Service-learning

Applications From the Research

Alan S. Waterman, Alan S. Waterman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135457174
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Linking research and educational practice for the benefit of both is not a new idea. If practice such as service-learning is a bold departure from the status quo, however, research is not just beneficial, it is critical. If schools are to become laboratories of democracy and entrepreneurship, and if students are to become engaged as partners in renewal of their communities, a research case must be made for service-learning. Does learning take place? Will other kinds of learning suffer? What kinds of practice are most effective? Clearly, solid research is essential if this transforming way of teaching and learning is to be fully integrated into American schooling and youth development institutions. The National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) took a first step toward joining service-learning practice with research in 1983. In 1991, NYLC created a center which initiated and encouraged program evaluation, formative research that informs and improves practice, and summative studies that measure results. This volume grew out of a National Service-Learning Conference--an annual event convened by the NYLC. A day long research seminar at the conference brought together researchers to discuss the latest developments among themselves and with practitioners. Impressive in their range and rigor, their papers offer documentation and analysis useful to an emerging research knowledge base. It is a starting point for the evidence needed to firmly establish service-learning for K-12 age people as a widely accepted way of teaching and learning.

1

An Overview of Service-Learning and the Role of Research and Evaluation in Service-Learning Programs

Alan S. Waterman

The College of New Jersey

We have been doing “service-learning” in our society for far longer than we have applied the label to this approach to experiential education. We have involved our children, adolescents, and young adults in service to the community through our schools, our religious institutions, and youth organizations (e.g., scouting). We have expected service experiences to promote responsibility, caring, citizenship, competence, and a practical knowledge of our communities, our nation, and our world. We have believed that service promotes these goals more effectively than other means, particularly standard classroom instruction. And we have found that in doing service, many of our students come to feel quite differently about that standard classroom instruction as a function of seeing its application in ways that make a difference in the lives of others.

AN OVERVIEW OF SERVICE-LEARNING

Defining Service-Learning

The term service-learning has come to be applied to a very wide range of activities with students from kindergarten through higher education. As the use of the term has expanded, there has risen a lively debate about what should and should not be considered educational practices under this label. Although there is potentially much to be gained from this debate in terms of the identification of parameters potentially necessary for effective practice, this is not the forum to review the sometimes broad, but often subtle, distinctions offered from competing perspectives. Still, it is appropriate to provide some formal definition of service-learning, so as to identify the major defining features of this approach to education.

The Commission on National and Community Service has defined service-learning as follows: Service-learning is a method

(A) under which students learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences that meet actual community needs and that are coordinated in collaboration with the school and community;

(B) that is integrated into the students’ academic curriculum or provides structured time for the student to think, talk, or write about what the student did and saw during the actual service activity;

(C) that provides students with opportunities to use newly acquired skills and knowledge in real-life situations in their own communities; and

(D) that enhances what is taught in school by extending student learning beyond the classroom and into the community and helps to foster the development of a sense of caring for others. (National and Community Service Act of 1990)

The Roots of the Service-Learning

Contemporary programs in service-learning represent the confluence of two important historical traditions: (a) the American tradition of service to the community, and (b) the experiential approach to pedagogy (Alt & Medrich, 1994; Shaffer, 1993). The value and importance of service to the community is reflected in the writings of Thomas Jefferson and in the works of the American philosopher William James. James (1910) called for a program of national service for youth that would function as “the moral equivalent for war” (p. i). The circumstances of the economic depression of the 1930s spurred the creation of community service programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps that involved millions of unemployed youth with benefits to the environment, the society, and the participants (Shaffer, 1993). More recently, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton promoted national and community service as a means of tapping the best potentials within individuals and integrating youth into the community and the nation.

The philosopher and educator John Dewey advanced the view that active student involvement in learning was an essential element in effective education (Dewey, 1956). Through experiential education, students are challenged to discover relationships among ideas for themselves, rather than merely receiving the information about such relationships from the authorities around them. Dewey viewed the community as an integral part of educational experiences, because what is learned in the school must be taken and utilized beyond its bounds, both for the advancement of the student and the betterment of future societies (Dewey, 1916).

