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Service-learning is the pedagogy that links academic study with the practical experience of community service. It has become an international movement that offers new approaches to teaching and learning and to the civic engagement of institutions of higher education. It provides students with an education that meets the highest academic standards and delivers meaningful service that makes a difference to the well-being of society.
Service-learning aims to develop in students a lifelong commitment to service and leadership. It promotes understanding of local issues as well as recognition of the interrelatedness of communities and societies across the world.
What is service-learning?
Service-learning unites academic study and volunteer community service in mutually reinforcing ways. The service makes the study immediate, applicable, and relevant; the study, through knowledge, analysis, and reflection, informs the service.
The service may involve teaching, health care, community development, environmental projects, construction, and a host of other activities that contribute to the well-being of individuals, communities, nations, or the world as a whole.
The academic study may be related to one or more of many disciplines, especially the liberal arts, the humanities, the social sciences, and the physical sciences such as biology, chemistry, and environmental studies, and to professional fields, including medicine, law, social work, engineering, education, and business.
In service-learning programs, students and teachers use the experience of service as one source of information and ideas, along with the classroom, laboratory, library, and Internet. They are asked to analyze critically what they learn from the service, just as they analyze the information and ideas garnered from the sources of traditional academic study. When academic credit is awarded, it is not for the service performed, but for the learning, which the student demonstrates through written papers, classroom discussion, examinations, and/or other means of formal evaluation. In service-learning programs that are not offered for credit, the learning should be intentional, structured, and evaluated.
Service-learning is different from community service unconnected to formal study in two important ways. First, it demands that the student understand the service agency—its mission, philosophy, assumptions, structures, activities, and governance—and the conditions of the lives of those who are served. Second, it is characterized by a relationship of partnership: the student learns from the service agency and from the community and, in return, gives energy, intelligence, commitment, time, and skills to address human and community needs. In addition, the service agency learns from the students. College and university faculty and service agency personnel both teach and learn from one another.
Service-learning is different from field study, internships, and practica, although it may have elements of all of these. Unlike field study, service-learning makes the student not only an observer but an active participant. While the student may gain from service-learning many of the benefits of an internship or practicum, service-learning has two goals: student learning and service to the community. The success of a program is measured not only by what the student learns but also by the usefulness of the student’s work to those served.
