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What
Is Service Learning?
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 Service-learning
is a teaching method which combines community service with academic
instruction as it focuses on critical, reflective thinking and civic
responsibility. Service-learning programs involve students in organized
community service that addresses local needs, while developing their
academic skills, sense of civic responsibility, and commitment to the
community.
-Campus Compact National Center for
Community Colleges
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Principles of Good Practice in Combining Service and Learning
An
effective and sustained program:
- Engages people
in responsible and challenging actions for the common good.
- Provides
structured opportunities for people to reflect critically on their
service experience.
- Articulates clear
service and learning goals for everyone involved.
- Allows for
those with needs to define those needs.
- Clarifies the
responsibilities of each person and organization involved.
- Matches
service providers and service needs through a process that recognizes
changing circumstances.
- Expects genuine,
active, and sustained organizational commitment.
- Includes training,
supervision, monitoring, support, recognition, and evaluation to meet
service and learning goals.
- Insures that the
time commitment for service and learning is flexible, appropriate, and
in the best interest of all involved.
- Is committed
to program participation by and with diverse populations.
Honnet, E. P., &
Poulson, S. J. (1989).
Principles of good practice for combining service and learning.
(Wingspread Special Report). Racine, WI: The Johnson Foundation.
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Principles of Good Practice in Community Service-Learning Pedagogy
- Academic credit is
for learning, not for service.
- Do not
compromise academic rigor.
- Set learning goals
for students.
- Establish
criteria for the selection of community service placements.
- Provide
educationally sound mechanisms to harvest the community learning.
- Minimize the
distinction between the student’s community learning role and the
classroom learning role.
- Re-think the
faculty instructional role.
- Be prepared
for uncertainty and variation in student learning outcomes.
- Maximize the
community responsibility orientation of the course.
Howard, J. (Ed.).
(1993). Praxis I: A faculty casebook on community service learning.
Ann Arbor, MI: Office of Community Service Learning Press, University
of Michigan.
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As
a form of experiential education, service-learning shares similarities
with internships, field education, practica, and voluntary service.
Furco (1996) places these forms of education on a continuum. At one end
of the continuum are internships and practica, with their primary focus
on the students' career development. At the other end are volunteer
activities, in which the emphasis is on the civic involvement and the
services provided to recipients. Furco locates service-learning in the
middle of the continuum, and states that it is unique in its "intention
to equally benefit the provider and the recipient of the service as
well as to ensure equal focus on both the service being provided and
the learning that is occurring" (1996, p. 5).
Furco,
A. (1996). Service-learning: A balanced approach to experiential
education.
In Corporation for National Service (Ed.),
Expanding Boundaries:
Serving and Learning (pp. 2-6). Columbia,
MD: Cooperative Education Association.
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