Guiding the construction of opportunities: a service learning experience with postgraduate students

Abstract

One of the areas of psychopedagogical intervention that has become more relevant in recent times has to do with the profile of the employment/professional counselor, this being one of the interesting professional opportunities for students enrolled in the Master’s Degree in Psychopedagogical Intervention in contexts of Formal and non-formal Education of the University of La Laguna (ULL). In this context, a service-learning (ApS) project has been developed, with the aim of strengthening the connection between the academic and community dimension of university learning. It is a way of teaching and learning by students through a service provided to the community. In this case, the project has involved collaboration between the Department of Didactics and Educational Research of the University of La Laguna (2 teachers, 1 doctoral student and 7 master’s students) and the Don Bosco Foundation (3 job counselors and 32 people in a situation of social vulnerability). Through this collaboration, the students of the Master’s Degree in Psychopedagogical Intervention transferred the acquired knowledge to the field of practice to contribute to the development of skills for the employment of socially disadvantaged groups. The results obtained have shown that the experience has been satisfactory for all the groups involved, both for the master’s students and for the young people of the Don Bosco Foundation, who through the activities have achieved a better knowledge of themselves and have developed skills to improve their employability capabilities. The experience developed opens an important way of collaboration for the care and guidance of groups in situations of social vulnerability.