The Distinction Between Service-Learning and Volunteer Service

Participants in the field of service-learning make an important distinction between service-learning and volunteer service. In both activities, individuals become involved in service projects that are believed to be of benefit to others, their community, or their environment and from which they derive no direct monetary or material benefits. In volunteer service there is no explicit focus on the educational value to be gained through involvement in the particular projects. In the case of service-learning, the projects are designed, enacted, supervised, and evaluated with the educational benefits of the experiences as one of the consciously held goals (Nathan & Kielsmeier, 1991). Consistent with the objectives of experiential learning, practitioners in service-learning endeavor to have the students develop expectations of what can or should be learned as a result of involvement in the project. Both during and after the activities that constitute the service project, attention is called to the learning objectives as a means of fostering the educational outcomes. Both during and after the service activities, time may be devoted toward having the students and others involved in the project reflect on the nature of what is taking place (or has taken place), and the reasons that events have transpired as they have. Further, explicit efforts are made to integrate what is taking place during the service project with elements of the more traditional in-class curriculum. Although there is a great deal that individuals may learn on their own from their personal involvement in volunteer service, the absence of a systematic focus on the educational possibilities of such service inevitably results in less utilization of those possibilities than can be achieved through service-learning.

THE OUTCOMES SOUGHT THROUGH SERVICE-LEARNING

The benefits believed to be derived from student involvement in service-learning activities can be grouped into four broad categories: (a) enhancement in the learning of material that is part of the traditional in-school curriculum, (b) promoting personal development, (c) fostering the development of civic responsibility and other values of citizenship, and (d) benefits accruing to the community.

Enhancing Learning Through Action

It is a fundamental assumption underlying the practice of service-learning, as well as other forms of experiential learning, that students will develop a better understanding and appreciation of academic material if they are able to put that material into practice in ways that make a difference in their own lives and/or in the lives of other people. There is an abstract quality to the subject matter of most courses in which the academic material appears only in classroom and textbook contexts. Students quite naturally respond to the classroom-based curriculum with questions about its relevance for their lives outside of school. By integrating academic material from the classroom with service activities in the community, the relevance and application value of the class content become more readily evident. As important, the hands-on application of skills taught in the classroom provides a clearer, yet simultaneously more complex, perspective regarding those skills. What is experienced through action will be remembered more vividly than what is merely read, or heard in a teacher’s class presentation.

Promoting Personal Development

In seeking to use service-learning as a means of promoting personal development, it should be recognized that there is a wide range of outcomes that are included under such a heading. Many of the personal development outcomes will be a direct function of the particular nature of the service projects in which students participate, whereas others may be more generic outcomes of such experiences. Furthermore, in a classroom, students participating in the same project may respond to it in a wide range of ways resulting in diversity of developmental outcomes.

The attitudes and values held by students participating in service-learning projects will tend to be specific to the nature of the project itself. We would expect students involved in environmental clean-up projects to become more reflective concerning issues pertaining to pollution, littering, and civic pride, whereas students involved in a project in a retirement or nursing home will become more reflective with respect to attitudes toward the elderly, and about abilities and disabilities. But both groups may experience developments regarding issues about the role of governments, and what can, and cannot be realistically achieved through governmental efforts. It should be noted here that from an educational perspective, the goal is to promote a reflective development of attitudes and values, not the forming of particular attitude or value contents.

Service-learning experiences at the high school and college levels may also contribute to students’ thinking about their career preparation. One of the difficulties of school-based education is that career decisions are often made without any extensive information about how day-to-day activities in the work environment are actually carried out. By getting students into the community for service projects, they are likely to receive exposure to a wider array of work environments than might otherwise be possible. For some students this might suggest possible career directions, whereas for others it may confirm or disconfirm decisions previously made.

Another type of personal development outcome that is likely to occur across different types of service-learning experiences involves increases in feelings of self-efficacy and self-esteem. Self-efficacy refers to the perception that one has the ability to bring about desired outcomes (Bandura, 1977). Service-learning programs have as one of their points of focus the development of those skills necessary for the conduct of the service projects; skills that are then enacted to make a difference in the lives of other people or in the quality of the community or environment. Students are thus in a position to appreciate the value of their contributions in a way that is generally not available in the classroom. Self-esteem is a somewhat broader concept involving the overall value assessment one makes regarding oneself. Although there are educational programs that are designed to increase feelings of self-esteem apart from the behaviors one enacts, the effects of service-learning on self-esteem are mediated through self-efficacy. If students have a perception of higher levels of skills and competencies that contribute to desired outcomes, the level of their overall self-assessment will be increased. Of course, higher levels of self-efficacy and self-esteem will only result if the students experience themselves as making useful contributions to projects they believe are worth their efforts.

