Service learning

Service-learning is a method of teaching, learning and reflecting that combines academic classroom curriculum with meaningful service, frequently youth service, throughout the community. As a teaching methodology, it falls under the category of experiential education. More specifically, it integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, encourage lifelong civic engagement, and strengthen communities for the common good.

Key components

Service-learning combines experiential learning and community service opportunities. It can be distinguished in the following ways:

• Curricular connections- Integrating learning into a service project is key to successful service-learning. Academic ties should be clear and build upon existing disciplinary skills.

• Student voice - Beyond being actively engaged in the project itself, students have the opportunity to select, design, implement, and evaluate their service activity, encouraging relevancy and sustained interest. In community settings, this is alternatively called youth voice.

• Reflection - Structured opportunities are created to think, talk, and write about the service experience. The balance of reflection and action allows a student to be constantly aware of the impact of their work.

• Community partnerships - Partnerships with community agencies are used to identify genuine needs, provide mentorship, and contribute assets towards completing a project. In a successful partnership, both sides will give to and benefit from the project. In order for this partnership to be successful, clear guides must be implemented as to how often a student engages in service to a particular community agency.

• Authentic community needs – Local community members or service recipients are involved in determining the significance and depth of the service activities involved.

• Assessment - Well structured assessment instruments with constructive feedback through reflection provide valuable information regarding the positive 'reciprocal learning' and serving outcomes for sustainability and replication.

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.

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 so 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.

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.

In addition to academic content, service learning can facilitate a range of valuable practical skills including: problem solving, organizing, collaborating, project management, and research as well as dealing with obstacles and setbacks. It develops character virtues and interpersonal habits such as respect, responsibility, empathy, cooperation, citizenship, initiative, and persistence. Probably the most valuable aspect of service learning is that it empowers the students with the realization that they can make a difference. Anyone can actively participate and make a meaningful contribution regardless of their talents or their deficits.

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.

"Service-learning makes academic content come alive as students apply their knowledge and skills to real-life situations. Students become more engaged in their studies and see that they can make a difference. Taking an active role in addressing community needs fosters responsible citizenship and contributes to character development."

Jack O'Connell, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction

"Service-learning is a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students work with others through a process of applying what they are learning to community problems and, at the same time, reflecting upon their experience as they seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves."

Eyler, J., & D. E. Giles, J. (1999). Where's the Learning in Service-Learning? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Supporting Programs

• The State Education Agency K-12 Service-Learning Network (SEANet) is a national network of professionals committed to advancing school-based service-learning initiatives in K-12 schools and school districts all across the country (seanetonline.org). Our members are directors, coordinators, specialists, or other staff working in a State Education Agency (SEA), or in an organization designated by a State Education Agency, who provide leadership in their respective states for the advancement of school-based service-learning. They promote, develop, and expand school-based service-learning to K-12 schools and school districts; they provide direct assistance in the form of technical support and professional development opportunities to local school-community partnerships; and they administer and dissiminate the annual K-12 school-based state formula grants from Learn and Serve America, the primary federal funding source for service-learning.
• The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (NSLC)- provides the world's largest database of Service-Learning materials, electronic resources, and job listings.
• National Service-Learning Partnership- 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.
• The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation fosters academic service-learning in higher education with awards and grants to students/faculty and their 501(c)(3) community partners who demonstrate best practices or innovative approaches in the field. The Carter Academic Service Entrepreneur grant program seeks to motivate students to develop innovative service-learning projects by providing $1,000 grants to the community organization partner of the student with the most innovative proposal in a state-wide or school-wide competition. ServiceBook, sponsored and maintained by JRCPF, is the online community for academic service learning. JRCPF programs have been held in 16 U.S. states, India and the United Kingdom. [1][2]
• The Leadership, Ethics, and Social Action Minor- At Indiana University-Bloomington the LESA program focuses on civic participation, community decision-making, and citizenship skills: how to communicate and organize and lead while serving as a citizen. The LESA program is a chance to develop your own voice and interests while you research, serve, and take action in the community. A student who enjoys thinking and working independently and who would like to develop his or her professional presentation through serving the needs of the community will find opportunities to do so with LESA. Pre-professional students who wish to be involved in a community setting are attracted to the program. Pre-law and pre-med, as well as pre-business, students find opportunities to develop their professional presentation.
• Facing the Future develops young people’s capacity and commitment to create thriving, sustainable, and peaceful local and global communities. They do this by equipping teachers and schools with the curriculum and workshops used as strategies to help students, and maintaining an online database of service-learning projects of international and local interest.
• Serve Canada engages diverse youth in experience-based education, teamwork and community involvement so they may establish personal direction, overcome obstacles, achieve goals, and contribute to society.
• The International Partnership for Service-Learning and Leadership offers programs uniting academic study and volunteer service to the community in international/ intercultural settings that are models for the practice of service-learning, and promotes the theory and practice of service-learning through research, publications conferences, and training.

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.
• Winings, Kathy. 2002. Building character through service learning. Character Development Publishers. ISBN 1892056216

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