Beyond Respect: Rethinking Cultural Sensitivity in Rural Service-Learning through a Multi-Actor Perspective

This paper examines how students, teachers, and community partners understand cultural sensitivity in e-service-learning (e-SL) with rural communities. Drawing on the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC; Council of Europe, 2018), cultural sensitivity is conceptualised not as a single competence but as a composite of values, attitudes, skills and knowledge, including valuing cultural diversity, respect, empathy and critical understanding of self and the world. The paper argues that framing cultural sensitivity as respect for diversity obscures tensions around power, inequality, and participation (Brozmanova-Gregorova et al., 2026).
The study draws on 15 focus groups with 91 participants (40 students, 25 teachers, 26 community partners) conducted in Austria, Croatia, Italy, Slovakia and Spain within the Erasmus+ project CIVENHANCE, using a protocol structured around People, Places, Partnership and Purpose (Mikelic-Preradovic et al., submitted). We analysed national reports and focus group notes through qualitative content analysis, combining RFCDC-based and inductive codes.
We identified four dimensions of cultural sensitivity. A heritage dimension (respect for and preservation of traditions, dialects and customs) dominated across all groups. A relational dimension (presence, continuity, reliability, consent) and a positional dimension (reflexivity about academic power and deficit framings of rurality) were articulated mainly by community partners and by participants with service-learning experience, suggesting that field experience shapes conceptions more than stakeholder role. A value-conflict dimension remained fragmentary: partners' accounts showed that the direction of sensitivity – towards rural communities, towards established residents or towards minorities within rural communities – is itself contested. In e-SL, partners questioned digital heritage documentation, the activity most frequently proposed by students and teachers, on grounds of consent and commodification.
The paper proposes a shift from attitudinal to relational and positional conceptualisations of cultural sensitivity. It argues that service-learning curricula should prepare students not only to respect local traditions, but also to address value conflicts within communities and the ethics of digital representation.