What is Service-Learning?

Service-learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.

What is School-Based Service-Learning?

In school-based service-learning projects, students apply curricula and classroom learning through hands-on service projects they help design. The service must meet a real need and is both a means and an application of learning. Activities are related directly to important learning goals and are designed to apply specific learning objectives linked to the Sunshine State Standards. It is the combination of experiential learning and the personal satisfaction students gain from helping others that makes service learning such an effective teaching and learning tool.

The following list gives a sense of the many ways students can apply instruction and practice needed skills through helping others. Full-scale projects include formal linkages with coursework, and part of the student grade is tied to the service-learning activities. Students apply different skills based on the type of project.

Elements of Effective Service Learning

What distinguishes service learning from other service and volunteering? In a school context, the service is directly related to curricula and components of the project are course assignments and part of the student’s grade. Activities are design to address and apply specific learning objectives, standards, and curriculum frameworks. Effective service-learning projects have the following elements:

1. Preparation/Planning/Design

• Needs identification/assessment—those being served help define their needs and how to meet them.
• Learning the context for the need(s) to be addressed.
• Issue discussion and selection.
• Examination of stakeholders, policies, and systems impacting the need(s) to be addressed.
• Designing activities to meet identified needs.

Teachers assign students work/projects/tasks to learn about the context for the service the students will subsequently provide. The service that follows is derived from this new knowledge, involves student voice and design, but remains within the curricular framework the teacher has established.

2. Action

• Research- and knowledge-based service activities.
• Student leadership in conducting and leading project activities.
• Activities are often fluid and evolve as the project progresses, original needs are addressed, and others are identified.
• Students work collaboratively with service recipients and partners.
• Application of multiple learning styles including individual work, teamwork, using technology, tactile/manual work, oral presentations, data collection, writing, construction, etc.
• Activities flow from preparation and are not wholly pre-planned by teachers.
  

3. Reflection is integrated into successful projects from beginning to end as students form and test opinions, project outcomes, measure results and impacts, discuss actions and reactions, and make improvements and future plans. It allows students to process and absorb what they have experienced and is critical to meaningful learning. Reflective activities include the following:

• Journaling,
• Projecting project impacts,
• Discussion,
• Conducting formative and summative evaluation,
• Making project refinements, and
• Conducting future planning.

4. Demonstration is another application of service learning that involves students in educating others about the issues they are addressing. Demonstration takes various forms—many of which are actual service-learning projects in themselves—including the following:

• Advocacy campaigns
• Putting on public forums/presentations
• Performance on the service issues
• Teaching others about the project and the issues behind it
• Creating films, portfolios, books, web sites, publications, works of art, etc.

5. Recognition/Celebration

Throughout the project but especially at the end, students should be recognized for their efforts. In successful projects, all participants join together to reflect and to plan future efforts.

6. Youth Empowerment

An implicit or explicit component of the above elements, youth empowerment and leadership enrich every aspect of service learning. The greater the voice students have in identifying needs and designing activities, the more motivated they will be about the project. Having to demonstrate to (i.e., teach) others about the needs and issues being addressed requires a higher assimilation of learning. Effective projects have students conduct much of the evaluation, saving teachers labor and making students responsible for determining whether or not their efforts were successful. Strong student roles are hallmarks of effective projects, in which students . . .

• Are involved in project design and planning, with meaningful leadership roles (including needs identification and helping to decide what service activities will be conducted). Teachers in effective projects assign students organizing and logistical duties involved in arranging, providing, measuring, evaluating, reporting, and celebrating service activities.
  
• Conduct a lot of service over time. It is better to have fewer students doing a lot of service learning than to have a lot of students conduct only surface-level efforts.
  

7. Reciprocity

Reciprocity ensures activities provide service that actually needed, exposes student to people different from themselves, provides different perspectives on needs, and brings outside assistance, expertise, match, and publicity, to service-learning projects. In effective projects, teachers and students design activities based on what they hear and learn from those in need and not on preconceived notions.

When these elements are in place, the impacts of curriculum-based service learning go far beyond those of traditional community service and volunteering. Service learning combines academic and affective learning to engage students hands-on in the real world. This combination—not to mention the incentive to get out of class—is what makes service learning such a powerful tool, pedagogy, and strategy.

