Attempts to epistemologically "support" service-learning pedagogy are unnecessary and counter-productive. Responding to the essays of Goodwin Liu and Kenneth A. Richman which appeared in volumes two and three of this Journal respectively, this article suggests that pragmatism is most usefully seen not as an alternate epistemology but as a perspective which encourages service-learning practitioners to avoid epistemology altogether. After critiquing Liu and Richman, the author forwards a robust version of pragmatism as an alternative to sterile and potentially divisive conflict about epistemology. Pragmatism so conceived neither "grounds" nor "supports" service-learning practice but instead encourages practitioners to embrace three related commitments: a respect for disciplinary diversity, an encouragement of innovative experimentalism, and an enthusiasm for progressive thought and action.

This article compares the educational and philosophical theories of John Dewey and Paulo Freire, articulating how each deals with two key relationships: action to reflection, and individual to society. While Dewey and Freire largely overlap in their theories of experiential learning, they depart on the larger ideological purposes of education, with Freire more inviting of critical reflection on race, class, and power. After a discussion of each theorist, the author illustrates the implications of Deweyan and Freirean philosophical frameworks for service-learning pedagogy, using two college writing courses as examples.

Research on service-learning tends to emphasize student learning outcomes and pedagogical issues and de-emphasize the community voice. To be true to the dual responsibility of service-learning to both campus and community constituencies, research must include both campus and community viewpoints. This paper is based on findings from a research project to assess community agency viewpoints about student service providers, and based on the data, provides suggestions for improving campus and community service-learning partnerships.

This paper explores the impacts of an environmental problem solving seminar on alumni of the Brown University Center for Environmental Studies. Given the benefit of hindsight, 38 alumni who took this course between 1980 and 1995 reflected on their experiences in the seminar and how those experiences related to their later activities. The alumni reflections are analyzed with particular attention to implications for instructors teaching similar service-learning courses. Based on this analysis, recommendations are made for instructors, institutions, and service-learning researchers to maximize the benefits and minimize the frustrations of such experiences.

This paper reports on a study of the Community Service Writing program at San Francisco State University designed to explore the relationship between the knowledge students acquired in school and the knowledge they needed when writing for community-based organizations. An analysis of interviews, student papers, and other qualitative data showed that students' success in creating texts for community organizations depended on eight factors: their knowledge about writing, their theories of writing, their rhetorical awareness, their motivation, social relationships formed at the organizations, ability to develop new learning strategies, students' view of themselves as writers, and their view of themselves as learners. These findings suggest that, as service-learning researchers explore how knowledge is developed and used across multiple settings, we should attend not only to the transfer of knowledge but also to the affective and social dimensions of students' experience.

One concern that arises during student participation in urban service-learning is the often marked difference in life experience between university students and the people in the urban communities in which they serve, a difference which may have a detrimental effect on the experiences of students and community members alike. This paper describes use of a transformative service-learning model to design and implement an environmentally-focused service-learning class structured to sensitize students to the needs of the community and to enhance the community's capacity to resolve environmental problems.

This article describes a project undertaken by undergraduate students enrolled in the American University Washington Semester Program seminar in American Politics and Public Law. The project's design was influenced by the collaborative teaching/lawyering method of clinical legal education. The results of the project indicate that community service learning, informed by the collaborative teaching/lawyering method, can be successfully incorporated into traditional undergraduate courses in a variety of programs to introduce professional demands, further develop skills, foster progressive conceptions of citizenship and professionalism, and facilitate critical examination of political systems.

What Are Students Learning?: Assessive Cognitive Outcomes in K-12 Service-Learning
Kathryn Blash Cumbo,
University of Colorado - Boulder

Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur,
Montana State University

Service-learning is identifed as a vehicle for merging current reform initiatives, including standards based education and authentic assessment. Descriptions of service-learning, standards based education and authentic assessment are provided, along with an example case study project and a general model for designing and assessing service-learning projects. As teacher educators, the authors highlight the K-12 school context in order to better prepare future teachers for utilizing service-learning. Educational implications are drawn from the research.

This article discusses the interaction between race and service-learning in the college classroom. The author found that students of color were more likely to choose the service-learning option in her courses when the incentive was higher and there was more latitude in site choice. The article then looks at factors that adversely affect the service-learning experience in courses that are specifically race-focused and suggests counterbalancing strategies.

What can service-learning do for students, for educational institutions, and for our communities? The theoretical justification for service-learning is critically examined through the writings of Harkavy, Barber, and Morton. The author argues that service-learning will rise or fall based less on its broad social aspirations and more on how well it serves the goals of education.

For those interested in service-learning -- whether as a novice or experienced faculty practitioner, as a scholar of higher education or social movements, as a student, as a community partner, or as an interested observer -- this book is a must read. Service-Learning: A Movement's Pioneers Reflect on Its Origins, Practice and Future, or simply the "Pioneers" book as people in service-learning circles refer to it, offers the reader a wealth of insights and wisdom about service-learning from the people who initiated this movement in higher education. The book reviews the history of the movement through the eyes of its early practitioners, introduces the challenges faced by early practitioners and their responses, both personally and programmatically, and articulates their accumulated wisdom that informs the debates that the movement still faces today.

In working with student teachers, we have often said, "We teach who we are. What does that mean to you?" On the intellectual level, most students can answer the question. But at a deeper level, at a sprititual level, what are we asking? Palmer opens with this question in his introduction, "Teaching from Within," and eloquently sets the stage for his reader to follow interwoven paths, which he identifies as intellectual, spiritual and emotional, on a journey toward answering the fundamental question, "Who is the self that teaches?"

As another semester reaches its end, a student sits in my office describing her work as a chaplain with low income patients at San Francisco General Hospital. Her face glows as she talks about the kind of changes that have taken place for her in a single semester: her new sense of competence, her growing conviction that she needs to learn more about health care policy to become better able to address the inequities in medical care, her new awareness of the relationship between her theology major and the kinds of existential questions raised by encounters with illness and death, and her increased comfort in relating to people whose race and social class are different from her own. After many similar conversations, IÕve often wished that I had some way to document the power in this kind of learning, in order to share it with other faculty and administrators.

Last Updated March 01, 2001