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Cognitive Outcomes of Service-Learning:
Reviewing the Past and Glimpsing the Future
Pamela
Steinke and Stacey Buresh,
Central College
This article critically reviews the research literature on cognitive outcomes of service-learning over the past decade with an emphasis on how convincing the results are to faculty. Self-report measures produce the most consistent positive findings yet are one of the least persuasive measures to faculty. The use of problem-solving protocols shows promise in measuring both student knowledge and the complexity of student thinking but needs further development. Recent work in the learning sciences provides direction for future outcome research and suggests how service-learning will help to transform education.
Two samples of undergraduate students (N’s = 761, 725), enrolled in liberal arts and sciences courses at a private research university, completed a questionnaire designed to measure attitudes, skills, and behavioral intentions that might be affected by service-learning participation. Factor analyses were used to define six scales. The scales’ reliability was found to be adequate, according to internal consistency and test-retest assessments. Support for the scales’ validity was obtained by examining relationships to measures of social desirability, attitudes about race, motivational beliefs, and respondents’ demographic characteristics.
Sixty service-learning student reflection papers from a service-learning course taught five times over a three-year period were content analyzed to determine: (1) what benefits were reported by undergraduate student participants in the course; and (2) what differences were found when responses were compared relative to students’ performance in the course.
This paper explores the relationship between community colleges’ institutional mission, service, and service-learning. Using document analysis and survey responses from senior administrators at 24 community colleges in New York State, this article analyzes how community colleges perceive their mission and are involved in their communities, identifies major barriers to and reasons for engaging in service-learning, and describes service-learning initiatives, including the level of institutional support. While affirming the positive ways that community colleges benefit their communities, this paper argues that by becoming more civically engaged through initiatives such as service-learning, community colleges and their students can become leaders in solving public problems with community partners.
This multi-site study of candidates in nine teacher education programs sought to measure gains in pre-service teacher participants’ teaching efficacy, commitment to teaching, service ethic of teaching, and acceptance of diversity, as well as their intent to personally engage in community service and to utilize service-learning in their own classrooms. Findings revealed significant gains on three measures: acceptance of diversity, importance assigned to teachers’ ability to bring about social change, and intent to use service-learning in participants’ future teaching. Analyses also determined the contribution of student characteristics and aspects of the service-learning experience to the dependent variables. Quality of the experience, assisting a K-12 teacher with a service-learning project and respondents’ perception that the course instructor had helped them adjust to the service-learning experience were significant predictors of increased commitment to teaching.
This article examines service-learning as a means to bridge the gap between practical courses in the curriculum such as professional communication, which are linked to a market-economy, and the ideal of public service. By outlining ways in which service-learning has been used in the professional communication field, and problems and concerns with its use, the author explores the charge of “vocationalism.” The historical connection between rhetoric and professional communication is developed through a detailed case study analysis covering the author’s partnership with a non-profit organization over several semesters. The author suggests that when used with care and reflection, service-learning can be a path toward virtue for students, helping them to inculcate a public service ideal.
Reviewed
by Deborah DeZure,
University of Michigan
After a decade of prodigious efforts, outcome assessment and service-learning initiatives are proliferating in American higher education, moving from the margins to the mainstream. It was only a matter of time until these two powerful movements would converge in a meaningful way. This convergence is enabling service-learning to benefit from the process of continuous improvement embedded in serious assessment efforts. It is also providing the assessment movement with new conceptual approaches and models to evaluate the impact of experiential and service-learning on varied constituencies.
