Service Learning and International Internships in Journalism Courses: A Pedagogy of Transformative Citizenship

This study explores the concept of transformative citizenship using student data collected over a 3-year timeframe. Students enrolled in two reporting and writing courses and an international journalism course were post-evaluated. The reporting and writing courses incorporated service learning projects while the international journalism course culminated in short-term media internships in Zambia. Postevaluations of these courses showed that students highly valued the transformative sense of citizenship that resulted from their experiences. The study further found gender differences in this transformative sense of citizenship, particularly where international internships were concerned. Although the class sizes of the Journalistic Practice in Zambia course were small and had more male than female students, the former scored higher than their female counterparts on transformative citizenship indicators. The difference was explained away by prior travel experiences both within and outside the United States by the male students. For the female students, the Zambia trip was their first outside their native Virginia.