What is Service-Learning?

notes by Romelia Salinas

1) Even though there are many different interpretations of service-learning as well as different objectives and contexts, we can say that there is a core concept upon which all seem to agree:

Service-learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity change 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. (http://www.servicelearning.org/)

2) Definitions of service-learning vary considerably among those who embrace it. At its heart, however, service-learning is a form of experiential learning that employs service as its modus operandi. Service-learning pedagogies are used by teachers in colleges and universities as well as in K-12 schools to enhance traditional modes of learning, actively engage students in their own educations through experiential learning in course-relevant contexts, and foster lifelong connections between students, their communities, and the world outside the classroom.  (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/frss/publications/1999043/2.asp)

3) "Service-learning means a method under which students learn and develop through thoughtfully-organized service that: is conducted in and meets the needs of a community and is coordinated with an institution of higher education, and with the community; helps foster civic responsibility; is integrated into and enhances the academic curriculum of the students enrolled; and includes structured time for students to reflect on the service experience." (http://csf.colorado.edu/sl/)

4) What is Service-Learning?
Although I try to avoid serving up a "definition," there are several characteristics which make service-learning a unique way to learn, serve, and teach. Service-learning holds up a mirror for us to see ourselves, a microscope for us to examine our society, and binoculars for us to see what lies ahead.

Characteristics of Service-Learning

• Community service serves as the vehicle for the achievement of specific academic goals and objectives.
• It provides structured time for students to reflect on their service and learning experiences through a mix of writing,reading, speaking, listening, and creating in small and large groups and individual work.
• It fosters the development of those "intangibles"- empathy, personal values, beliefs, awareness, self-esteem, self-confidence, social-responsibility, and helps to foster a sense of caring for others.
• It is based on a reciprocal relationship in which the service reinforces and strengthens the learning, and the learning reinforces and strengthens the service.
• Credit is awarded for learning, college-level learning, not for a requisite number of service hours.

THE BIG DUMMY'S GUIDE TO SERVICE-LEARNING (http://www.fiu.edu/~time4chg/Library/bigdummy.html)

5)  Service-learning is a form of experiential learning where students and faculty collaborate with communities to address problems and issues, simultaneously gaining knowledge and skills and advancing personal development. There is an equal emphasis on helping communities and providing valid learning experience to students.

Service-learning requires that faculty members be actively engaged as teacher/mentors with students. Students learn new knowledge and skills that contribute to their education. Students have the opportunity to reflect critically upon their experiences. The service provided meets a need identified by the community to be served. Those receiving the service have significant involvement and control over the activities engaged in by students and faculty. (http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/slc/)

Critical Service Learning:
A Model for the Ethics, Diversity and Change Class

Masucci, Matt and Renner, Adam.  "Reading the Lives of Others: The Winton Homes Library Project A Cultural Studies Analysis of Critical Service Learning for Education," High School Journal, 84(1): 36-?; Oct/Nov 2000.

Four Steps of Critical Services Learning:

1. Pre-reflection – “one should reflect upon and politicize oneself (i.e., investigating who we are and what we stand for, as well as investigating our past service experiences, our preconceptions about the project and our predictions as to its outcome).”  Theories assist in gaining an understanding of individual subjectivities, identities, positions and localities.
2. Theory – understand the construction of the world in theoretical terms and examine its relation to action (service learning).  Potential theories to be examined are those posited by Bourrdieu (habitus, meaning-construction), Foucault (in relations to power), Freire [and others] (in pedgagogy), Gramsci (organic intellectual and hegemony), Matsuda [and Crenshaw, Delgado, etc.] (critical race theory), and others on feminist, post-colonial and queer theories. (See for example, PopCultures.com http://www.popcultures.com/theorist.htm)
3. Action – “Drawing from a cultural studies tradition, action must be the accompanying harmony that helps inform and update theory.”  Action in service learning can take on many forms as is particular and appropriate in the community partnership.  It is suggested that the “action include some type of dialog and/or dialectical understanding with those whom you are partnering in order to assure that the voice of that partnering organization is evident in the action.”
4. Reflection – the foundation for the entire endeavor which “through critical reflection one has the opportunity to integrate and personally contextualize the experience of service learning.”  A sharing space is created with the instructor and fellow students.

Documenting and reflection of experiences and learning will also take place through the keeping of a journal and discussions in class.