Abstract
Community Service Learning (CSL) is an educational approach that has become increasingly popular at many universities around the world for a myriad of benefits to learners, schools and communities. In fact, incorporating CSL into the school curriculum is considered one of the most effective ways to promote students’ social responsibility and community engagement. In Vietnam, CSL has been widely applied in the past few years as an integrated experiential learning method, encouraging students to strive to become better citizens. This paper aims to analyse the effectiveness of integrating CSL approach in specialized courses and faculty’s support on students’ perceptions of social responsibility. The quantitative study employed primary survey data of 173 students, from University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Danang, Viet Nam, having participated in CSL-integrated Interpreting courses. The results of estimation and testing with multi-structure linear model showed that factors of perceived behavioural control [β = 0.343, p = 0.000 < 5%] and self-efficacy [β = 0.606, p = 0.000 < 5%] had a direct impact on students’ perceptions of social responsibility. Also, faculty’s support had no direct yet significantly strong indirect impacts on students’ perceptions of social responsibility in their experience with CSL [R2 = 75.9%]. Accordingly, several recommendations to improve students’ perceptions of social responsibility were proposed, namely adjusting learning outcomes of the training program, enhancing faculty’s support and cooperation with the community.
Keywords: Community Service Learning, Faculty’s Support, Perceived Behavioural Control, Self-efficacy, Social Responsibility.