Fostering Civic Responsibility

Consistent with the American tradition of service to the community represented in the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and William James, education advocates of service-learning are seeking to promote feelings of concern, care, and responsibility for one’s community and the nation, in terms of people, institutions, and ideals (Barber, 1991). Involving students in service to the community at a relatively early age is seen as a way for students to come to recognize that individual and collective action can make a difference in the quality of civic life. It is believed that this will increase the likelihood that individuals will be involved in community service in a sustained way through the adult years.

Service to the community is also seen as a way to promote an identification with and involvement in community institutions, including governmental agencies. Recognizing the interrelationships among the levels of government can promote a sense of the importance of voting, political involvement, and, under some circumstances, political protest.

Contributing to the Community

An integral part of service-learning as an educational framework is that the students are providing real service to their communities. Whereas it could be argued that benefits to the community are not, strictly speaking, educational outcomes, it is not likely that positive outcomes in the other categories could be achieved in the absence of evidence that the students’ efforts result in contributions to the community. Also, when educational administrators and teachers weigh a decision as to whether to initiate a service-learning program, ancillary benefits to the community may be used as one factor in favor of the initiative, although it is not likely to be the determining factor.

THE RANGE OF SERVICE-LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Service-learning programs have been developed for all educational levels from kindergarten through higher education. It is beyond the scope of this chapter, and indeed this volume, to describe the myriad forms that service-learning can take with the diverse populations with whom it has been implemented. It will be useful however to draw attention to some of the principal dimensions along which service-learning programs differ, and to catalog some of the principal types of programs now in existence.

Service Within Versus Service Outside the School Environment

Service-learning projects that are of direct benefit to others can be carried out without the students having to leave the school environment. Tutoring programs across grade levels have been demonstrated to be of benefit to both the students receiving the tutoring and those providing it (Cognetta & Sprinthall, 1978). Providing the tutors with structured opportunities to reflect on these service experiences and integrating material emerging from the tutoring sessions into the tutors’ academic courses, provides the service-learning elements to such tutoring programs. Similarly, participation in peer counseling programs at the secondary level can provide opportunities for both service and learning.

Another model for providing service to the community within the school context is offered by industrial arts and home economic courses in which goods produced in the classroom are donated to community agencies. Typically, a direct connection is established between the students producing the goods, for example, furniture and clothing, and the individual recipients.

The alternative model is for students to engage in service-learning projects outside of school, that is, directly in the community. Such projects may involve identifying sources of stream pollution, improvement of buildings within the community, or visiting with the residents in retirement or nursing homes. The organization of project experiences outside of school is inevitably a more complex undertaking than providing in-school service experiences. Arrangements for transportation and on-site supervision must be made. Coordination must be established with community administrators for the sites at which the students will be carrying out their project. And issues of safety and insurance must be addressed.

Service as an Element in Academic Courses Versus Service as a Separate Course in the Curriculum

One model for service-learning is to have service as an element in a wide range of relatively traditional academic courses. For example, for a college class covering tax law, students may have a project in which they donate time to provide assistance to the poor or elderly in the preparation of their tax returns. The experiences generated in the field can then be brought back into the classroom for discussion. In this example, the service is likely to be a one-time experience in a course. Alternatively, the service element may be built into a course on an ongoing basis, as exemplified by an introductory psychology course that entails the students providing service as a volunteer at a social service agency for 3 hours per week throughout the semester.

An alternative model at the secondary school and college levels is for there to be separate service-learning courses not identified with any traditional curricular subject area. These courses may involve having students work at a single site for a specified number of hours during the school term or may have elements of a survey course in which a succession of projects are carried out at different sites. Whether one or more projects are performed, the students spend classroom time in school reflecting on their field experiences and considering the relationship between what they are learning in school subjects and what is being done in the field.

Service-Learning as a Curricular Requirement Versus Service-Learning as a Curricular Option

In some school districts, community service is a curricular requirement, with a specified number of hours of service required for graduation. Such a requirement would only be considered as a service-learning requirement if some provisions are made to have the students reflect on their service...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Contributors
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 An Overview of Service-Learning and the Role of Research and Evaluation in Service-Learning Programs
• Part I Methodologies for the Study of Service-Learning
• Part II Research on the Elements of Effective Service-Learning
• Part III Research on the Contexts for Service-Learning
• Conclusions
• Author Index
• Subject Index