Service Leaning in Higher Education

 Service-learning is a reflective, relational, pedagogy that combines community or public service with structured opportunities for learning. Service-learning is premised on experiential education as the  foundation for intellectual, moral, and civic growth. This focus on the synergy of the intellectual, moral, and civic dimensions of learning distinguishes service-learning from other forms of experiential education.  Rather than focusing on preparing students for a particular job, service prepares students for practical community-based problem solving. It offers students an opportunity to explore the connections between the theoretical realm of the classroom and the practical needs of the community.  As such, service-learning is inherently linked to a civic purpose reinforcing the skills of critical thinking, public discourse, collective activity, and community building. Moreover, because service is occurring in the context of an educational setting, faculty can ask students to reflect upon their service experience in relation to particular community principles, civic ideals, universal virtues, and their relationship to course content. Perhaps the most important benefit of service-learning is the motivation and opportunity it can provide for students to connect to a community and identify their civic role in that community.  Service-learning pedagogy challenges faculty to reconceptualize not only their curriculum, but also their disciplinary training and their role as educators.  Initially, many faculty relate that it was difficult to relinquish the comfortable and predictable nature of classroom work and they found service-learning unpredictable and as such, uncomfortable. But inevitably faculty report that the unpredictable nature of service created a more authentic learning environment, one that was both energizing and motivating to students and faculty. Service challenges faculty and students on multiple levels as it incorporates shifting dialogues, and actively engage issues of equity, difference, inclusion, access, justice, and power.  Adopting service-learning pedagogy often  surfaces issues related to faculty roles and rewards and the connection of the faculty role to that of the institutional mission and the needs of the wider society. Surveys indicate that faculty identified the following as the three greatest obstacles to incorporating service into their coursework:

    Part of one's re-conceptualized role that can address issues of powerlessness is to move faculty work toward connection and agency. This requires faculty and administrators to examine strategies for moving from a culture of privatized work to that of collective work, both departmentally and across the institution. It also requires connecting professional expertise to public discourse for wider civic engagement and as a way of approaching the construction of knowledge. Finally, allowing students and others – whether faculty on campus or partners in the community – to become part of the process of constructing knowledge requires shifting from a culture of argument to a culture of dialogue, fostering engagement, critical thinking, and a cultivation of agency. Moving toward a reflective pedagogy that is student-centered, community-based, and experiential, fundamentally redefines the faculty role on campus.  Service-learning as an epistemology and as pedagogy "de-centers" the classroom and intentionally places community in the center of the learning process. In doing so faculty acknowledges that educational design is critical to engagement, and that the construction of knowledge is directly related to how we utilize knowledge in reasoning. Furthermore, service as academic work accepts that cognitive, affective, and moral growth are inseparable; that a student’s ability to analyze situations and material is critical to their ability to make responsible decisions outside the classroom.  These skills and experiences are critical to participatory citizenship for in both civic and intellectual life one must consistently reflect on their position, reconcile their preconceptions with the lived experiences of others, and uphold an ethic of personal accountability and social responsibility.  The way service-learning develops on your campus will differ in many respects from how it emerges on another campus. Its qualities will be shaped in large part by the broader institutional  identity and the degree to which that identity is tied to a wider sense of social responsibility. It will develop according to the characteristics of the academic culture on your campus and the degree to which it values community-based education, definitions of scholarship, and professional service aimed toward outreach and public purpose. In some cases the  institutionalization of service-learning will be determined by the role of a few faculty who act as agents for institutional transformation.

To be truly effective and to minimize that potential for harm, service-learning must be well planned and integrated into the course with a clear sense of how and why the placement or service activity is being utilized and its relationship to the course  content:

    Whether faculty are creating a new course or reconstructing an existing course utilizing servicelearning, they must choose an appropriate model of service-learning. While the field has moved far from the rudimentary debate of head versus heart, elements of that dilemma still surface when choosing appropriate service models. One end of the continuum argues for pristine models that breed "pure" service-learning courses. These pure courses focus on the service and adhere to a specific set of service-learning requirements.  The other end argues that service-learning ought to be included at any point and are comfortable tacking on a service component to almost any course no matter how spacious the intellectual connection between the service and course content.  As is generally the case, the safest road is somewhere in the middle between the extremes. While there should be standards that guide faculty through the classroom community connection there must also be room for risk, creativity, and exploration.

    While there are a number of models of service-learning, most service-learning experiences can be described in the following five categories:

  "Pure" Service-Learning - These are courses that

 not only send students out into the community to

serve but have, as their intellectual core, the idea of

service to communities by students, volunteers, or

engaged citizens. They are not typically lodged in

any one discipline.

 

Discipline-Based Service-Learning Courses – In

this model students are expected to have a presence

in the community throughout the semester and

reflect on their experiences on a regular basis

throughout the semester using course content as a

basis for their analysis and understanding.

