Where's the Learning in Service-Learning?

A Forum — August 2, 2000

A small group of policymakers from the U.S. Department of Education, national associations, university and congressional offices, education consultants and a high school in Maryland gathered for a policy salon discussion on service-learning. The discussion involved a look at compelling evidence that service-learning is a powerful context and catalyst for acquiring the knowledge, skills, and attitudes students need to achieve success. Participants in the salon learned about and shared evidence of service-learning, and reflected upon questions, challenges, and opportunities for making service-learning a part of every young persons' educational experience. As with all American Youth Policy Forum salons, we do not include names of participants in order to maintain a relaxed and candid conversation. These notes were written to capture highlights of the discussion.

Some questions that led the discussion were:

• What is the impact of service-learning on students, schools and communities?
• How can quality service-learning help address current concerns about the social/personal development of youth?
• What is the federal role in supporting/assisting states and communities in creating quality service-leaning opportunities for all young people?
• How do you define service-learning?

Saint Mary County Maryland teachers at the salon began the discussion. They described that "defining service-learning depends on where you’re entering into the service-learning world. As teachers, they described feeling very attuned to student outcomes. "It [service-learning] is part of a community-building strategy." Teachers put a heavy emphasis on partnerships, and use service-learning as an approach to education reform."

Service-learning is not only viewed as another form of civic responsibility or community building, but as a way to engage students in active, meaningful learning in school. A leader of a national organization concerned with bringing service-learning to all students argued that there is value added to school programs with service-learning if it is of good quality and executed properly, but warned against stopping at academics. "This includes the interface between the school and community and the action of opening up school doors to the community and visa versa. In Baltimore, on any given day, approximately 50% of the students don’t show up for school. I think we sell ourselves short by not expanding the view of service-learning. If your looking for a better strategy for teaching academics, service-learning is a way to go, but there is also the benefit of community building and understanding differences."

The Maryland teachers stated that there are several states that have similar types of infrastructures for doing service-learning teaching in the state. Maryland has a state requirement for service-learning hours before graduation. South Carolina is a good example of statewide policy support for service-learning. Other salon participants offered information on states that are working strongly with service-learning California has statewide goals regarding service-learning. Philadelphia has a city policy. There was criticism of Maryland’s policy because it is viewed as a top down policy. "They were bold and brave to do this," argued a prominent education consultant in the group, "but top down edicts result in everybody going against the grain and end up harming the original purpose of service-learning. Students run around trying to get hours for graduation." "You can’t record service on a time sheet – that’s wrong," said another participant.

States are beginning to address service-learning in their state standards. According to one teacher participant, there are many of schools in Maryland who are doing this right now. "Community-service is a good thing, stated a Corporation for National Service participant, "but I can’t justify it in the curriculum by itself without that connection to the curriculum." President Clinton’s initiative on the National Service-Learning Leader Schools programs was mentioned and described as a way to celebrate exemplary schools who have improved teaching and learning at their school, while strengthening their communities through high quality, broad-based service-learning. Seventy schools won the award in 1998-99. These schools have gone through their own rigorous process to connect standards to the curriculum and include this in their service-learning program. These schools also act as mentors for other schools and help spread the good news about service-learning.

In the private/non-profit sector, Learning In Deed, a new initiative sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, is trying to form a network of movers and shakers in the service-learning field into one unified group. The initiative’s mission is to galvanize a national service-learning movement.

There was some question regarding the similarity of community service (sometimes known as service-learning) being done by youth development groups with service-learning done in schools, which is directly linked to academics. "Service-learning is only service-learning if it’s connected to the curriculum. I have a problem with some community-service programs. I like the Campfire Girls, but is what they are doing really service-learning?" asked one participant. The participant from Campfire Girls responded by explaining that the organization is helping youth build academic skills in many of their community-based projects. Upon this, one participant became enlightened, "Oh, I thought that service-learning was just learning about service. I didn’t know it had academic value." "We do have national evaluations for service-learning, but what is it that we are going to look at?" asked one participant. Responding, another participant said, "This changes as you look at service-learning from a school or community basis."

College students are starting to raise awareness of service-learning in higher education just by asking for it. Some universities are struggling to respond, others are embracing the movement. Georgetown University has a service-learning project for their freshman orientation. Teacher education programs are beginning to include service-learning in teacher education. More teachers are coming into the profession as a second career from outside the teaching world and bring community-service experience with them. American University gives teaching students course credit for community experience. "It is amazing to me that the University of Maryland doesn’t take advantage of a captive audience," said one participant.

A story of service-learning in action was described. Science, social studies and English teachers from Florida’s Taylor County High School worked together on a project to evaluate the quality of the communities drinking water. After some investigation of their local water supply, the students contacted the local EPA and informed them that someone needed to monitor the situation. The EPA replied that there were no employees available to investigate and thus, the high school students began a service-learning project to build lab experiments to monitor and give reports on the quality of their local water. Through this project, the students were engaged in a real-world situation and were able to provide a much needed service to the community. Stories of service-learning projects regarding the quality of community water are common.

The group briefly discussed other ways to identify service-learning. They felt it would be good to look at quantitative measurement of service-learning, specifically to look at the recidivism of service by youth. Also, there were differing views within the group on service-learning conducted for or in a distant community. "Busing students to do projects is not service-learning," said one participant. Answering this, another participant replied, "If you bring students to another community not their own, as long as they are building awareness, it is the fact that they are building character that is the intention of the project, and it should be called service-learning."

This informal salon discussion revealed differing points of view on service-learning, raised a number of variables to consider when deciding whether an activity should be called service-learning or community service, and rallied for an expand view of service-learning. Not all participants had a clear picture of service-learning before the salon and some have varying views on the definition of service-learning.

 

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