Examples of Service Learning in Various Need Areas

• Reading — e.g., students serving as reading tutors for other students or for adults; creating books or other written materials for other students, the public, or web sites; reading and writing for seniors or the infirm; editing documents; teaching reading to young children; translating documents for non-English speakers; promoting reading through advocacy campaigns, public service announcements (PSAs), book drives, or public readings; designing and constructing reading areas; and dramatic, artistic, or musical performances of texts and literature.

• Civics/history — e.g., conducting, compiling, recording, publishing, filming, or depicting histories of a local community, individuals in a community, or historic locations (cemeteries, buildings, natural features/sites, forts, Native American sites); advocacy campaigns on topics in the public interest; gathering and disseminating information about services available to residents and visitors; creating murals depicting local history; teaching peers about democratic processes through events, student-made videos, performances (including puppet shows), lessons, and hands-on activities; creating children’s history books; serving as museum docents; reenacting historic events; restoring or recreating historic structures; forums on topics of public interest; oral histories focusing on different eras; teaching about voting; producing tip sheets or guidebooks on how to effect positive community change.
  
• Drug/violence prevention — e.g., teaching other students or the community how to avoid/respond to conflict, drugs, STDs, teen pregnancy, alcohol, and other self-destructive choices. Strategies could include lessons, presentations, dramatic performances, videos, artistic displays, music, advocacy campaigns, PSAs, forums, coloring books, conflict mediation, serving on Teen Courts, and safety presentations for the home, car, or neighborhood.
  
• Intergenerational interaction — e.g., service projects for and with seniors to include health screenings, exercise programs, teaching use of computers, oral histories, pen pal programs, concerts and dances with (not just for) seniors, creating art or gardens at senior centers, working with seniors to put on public forums on important issues, and providing patients with physical and mental stimulation (working on arts and crafts together, exercise, games, etc.). Students can also teach others about seniors through lessons, publications, presentations, performances, brochures, web sites, and advocacy campaigns.
  
• Environment — e.g., restoration of degraded areas; exotic plant removal; propagation and planting of native plants; water, flora, and fauna testing/monitoring; research on endangered species; erosion abatement efforts; management of public lands to include trail and outdoor classroom design and maintenance; raise-and-release efforts; energy audits for homes, schools, and communities; and mapping. Demonstration elements include teaching, presenting, creating brochures and web sites, art representing the flora and fauna being studied, giving tours and field days, making videos, composing information to place in kiosks and translating it into foreign languages, performances, advocacy campaigns, public service announcements, web sites, and fundraising to preserve natural areas.
  

Types of Service-Learning

Direct Service Learning (person-to-person, face-to-face service)
Benefits: Personal responsibility, caring for others, dependability, interpersonal skills, problem-solving.

• Tutoring other students and adults
• Conducting art/music/dance lessons for younger students
• Helping other students resolve conflict
• Giving performances on violence and drug prevention
• Creating lessons and presenting them to younger students
• Creating life reviews for Hospice patients

Indirect Service Learning (working on broad issues, advocacy, environmental projects, community development)
Benefits: cooperation, teamwork skills, playing different roles, organizing, prioritizing, project-specific skills.

• Compiling a town history
• Volunteering at local clinics to conduct health screenings
• Restoring historic structures or building low-income housing
• Removing exotic plants and restoring ecosystems, preparing preserve areas for public use

Research-Based Service Learning (gathering and presenting information on areas of interest and need)
Benefits: Learn how to make discriminating judgments, assess, evaluate, and test hypotheses.

• Writing a guide on available community services and translating it into Spanish and other languages of new residents
• Conducting longitudinal studies of local bodies of water; water testing for local residents
• Gathering information and creating brochures or videos for non-profit or government agencies
• Mapping state lands and monitoring flora and fauna

Advocacy Service Learning (educating others about topics of public interest)
Benefits: Perseverance; understanding rules, systems, processes; engaged citizenship, work with adults.

• Planning and putting on public forums on topics of interest in the community
• Conducting public information campaigns on topics of interest or local needs
• Working with elected officials to draft legislation to improve communities
• Training the community in fire safety or disaster preparation

The web site below also provides a good overview of the history and components of service learning.
http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~dms56/etc667/final_project/