Table of Contents

ABSTRACT

The pedagogy of service-learning has been widely adopted in educational settings due to its multidimensional benefits for different stakeholders. However, existing empirical studies have primarily focused on the impact of this pedagogy on service providers (i.e., students), while the experiences of service recipients (i.e., community members) have been largely overlooked, despite being a crucial dimension in evaluating the quality of service-learning programs. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of a service-learning program through the experiences of the service recipients, specifically a group of rural-to-urban migrant children in Hangzhou, China. In this program, students from a university in Hong Kong designed and provided a five-day summer camp for migrant children in Hangzhou. During the 2023/24 academic year, 290 participating migrant children (female = 122, 43.3%; age = 10.73 ± 0.73 years) were invited to respond to an open-ended question at the completion of the summer camp. This question asked them to use one metaphor to represent their experiences at the summer camp and to explain the reasons behind their choice. The results showed that the participating children perceived they had positive personal growth in various areas, as reflected in the metaphors. They also expressed highly favorable overall perceptions of the program. These findings provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of the program regarding its impacts.

Keywords: Service-Learning, migrant children, positive youth development, service recipients, metaphor analysis, China