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The transformative potential of international service-learning at a university with a Christian foundation in the UK

This article highlights the transformative dimension of learning through analysis of the student experience of International Service-Learning (ISL). This study investigates the transformative nature of ISL as experienced by students at Liverpool Hope University (LHU), a British University with a rich tradition of ISL. A holistic conceptualisation of transformative learning is proposed that looks beyond an epistemological process that involves shifts in worldview and habits of mind to an ontological process that accounts for changes to the student’s ways of being in the world. This paper is characterised by strong theoretical underpinning, qualitative methodologies and carries significance for the more secular forms of community service. The author was invited to submit the paper to this journal following presentations to the Religious and Moral Education SIG at the BERA annual conference September 2010 and to the Association for University Lecturers in Religion and Education annual conference July 2010.Based upon the findings of the article the author has since been invited to lead consultancy (£10,000) with the Irish NGO, Development and Inter-Cultural Education in Ireland (DICE) and the six teacher education colleges in Ireland that facilitate ISL programs. The research was disseminated at a symposium organised and led by the researcher in March 2011 on 'The transformative impact of international experience on personal and professional learning'. This event funded by ESCalate, the Education Subject Centre for the Higher Education Academy and was attended by 45 academics from 19 Universties. The researcher has subsequently secured a £30,000 grant from the Church Colleges of Education Fund to research ‘Anglican Character through Service in the Core Curriculum’.