FACULTY PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY SERVICE LEARNING IN TEACHER EDUCATION

Community service learning aims to develop students' commitment to civic participation as an active, responsible and democratic citizen through providing service responding to a need that originates in the community as well as strengthen their academic learning. In this study it is aimed to examine Community Service Practices course defined as a compulsory course in teacher education program through the lenses of faculty. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to understand how faculty explains service learning and what kind of issues they addresses with regard to advisors, participants, characteristic of the service learning experience and assessing the outcomes. Data collected from 10 education faculty members with semi-structured interviews and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The emerging themes objectives, process and service learning in the teacher education program-framed the examination of the faculty perceptions. As a result, the faculty aimed to provide pre-service teachers to be sensitive to the community needs as well as developing their problem solving and project development and management skills. They emphasized the importance of advisor's competence and proficiency, the selection of the community partner. They also stressed the difficulty of evaluation, the inadequate time for the course and the importance of applying the course as voluntary-based instead of compulsory. The need for further research examining community service practices that includes all participants-students, faculty, and community partners- and its' long-term effects on students using longitudinal studies appeared as new research suggestions.