Service learning

Service learning is a form of experiential education characterized by student participation in a service activity that is connected to learning outcomes, meets identified community needs and provides time for student reflection and connection of the service experience to learning. It helps students to master important curriculum content through making meaningful connections between what they are studying and its many applications.

Key components

Service learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity changes both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content.

During the 1980s and 1990s, service learning spread rapidly in the United States through all levels of education. A report from the National Commission on Service-Learning (Fiske, 2001) noted that the National Center for Education Statistics found that between 1984 and 1997, the number of K-12 students involved in service learning programs rose from 900,000 to over 12.6 million. During the same period, the proportion of high school students participating in service learning grew from 2 percent to 25 percent.

In 1990, the Corporation for National and Community Service reported that service learning:

• Promotes learning through active participation in service experiences
• Provides structured time for students to reflect by thinking, discussing and/or writing about their service experience
• Provides an opportunity for students to use skills and knowledge in real-life situations
• Extends learning beyond the classroom and into the community
• Fosters a sense of caring for others

Because of its connection to content acquisition and student development, service learning is often linked to school and college courses, and it encourages these educational organizations to build strong partnerships with community-based organizations. Service learning can also be organized and offered by community organizations with learning objectives or structured reflection activities for their participants. Whatever the setting, the core element of service learning is always the intent that both providers and recipients find the experience beneficial, even transforming. It enhances the community through the service provided, but it also has powerful learning consequences for the students or others participating in providing a service.

Pedagogical Implications

Constructivism

The service learning method ties in well with a teaching philosophy known as constructivism. Constructivism is an educational theory rooted in psychology and sociology. It asserts that learners construct knowledge from previous knowledge rather than passively absorbing knowledge from outside sources. Furthermore, learning includes both creation of new factual knowledge and understanding the connections between different nodes of knowledge. Service learning provides an environment where students can actively construct knowledge while engaging in actual projects. The reflection portion of service learning gives students time to create connections between old and new knowledge.

While accepted by many, some educators have criticized constructivism both epistemologically and pedagogically. Pedagogically, critics claim that a constructivist approach gives students in-depth knowledge but not breadth of knowledge. Since in a constructivist approach takes a significant amount of time to allow students to create new knowledge and relate it to previous knowledge through reflection, instructors usually cannot cover a large amount of material. However, while this may become a real concern for many courses, the specific role of service learning plays in engineering school courses mitigates these concerns. Service learning typically appears in introductory or optional courses in the engineering school. The goals of these courses is not to much to gain a detailed and broad understand of a field, but rather to have a real world engineering experience. This is notably different from courses where students must obtain vast amounts of accurate knowledge for precise calculations.

Critics also worry that a constructivist approach to education leaves the learner too disconnected from reality since it constantly focuses on building new knowledge based off of pre-existing knowledge. Thus, theoretically, as they continue building knowledge off of their pre-existing knowledge in isolation, their view of the world could slowly become skewed from reality. While this may be a weakness for many courses, in service learning, students work to create real solutions for a real customer. Thus their ideas must be resolved, not only with fellow engineering team members, but also with reality.

Learning Styles

In past years, studies on engineering education revealed the learning styles of most engineering students and the teaching styles of many engineering professors were incompatible. The five well known learning style dimensions include: sensing/intuitive, visual/auditory, inductive/deductive, active/reflective, and global/sequential. These learning styles and their corresponding teaching styles are summarized in the table below.

According to Richard Felder from North Carolina State University and Linda Silverman from the Institute for the study of Advanced Development, most engineering students are visual, sensing, inductive, and active learners. Also, many of the creative students are global learners. However, most engineering education is auditory, intuitive, deductive, passive and sequential.

Community service versus service learning

The key point that differentiates service learning from community service is the intentional learning experience. For example, if students clear garbage from a stream, they are providing a valuable service to the community. However, if those same students clear the stream, analyze and discuss what they found, identify possible sources, share the results with local residents and suggest steps for reducing pollution, they are engaging in service-learning. In addition to providing a valuable community service, they are developing an understanding of pollution issues and learning to explain those issues to the public. They may also be encouraged to reflect on their personal and career interests in science, the environment, public policy or other related areas. In this way, service learning combines service with learning in intentional ways.

Service and character

Research shows that effective service-learning experiences foster the values and behaviors that are the goal of character education. For instance, studies show that students who take part in service learning strengthen not only their academic skills, but also civic attitudes and citizenship skills. In addition, there is evidence that service learning provides the key experiences that lead to resiliency and helps develop a sense of social responsibility.

In 2000, RMC Research Corporation produced a compilation of evidence from the past 10 years on the impact service-learning has on students, schools and communities (Billig, 2000). The results indicated that service-learning experience helps students to realize the goals of character education:

• Service learning helps develop students' sense of civic and social responsibility, as well as their citizenship skills.
• Teachers and students have greater respect for one another.
• School climate improves.
• Students are less likely to engage in risky behaviors.
• Service learning has a positive effect on students' interpersonal development and the ability to relate to culturally diverse groups.
• Service learning provides an avenue for students to become active, positive contributors to society.

Quotations

"Service-Learning goes beyond charity or volunteerism. It encourages those involved in service ministry to ask the hard questions and search for real solutions. Service-Learning programs explicitly include features which foster participants' learning about the larger social issues behind the human needs to which they are responding."

Jane C Kendall, Combining Service & Learning: A Resource Book for Community and Public Service. (Raleigh: National Society for Internships and Experiential Education, 1990), p. 20.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Billig, Shelley (2000). Service-Learning Impacts on Youth, Schools and Communities: Research on K-12 School-Based Service-Learning, 1990-1999. Denver, CO: RMC Research Corporation.

• Corporation for National and Community Service 1990 - as adapted from the National and Community Service Act of 1990 http://www.nationalservice.org/pdf/cncs_statute.pdf

• Fiske, E. B. (2001). Learning in Deed. The Power of Service-Learning for American Schools. Battle Creek, MI: W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

External links

• National Service Learning Clearinghouse provides the world's largest database of Service-Learning materials, electronic resources, and job listings.

• National Service-Learning Partnership is a national network of members dedicated to advancing service-learning as a core part of every young person's education. Service-learning is a teaching method that engages young people in solving problems within their schools and communities as part of their academic studies or other type of intentional learning activity. The Partnership concentrates on strengthening the impact of service-learning on young people's learning and development, especially their academic and civic preparation.

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