This dissertation begins with the contention that the concept of community has been insufficiently problematized in the field of service learning. A survey of the current literature suggests that educators and theorists in this area tend to accept an understanding of community that is local and geographically constitutive. This study seeks to address this gap, through exploring models of community available for enactment of service-learning experiences and through examining the implications of possible enactments.; More specifically, the study commences by reviewing three models of community—the constitutive community, the created community, and the community of difference—interrogating each to determine its value and limitations for service-learning experiences. Each model has merit for particular learning situations, but it is argued that, in cases where the goal of the service-learning experience is to create new knowledge, the community of difference model would seem the model most likely to facilitate such a goal. Julia Kristeva's theory of alterity within identity, and Gloria Anzaldua's concept of “borderlands” are also presented as providing a means of theorizing motivation for and engagement with community.; To enrich and complicate our understanding of the theoretical models of community, the study also includes an ethnographic interpretive study of five students enacting a service-learning experience. The students are interviewed at various stages of researching, drafting, and completing their service-learning projects; their narratives are offered as counterpoints to the conclusions made about the value of the three models of community discussed.; The concluding chapter of the study synthesizes the findings of the ethnographic study with the discussion of the three community models. It is asserted that: (1) students may resist the notion of the constitutive tie of citizenship, model permits students to achieve a level of comfort that may facilitate learning; (3) the community of difference model may prevent the student from completing work for the community if too great an emphasis is placed on student difference; and (4) undergraduate students are more concerned with strengthening their constitutive ties to the university academic community than the current literature would suggest.
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