What is Service Learning?
By James McDonald, CMU Teacher Education & Professional Development

Service-Learning is an experiential teaching method that intentionally integrates academic learning and relevant community service.

Through providing service for a community agency or school, students take part in activities in which both the server and those being served teach and learn. Students, faculty, and community members are interconnected partners and each play a critical part in this dynamic process.

The student contributes knowledge, energy, and ideas to the community, and in return, the community provides the student with real-life experiences and observations.

Service-learning is a teaching method that engages young people in solving problems within their schools and communities as part of their academic studies or other type of intentional learning activity. Service-learning helps students master important curriculum content by supporting their making meaningful connections between what they are studying and its many applications. Service-learning also helps young people develop a range of service skills, from acts of kindness and caring, to community stewardship, to civic action.

Examples

• Elementary school students tutor younger students and improve their mastery of essential literacy skills.
• Math students make calculations that persuade local authorities to install a traffic light near their school to reduce accidents at a dangerous intersection.
• History students research the local heroes identified on plaques in their community and share what they have learned at the annual Memorial Day ceremony.
• Language arts students hone their writing skills by organizing a campaign to reduce bullying on their school buses.

Service Learning Components

Common Characteristic of Service-Learning Experiences

• Service-learning experiences are positive, meaningful and real to the participants.
• Service-learning experiences involve cooperative rather than competitive experiences and thus promote skills associated with teamwork and community involvement and citizenship.
• Service-learning experiences address complex problems in complex settings rather than simplified problems in isolation.
• Service-learning experiences offer opportunities to engage in problem-solving by requiring participants to gain knowledge of the specific context of their service-learning activity and community challenges, rather than only to draw upon generalized or abstract knowledge such as might come from a textbook. As a result, service-learning offers powerful opportunities to acquire the habits of critical thinking; i.e. the ability to identify the most important questions or issues within a real-world situation.
• Service-learning experiences promote deeper learning because the results are immediate and uncontrived. There are no "right answers" in the back of the book.
• As a consequence of this immediacy of experience, service-learning is more likely to be personally meaningful to participants and to generate emotional consequences, to challenge values as well as ideas, and hence to support social, emotional and cognitive learning and development.

Benefits of Reflection

• Gives meaning to the experience (was goal accomplished, how did we do, how is community served by this, how is this part of a larger effort, etc.)
• Provides an opportunity to establish expectations (individually, team)
• Can help volunteers understand the limitations and opportunities of the service site or community organization
• Relieves tension and provides re-energizing and renewal (especially important when service is emotionally challenging)
• Can create a sense of accomplishment that is crucial, especially where there are limited external rewards
• Can create a habit of appreciating ourselves
• Integration of service into the rest of one’s life—developing a “spirit” of service and civic-mindedness
• Improved service—As volunteers examine the effects of their behavior, they discover ways to improve the quality and quantity of their service.
• Can create a sense of closure, especially important after a long service period, project, or emotional experience.
• Personal and Team Development:
• Fosters life-long learning skills—develops an ability to learn from positive and negative experiences
• Reality Check”—guards against reinforcing inaccurate perceptions/biases
• Volunteers gain a broader perspective of other’s experience
• Builds community among the volunteers
• Personal Problem solving increases personal empowerment, confidence
• Group problem solving creates shared understandings, open communication, and better teamwork
• Clarifies values as volunteers confront new situations
• Provides practice clarifying goals and making choices to accomplish these goals
• Encourages volunteers to do higher level thinking, as they look for root causes of complex issues
• Acknowledges gained skills gained builds confidence

Tips for Success

Designing a Reflection Activity:

An effective reflection activity should: Have an outcome in mind (e.g., leadership, team building, improved critical thinking, acknowledgment)

• Be appropriate for the team (age, culture, etc.)
• Happen before, during, and as soon after the service experience as possible
• Be directly linked to the project or experience
• Dispel stereotypes, address negative experiences, increase appreciation for community needs, increase commitment to service
• Be varied for different learning styles, ages, etc.
• Actively involve the service recipients for a really compelling reflection session
• Be facilitated well for maximum participation, creativity, and learning

Facilitating a Reflection Activity:

There are plenty of information and resources available about facilitating group activities. Some specifics for service reflection activities include:

• Seek a balance between being flexible to address member’s needs, and keeping the process consistent with the theme. In other words, if some notable incident happens during the day, or has been forming for some time, it will probably be on the member’s minds enough to prevent their presence in any other conversation. Thus, even if you have an outcome in mind, what needs to get said may be the most important thing to discuss or reflect upon. Similarly, the conversation cannot be allowed to veer with no focus: Reflection questions often lead to other questions, which lead to other questions . . . while these diversions can lead to great discussion, they can, as easily, go all over the place with little value for participants. Maintain focus by bringing it back to the theme or significant topic, and presenting “so what, now what” questions before leaving a decent topic.
• Use silence: People need some silence to reflect internally, some more than others do. Ask the question then wait.
• Ensure that all participants have an equal opportunity to become involved
• Remember that in a group setting, each member of the group will learn and reflect in a different way. Allow space for diversity; it, too, is part of the reflection process for the group.