% Change
PP1	Awareness of social issues in the community	3.90	4.13	+5.77
PP2	Concern on the well-being of people in the community	3.97	4.31	+8.72
PP3	Enthusiasm in serving people in need	4.17	4.44	+6.50
PP4	Help others event though I don’t get paid for it	4.17	4.50	+8.00
PP5	Awareness of whether doing the right things in different social settings	4.10	4.31	+5.18
PP6	Feel comfortable being with people from different backgrounds	4.27	4.31	+1.07

Note. Students were asked to make self-assessment on a 5-point scale, with 5 being “Highest Level” and 1 being “Lowest Level.”

Based on the above, the 4-Es pedagogy of the service-learning course is found to be effective in empathy building and the moral development of the students. However, students also reported if the service-recipients are in greater plight, it will give students a more “shocking” experience, stimulate deeper perspective taking and reflections, thereby resulting in even more successful nurturing of empathy and moral development. Nevertheless, choosing the context for comparing the “far from desirable” subdivided units and the “generally satisfactory” public rental units in the urban context of Hong Kong can balance different learning goals in nurturing the professional knowledge, empathy, and moral values of students.

Mediating Factors Moderating the Effectiveness of the Service Learning

The service-learning course is conducive to empathy building and moral development as it requires students to go beyond learning in “ivory tower” into the society to understand the social problems and serve the disadvantaged. This course facilitates engagement of students’ perspective which may seem as a ground-breaking experience for nurturing empathy.

First, I think in university, there is less emphasis on nurturing of moral [development] . . . [This service learning course can nurture moral development] because before you can serve others, you first need empathy. . . (Case 12, Male, Living in a subsidized home-ownership flat)

[The children of the sub-divided unit household] do not have television set, but they still need to bear with this and cannot ask their parents to buy a TV . . . [I put myself into the shoes of the children], I may become afraid to use money. And I put [myself] into the shoes of the parents, I will be frugal in every aspect . . . so that I can support the education of the children . . . I have not thought of these [before] at all. (Case 8, Female, Living in private housing with a room of her own)

The moral development of the students is not limited to the level of moral judgment but is also extended to a deeper level, including the intention, motivation, and planning for future moral acts, as expressed in the following excerpt:

We need to know, though I grow up in a quite good environment, there are some people who need to live in bad housing. We need to try to see how to help these people improve their living environment . . . I have a motivation to help, will join some voluntary service activities to see how to help . . .” (Case 4, Male, Living in a subsidized home-ownership flat)

Serving disadvantaged people in service learning also stimulates students to rethink about the point of study. A student declared that before service learning, his ambition was to earn money for a comfortable life. However, after the service-learning experience, he started to reflect upon the duty and responsibility of a surveyor, his future profession. He thinks that apart from getting a comfortable work and living environment, he has a responsibility to help the disadvantaged as a professional. Thus, service learning is also constructive in building professional ethics.

In summary, service-learning experience is conducive to empathy building, moral development, and professional ethics building. However, the degree and effectiveness of these experiences in the aforementioned aspects are mediated by a number of factors (in meeting objective 3). The most significant factor is the condition of the service-recipients and whether or not they deserve help as shown in the following student’s observation:

After visiting the sub-divided unit, from what she said, I think to a high extent, they may be “cheating” to get CSSA³. . . . In fact, when I first entered [the sub-divided unit], I saw the two children playing with an iPad, afterwards, I saw that they had iphone 6 plus. . .During the sharing, the [mother] told us that the children would stay at community centre after school until 7:00p.m. I thought during this period, the mother could go out to work, but she did not. She then shared with us that the toilet in her flat in Mainland [China] is bigger than her [present] sub-divided unit. I imagine why she has ‘hands and legs,’ but does not work . . . I think when the children goes to school, she can get a proper job . . . I also think there are reservations with [this case] . . . .If she is so rich in Mainland [China], why have they come to Hong Kong to live like this? (Case 7, Male, Living in a subsidized home-ownership flat)

If the service-recipients are the “deserving poor,” such as those being poor because of illness, age, or involuntary unemployment, those whose poverty is not traceable to their own fault and thus deserving assistance from the government and their fellowmen, then the effect of the service-learning experience on the students’ empathy building and moral development will be more positive. The worst scenario is when students encountered people who are not legitimate welfare recipients or those who may be “cheating” to obtain welfare as in the previous mentioned case. However, in organizing service learning, it is difficult to prescreen the service-recipients to ensure that they are the deserving poor. Therefore, giving students an effective case for empathy building and moral development is not always guaranteed. However, even if the service-recipients are not the “deserving poor,” the concerned student, as shown in case 7, still considers it as an atypical case and does not generalize it as a common situation among the urban welfare recipients of Hong Kong. This atypical case may serve as an eye-opener for students, giving them a vivid example of “reverse teaching materials” for moral development. It poses a case of moral condemnation, thus stimulating students’ moral reflection not out of empathy with but out of the nonrecognition of and detachment from the “undeserving poor.”

