Connecting mind, heart, culture and activity in an undergraduate service-learning course

This manuscript reports on an educational project that was designed to closely link educational theory and practice–or mind, heart, culture, and activity–in a community-engagement course on sociocultural learning theory and ethnographic research. We identify patterned ways in how students connected theory and practice as revealed through an analysis of field notes written across three quarters of instruction about their experiences in an after-school program at an urban elementary school. We draw implications for how undergraduate education can better foster students’ ability to engage with theory in support of transformative educational practice.