Using Sport to Build Community: Service-Learning with Iraqi Refugees

The purpose of this study was to explore the connections between Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), service-learning, and community-university partnerships through the implementation of the Service-Learning: Sport and Community Development (SCD) class. It was my hope that this research would produce a usable model, a framework for other scholars and practitioners interested in developing community-university partnerships. I wanted this project to not only answer the “why” questions for SDP and service-learning, but also the “how” questions – specifically, how to create a reflexive and collaborative partnership that balances the needs of the community and university. I wanted to create something riveting and real, something inspiring and authentic, and something more inclusive than a first-person programmer or instructor account of the experience (Darnell, 2007; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Millington, 2010; Stoecker & Tryon, 2009).

Much like the goals of the class, this research was designed to stimulate and encourage others to move toward a more critical and engaged community agenda. To do that, I needed to create a research text that readers could “keep in their minds and feel in their bodies the complexities of concrete moments of lived experience” (Ellis, 2004, p. 30). For that reason, I chose narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) as the primary method of representation, coupled with performance narratives (Denzin, 2003) and poetics (Glesne, 2006; Ely, 2007).

Based on the data collected from 49 qualitative interviews, 500 pages worth of reflective journals, and 200 pages of electronically recorded field notes, I created a visual community-university partnership model that illustrates the connections between SDP and service-learning as implemented in the SCD class. In addition to the visual model, I constructed narratives to detail the progression of the SCD experience over time, beginning with the common language of sport and ending in complete investment and reciprocity. As a result of this research, it has become clear that if implemented with intentionality, careful consideration, community collaboration, and reflexivity, that sport-based service-learning initiatives can enhance student learning, improve community welfare, and strengthen ties between the community and the university.