Besides the circumstances of the service-recipients, the past experiences of a student can also affect the extent of empathy building and moral development in the experience stage. The crux of the matter is whether or not a student has a traumatic experience with incidence of poverty. If the student feels that his or her experience with poverty may not be a matter of particular concern, he or she may not be very compassionate with the service-recipients circumstances. The student may give a cold response to matter. This could make their service-learning experience less constructive in empathy building and moral development than that of other students who have had no experience of poverty and view the plight of the service-recipients as “shocking” and a great concern thus stimulating their deeper reflection and sympathy. The following comments given by a student who grew up in a deprived situation is an example:

At that time, there were a lot of cockroaches. Also, [the public rental housing⁴ unit] was very small. [I] did not feel very problematic. Perhaps, I was a young boy at that time, [thus] did not care much. Later on, we moved to a larger unit. For this sub-divided unit household, if [we] calculate the area per head, it should still be greater than my previous [experience]. Thus, my [compassionate] feeling is not very deep. Whether it is crowded [in the sub-divided unit]; to general people, they will think that it is quite crowded . . . I have [even worse] experience in the past; [thus] the [compassionate] feeling is not very deep . . . If you are used to live in a bigger flat, you go to [the sub-divided unit], your feeling will be deeper. (Case 11, Male, Living in public rental housing)

In addition to the past experience of individual students’ mediating service-learning experience, the students’ motivations in taking the service-learning course is also a determining factor. In this service-learning case, all students must take at least one service-learning course under discussion as a curriculum requirement in the university. Given the compulsory nature of the service-learning in this university, the students’ motivation to take this specific service-learning course may vary from merely fulfilling the curriculum requirement to gaining a deeper understanding of the Hong Kong housing problems and genuinely hoping to serve the community. The students’ motivations in taking this course are different and may affect the eventual learning outcomes. The following excerpt from an interview is a proof of this situation:

. . .It depends on whether you are active. If you really want to understand more, you will automatically take initiative to learn. If you have other factors that will affect you, for example, you are academically very busy or there are other matters which obstruct you, you will put less emphasis on this [service-learning] course, you will not be very concerned about this (matters which obstruct you), and not learn anything from the course . . . and perhaps, there are very impressive [reasons] that motivated you to do this. I think it is not very good to make this [service-learning course] compulsory. I think it is better if it is an elective . . . However, there are some advantages of being compulsory, there will be more voluntary services [done]. Regardless of their motivations, those who voluntarily do this will definitely do it in a better way. (Case 11, Male, Living in public rental housing)

Situating the service-learning site in the local urban context of Hong Kong facilitates easy identification with the service-recipients as students may be better able to identify commonalities between the local service-recipients and themselves. Hoffman (2000) outlines “familiarity bias” in empathy development and stated that most people empathize to a greater extent with people similar to them. The service-learning experience may stimulate some students to reflect on the question of justice in social inequality in the urban context of Hong Kong with great contrast in the livelihood of different Hong Kongers. This reflection may involve moral evaluations as applied to real-life contexts:

[This service-learning experience] makes me reflect on being a Hong Konger. We are all Hong Kongers, but we live in different environments. I remember, the building next to the sub-divided unit is a luxurious flat building . . . two very different worlds; think over why it is like this. Also, the sub-divided unit area is very densely [populated], very cramped. The mother and the son do not feel very safe. Thus, they do not go out at in the evening. [This] makes me reflect on why such situation exists. (Case 6, Female, Living in private housing)

The service-learning course exposes students to social problems related to housing in the Hong Kong context through home visits to subdivided units. These visits also facilitated a comparison with the housing condition in subsidized public rental housing through home visits to the elderly households there. Students are given opportunities to explore and reflect on the relationship between class difference and access to quality and safe housing in an urban context, which is the very pedagogical foundation of this service-learning course for training of future building and construction professionals. The course also gives them a more all-round education extending beyond the technical and theoretical level to affective, moral, civic, and personal development. Students recognize that they could only render a limited services to the concerned household and the changes they could make as students is limited. Nonetheless, they look forward to their roles in the future as professionals for which they are being trained while they also reflect on the ethics and social responsibility of their future profession.

Conclusion

Empathy building is an important component in moral development. A substantial number of studies have been conducted to explore the nature, mechanism, and function of empathy. However, most of these studies are confined to conceptual model building without linking the signature ingredients to a practical model in nurturing empathy, which is an indispensable part of moral development. This study proposes the 4-Es pedagogical model in empathy building that can facilitate moral development in students. Given opportunities to witness the housing plight of the disadvantaged in their local community in this service-learning endeavor, students became stimulated to reflect not only on their role as university students, as future professionals in building and construction and as fellow citizens, but also on furthering future moral and social advocacy commitments.