 

Problem-Based Service-Learning Courses -

According to this model, students or teams of

students respond to the community much as

"consultants" working for a "client." Students

work with community members to understand a

particular community problem or need. It is

presumed that the students will have some

knowledge they can draw upon to make some

recommendations to the community or to develop a

solution. Architecture students might design a

park. Business students might develop a web site.

Botanists might identify non-native plants and

suggest eradication methods.

 

Capstone Courses - These courses are generally

designed for majors and minors in a given

discipline. As capstone courses they are offered

exclusively to seniors or exceptional juniors. They

ask students to draw upon the knowledge they have

obtained throughout their course work and combine

it with relevant service work in the community with

the goal of exploring some new topic or to

synthesize their understanding of the discipline.

These courses offer an excellent way to help

students transition between the world of theory and

the world of practice while helping student make

professional contacts and gather personal

experience.

Service Internships - Like traditional internships,

these experiences are more intense than typical

service-learning experiences with students working

as much as 10 to 20 hours a week in a community

setting. As in traditional internships, students are

generally charged with producing a body of work

that is of value to the community or site. Unlike

traditional internships, these internship programs

have regular and on-going reflective opportunities

that help involved students analyze their new

experiences using discipline-based theories. These

reflective opportunities can be done with small

groups of peers, with one-on-one meetings with

faculty advisors, or even electronically with a

faculty member providing feedback. And unlike

traditional internships these internships focus on

reciprocity – the community and the student benefit

equally from the experience.

 

Undergraduate community-based action

research – A relatively new approach gaining

popularity, community-based action research is

similar to an independent study option for the rare

student who is highly experienced in community

work. In this model students can work closely with

faculty members and learn research methodology

while continuing to serve as advocates for

communities and the issues of importance to

communities.

    Discipline-based service-learning courses are generally, more easy to defend intellectually, but the link between course content and community experience must be very explicit. But the more explicit the link, the more one risks limiting the types of appropriate community experiences. This can make the placement more time consuming for faculty, the logistics and monitoring more difficult and more frustrating. 

    Problem-based service-learning courses attempt to circumvent many of the logistical problems by limiting the number of times that students have to go out into the community. The rationale is that students are responsible for surveying communities and identify specific needs. Students are also responsible for coordinating their own schedule to develop a response to the expressed needs. There are two difficulties associated with this approach:

    Capstone courses simply place much the organizational onus for the placement on the student. It is assumed that the senior year is an appropriate time in which students can bring their skills and knowledge to bear on a community problem and in the process develop new knowledge. Capstone courses generally offer communities students with specific skills who can invest a significant amount of time in research and practice. The danger is students graduate and leave the community site taking with them valuable knowledge and insights that cannot be easily replicated. 

    Undergraduate community-based research courses share many of the pluses and minuses of a traditional independent study. The model assumes that students are competent in time management, are self-directed learners, and can negotiate different communities.  These same assumptions can become problematic and the ramifications for student’s failure can impact the community.

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Before choosing a model and constructing a service-learning course faculty should first reflect upon some fundamental questions surrounding teaching and learning that lie at the core of service-learning:

~Theory:

~Reflection:

~Academic Culture:

~Student Development:

~Assessment:

Service-learning is a powerful pedagogy of engagement that extends beyond methods of teaching and learning,  recognizing that democracy is a learned activity and that active participation in the life of a community is a bridge to citizenship. Service-learning has the potential to be a bridge to civic education as it surfaces a broader vision of an engaged campus. A campus that is centrally engaged in the life of its local communities reorients the core missions of academia - teaching, scholarship, and service - around community transformation.

    If the possibility of wider democratic practice is to be more than a reorientation of professional culture, the engaged campus must extend beyond the academic mission of the university to its institutional structure and organization – engagement compels institutional change.  Reciprocal, long-term relationships in local communities require institutional structures to connect the campus to the community. Faculty roles need to be redefined, as does the reward structure, to acknowledge, validate, and encourage a shift in teaching, scholarship, and service toward community engagement.  Additionally, traditional divisions on campus between student affairs and academic affairs, between disciplines and departments, need to be broken down to encompass a broader view of educating students as whole individuals whose experience in community life is not defined by disciplinary distinctions. Further, the institution as a whole must be realigned toward a view of community that includes the campus as part of, not separate from, the local community. This kind of alignment would reorient the resources of the college or university toward community resources, raising questions of community economic development and the investment of capital for community revitalization.

    In a framework of civic education, higher education would address the questions: To what extent does our institution create and sustain long-term partnerships with communities and civic bodies? To what extent can our civic partners point to long-term, positive experiences with our campus? Are these partnerships framed in ways which reflect the college or university’s commitments to and self-interests in community building and civic vitality, that integrate community experience into the learning of students and the professional service opportunities for staff, and that fully understand and appreciate the public dimensions of scholarly work? These are the questions now at the heart of service-learning. It is our hope that educators will shape their answers in a way that deepens the practice of service-learning and makes institutions of higher education more responsive to community renewal.