An Adventure in Service-Learning

Developing Knowledge, Values and Responsibility

Anto T. Kerins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317182160
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

An Adventure in Service-Learning argues that education can provide not just knowledge and skills but it can also encourage the development of values and responsibility Service-Learning is a teaching method unlike any other. It allows students to use their classroom theory to help others through relevant service or volunteering activity. In so doing, it gives students the opportunity to use the experiences of helping others to strengthen their understanding of subject material. Service-learning is like a bridge that connects education with the outside world. It breathes life and clarity into any subject and better prepares students for life after college. An Adventure in Service-Learning is a well written and easy to read book. It introduces the newcomer to service-learning and provides the seasoned practitioner with an important analysis of this most interesting of teaching methods. Its discussion of learning and the role of higher education will interest educationalists and its consideration of service will be important to those who are concerned about community. A passionate belief in education and its possibilities permeates An Adventure in Service-Learning. The book examines service-learning in project management, leadership and management consultancy and provides readers with an understanding of how the method can work in any subject or discipline. It clarifies the need for community and discusses the nature and possibilities of what it means to be human. The book will help to renew and reinvigorate practitioners, policy makers and the education system as a whole.

PART 1
Service-Learning

Part 1 is based on a review of the literature. It contains the following chapters.

1. What is Service-Learning?

2. The Learning Involved

3. The Service Involved

4. The Role of Higher Education

5. Service-Learning in Action: The Case Study

1
What is Service-Learning?

What is service-learning? Where does it come from? Can we define it and are there service-learning principles to help us understand how it should work?

This chapter introduces service-learning by looking at some definitions and discussing it as a teaching method. We also look at some principles of good practice and consider its roots and background. We then look at the work of the American educationalist John Dewey to help develop a conceptual framework. Finally, we consider its popularity and summarise its main characteristics.

Service-Learning

Service-learning is for the most part a US development. Although it is to be found in the UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa, the extent of its use differs from place to place. Certain educational institutes have adopted it successfully in the UK. However, in Australia, Asia and Africa, it is a relatively new concept and there are only a select few using it.1 Research indicates that a ‘remarkable range of universities and colleges’ internationally also offer the equivalent of service-learning but do not necessarily call it that.2 However, despite its international spread, its most important location is still the US.

DEFINITIONS

There are a many definitions of service-learning. In fact there are so many that one particular writer grumbled about being forced marched ‘through a decade’s worth of service-learning definitions’.3 Getting an agreed definition is no easy task. This is partly because any attempt to define service-learning requires us to link two different and relatively complex processes – service and learning.

This situation has led to both practitioners and writers on the topic failing to agree on a common meaning. The problem is compounded by the fact that even in studies where a very specific definition of service-learning is used some respondents have interpreted the definition differently.4

VARIATIONS

The definition of service-learning can vary depending on who uses it – teachers, students, college administrators, government agencies or others. This is because some groups see service-learning as mainly a type of learning. Others meanwhile see it as a teaching method and therefore part of the curriculum and others still as some combination of both.5

Those who see it as a type of learning, however informal, talk about the service or volunteering activity and the learning which arises from it. This could, for example, be volunteering to help out on a summer camp for young people. The volunteers providing the service have new experiences and learn new things but the learning is personal and unstructured and is not measured or assessed in any way as it would be if it was part of a formal course.

Those who see it as part of the curriculum view it as a teaching method. Here the service activity and course content are intentionally linked. For example, the learning from the service or volunteering activity is linked to the curriculum by requiring students to complete a report or essay on their service internship. This assessment is then marked.

Those who see it as some combination of both suggest that service-learning can have both curricular and co-curricular options. A co-curricular option might mean, for example, a summer internship programme where students help a charity and receive academic credit for their work. From a curricular point of view, however, this only works as service-learning when students complete an assignment or report on their summer internship. In other words, receiving credit for a summer internship is not enough. The credit must be for the academic learning which can be assessed through an assignment.

To prevent any grumbling among readers I avoid discussing a list of competing definitions. Instead I put my cards on the table at the outset by stating that I see service-learning as a curricular activity and nothing more.

Teaching Method

Service-learning is first and foremost a teaching method and a component of the curriculum. Although it may have additional benefits beyond the specific needs of the curriculum, it does not operate outside it. From a learning perspective its purpose is to provide students with the opportunity to use experiences from helping others to strengthen their understanding of classroom material.6 From a student development perspective however, its purpose is to provide students with the opportunity to use their classroom theory and knowledge to help others.

Since it connects classroom learning with real life experiences, it is a bridge that connects the academic with the outside world. It also provides a structure for grounding students’ educational experiences in rigorous, text-based coursework while moving their learning beyond the classroom and out into the community.7

ALL SUBJECTS

Service-learning can enhance learning by breathing life into a subject and, therefore, can help students learn more about specific course content. Zlotkowski says there is probably no discipline – from architecture to zoology – where it cannot be used to strengthen a student’s learning.8 Even business subjects, with their general concern for the private sector, and accountancy, with its profit focus, can benefit. Indeed, some writers feel that it represents the most effective teaching tool available to business school teachers and others discuss how it can increase the student’s understanding of accountancy.9

Although the service experience contributes to classroom learning, this does not happen automatically. The service experience must be purposefully reflected upon to ensure it contributes to learning. For this reason structured time must be provided for student reflection so that the service experience gets connected to classroom learning. Service-learning can also empower students by making them responsible in a real world context.10

BEYOND THE CLASS

Service-learning takes students well beyond the class. It encourages them to apply their newly acquired academic skills and knowledge to real community needs. Here classroom learning can assist communities and this gives the pedagogy a different dimension to other forms of learning. It takes its purpose outside the students and their own needs. It also takes it beyond the needs of the educational institute and its knowledge requirements and incorporates an unusual, altruistic dimension into its configuration. No other pedagogy does this. This dimension provides students with a rich resource for personal learning and development.

Service-learning also responds to students’ ‘desire to be in the world, learning from experience as well as classes’ and putting their education to use for the good of others.11 This means that it taps into certain needs within the student.

In going beyond the classroom, service-learning can introduce students to different worlds outside the campus.12 Students, however, do not travel through these different worlds as detached visitors or tourists. They go there to serve others. That is the core of their experience and differentiates this particular teaching method from other experiential methods. When they visit other worlds or communities it is to provide service.

Service-learning is not a new form of internship. Nor is it the same as simply helping others in the community. The experience of helping others is not necessarily synonymous with learning.13

EXPERIENTIAL

Service-learning is a particular example of experiential learning of which there are others such as internship, practical or lab work. Experiential learning can be described as ‘emotionally engaged learning’ where the learner experiences a visceral connection with the subject matter.14 Experiential learning is not simply learning by doing. Good experiential learning combines meaningful student experience with guided reflection and analysis.

Experiential learning methods achieve a number of things.15 First, they integrate the experience with classroom learning and help students to connect the concepts and theories of the classroom with the experience. They also use a more open-ended learning method where teachers take a less directive role and facilitate students to participate more fully in their own learning.

BALANCE

What should be the balance between the service and learning elements of service-learning? How much service, how much learning?

Sigmon helps us to summarise this issue.16 First, he says there is ‘service-learning’. Here the service activity or volunteering work dominates and the theory or classroom element is secondary. Then we have ‘service-learning’ where the subject or theory element dominates and the service is a minor element. There are many service-learning courses that contain only a l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART 1 SERVICE-LEARNING
• PART 2 RESEARCH FINDINGS
• PART 3 THE FUTURE
• Postscript
• Appendices
• References
• Index