This 4-Es pedagogy is a well-intended educational strategy. However, the exact efficacy of this pedagogy on each student concerned may be mediated by a number of factors that emerge from the analysis of the qualitative data. Such mediating factors (which may influence the exact learning outcome for each individual student) include the circumstances of the service-recipients (whether or not they are the deserving poor may affect the degree of empathy development); the students’ past experiences (whether or not they have experienced poverty may affect the extent of their empathetic responses and moral reflections); the learning motivations (that facilitated the students taking the course). Such qualitative findings lay the foundation to future quantitative research efforts for further investigation and verification on the extent and the exact influence of each such mediating factor on individual learning outcomes. Nevertheless, despite the possible influence of such mediating factors on each individual student (which may lead to slight variations among students), the general conclusion on efficacy of this service-learning endeavor, especially in nurturance of empathy and moral development, is notably positive, as reflected by quantitative data on students’ self-assessment and preprogram and postprogram comparison in Tables 1 and 2.

Since the service-learning course is conducted in the local urban context, the perceived similarities shared by the service-recipients and the students may facilitate students’ perspective-taking, empathic identification with the former, thus enabling moral reflections and development. Students’ comprehension of the urban plight in subdivided units often starts from media exposure and is further reinforced and confirmed in a more direct and “alarming” way by firsthand service-learning experiences.

Empathy building and moral development are a lifelong journey which is usually a gradual buildup rather than a dramatic leap, unless the individual faces a traumatic experience. Nevertheless, a service-learning course in the formative years of university-aged students can stimulate intense and deep reflections, which will play a significant part in empathy building and moral development of students. Exposing students to urban social and housing inequalities through first-hand experience of the housing plight of disadvantaged urban households during a service-learning course may foster deeper understanding of their own society, on the part of students as future building professionals, sowing seeds for any future actions that will make a difference and change for the better in society.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Barbara Y. P. Leung

Notes

References

Apple Daily . (2012–2014). Various issues.

Baker

R. L.

(2003). The social work dictionary (5th ed.). NASW Press.

Bogo

Vayda

(1998). The practice of field instruction in social work: Theory and process. Columbia University Press.

Boss

J. A.

(1994). The effect of community service work on the moral development of college ethics students. Journal of Moral Education, 23(2), 183–191.

Bowdon

Pigg

Mansfield

L. P.

(2015). Feminine and feminist ethics and service-learning site selection: The role of empathy. Feminist Teacher, 24(1–2), 57–82.

Decety

Jackson

P. L.

(2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3, 71–100.

Decety

Lamm

(2006). Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience. Scientific World Journal, 6, 1146–1163.

Everhart

R. S.

(2016). Teaching tools to improve the development of empathy in service-learning students. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 20(2), 129–154.

Gerdes

K. E.

Segal

E. A.

(2011). Importance of empathy for social work practice: Integrating new science. Social Work, 56(2), 141–148.

10.

Gorman

Duffy

Heffernan

(1994). Service experience and the moral development of college students. Religious Education: The Official Journal of the Religious Education Association, 89(3), 422–431.

11.

HKSAR. (2012). Policy. Transport and Housing Bureau. http://www.thb.gov.hk/eng/aboutus/welcome_message/index.htm

12.

Hoffman

M. L.

(2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. Cambridge University Press.

13.

Hult

R. E.

(2008). Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. In Salikind

N. J.

Rasmussen

(Eds.), Encyclopedia of educational psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 561–564). SAGE.

14.

Leung

B. Y. P.

Yung

(2015). Service-learning subject proposal—Housing for the community. Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

15.

Maxwell

Racine

(2010). Should empathic development be a priority in biomedical ethics teaching? A critical perspective. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 19, 433–445.

16.

Segal

E. A.

(2008). Social empathy: A new paradigm to address poverty. Journal of Poverty, 11(3), 65–81.

17.

Smith

B. D.

Marshall

Anderson

B. E.

Daniels

K. K.

(2017). A partnership forged: BSW students and service learning at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) serving urban communities. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 27(5), 438–449.

18.

Stephens

J. M.

(2009). Moral development. In Anderman

E. M.

Anderman

L. H.

(Eds.), Psychology of classroom learning: An Encyclopedia (Vol. 2, pp. 620–625). Macmillan Reference.

19.

U.N. Habitat. (2009). The right to adequate housing (Fact Sheet No. 21, Revision). Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations.

20.

Valaere

Coucke

Gastmans

(2010). Experiential learning of empathy in a care-ethics lab. Nursing Ethics, 17(3), 325–336.

21.

Zlotkowski

(1996). Opportunity for all: Linking service-learning and business education. Journal of Business Ethics, 15, 5–19.