Embedding Service Learning in European Higher Education

Developing a Culture of Civic Engagement

Pilar Aramburuzabala, Lorraine McIlrath, Héctor Opazo, Pilar Aramburuzabala, Lorraine McIlrath, Héctor Opazo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138089730
• eBook ISBN: 9781351611893
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Service learning brings together students, academics and the community whereby all become teaching resources, problem solvers and partners. In addition to enhancing academic and real-world learning, the overall purpose of service learning is to instil in students a sense of civic engagement and responsibility and work towards positive social change within society.

Embedding Service Learning in European Higher Education promotes service learning as a pedagogical approach that develops civic engagement within higher education. It both describes and assesses the most recent developments and contextual positioning of service learning in European higher education and considers if and how the pedagogy is responding to European Union policy and the strategy of higher education institutions and towards engagement with broader societal issues.

With case studies from 12 universities across Europe, this book draws on existing practice, shares knowledge and develops best practice to provide conceptual and practical tools for teaching, researching and practising service learning. This book:

• exposes service learning as a key approach in terms of embedding a culture of political and civic literacy within higher education;
• considers service learning in Europe, an area of growing research in service learning practice;
• explores the issue of university social responsibility;
• presents chapters from leaders in the service learning movement at a national and international level.

Practical and engaging, Embedding Service Learning in European Higher Education is a fascinating read for anyone working in service learning as well as those working at universities with an interest in social and civic engagement and institutional reform.

Part I

Foundations of service learning within Europe

1What is service learning?

Making sense of the pedagogy and practice

Andrew Furco and Katrina Norvell

Introduction

At first glance, the concept of service learning seems simple. As the term implies, it is a practice that links community service with learning activities, and learning activities with community service. Yet, in actual practice, the nature of service learning is quite complex and is subject to many interpretations. Over the years, as educational systems across the globe have adopted this instructional practice, there have been numerous and varied attempts to clarify the meaning behind this pedagogy. Just about every book or journal article published about service learning devotes space to defining the term and explaining the practice. And this volume is no exception. Indeed, such presentations are necessary, given that the term continues to be widely oversimplified, misinterpreted, and misunderstood.

This widespread misunderstanding of the term is due primarily to the fact that service learning is inherently a highly contextualised practice. It looks very different across institutional and community contexts. There is no one way to do service learning, and in turn, what counts and does not count as service learning is subject to some interpretation. Indeed, no two service learning experiences are alike. To complicate matters further, service learning is used to achieve a wide and varied set of educational goals and purposes, from improving students’ academic learning and educational success, to enhancing students’ personal development, to furthering students’ social and intercultural understanding, to strengthening students’ career development, to nurturing students’ civic responsibility and participation, to centring students’ ethical and moral compass, just to name a few. And when considering the operationalisation of service learning in different countries, capturing the true essence of service learning becomes even more challenging as the cultural nuances and situational contexts give shadings to the practice that can make a service learning activity in one setting unrecognisable from a service learning activity in another setting.

In this chapter, we approach the question ‘What is service learning?’ by avoiding the common pitfall of presenting an oversimplified, limiting definition of this multifaceted instructional practice. Instead, we offer a set of conceptual frameworks and a set of principles designed to more fully capture the complexities that undergird service learning. To a great extent, understanding what service learning is requires understanding what it is not. Through the frameworks and principles we present in this chapter, one can gain a fuller understanding of the essence of service learning as well as deeper insights into the different purposes, philosophies, and practices that educators in different countries ascribe to this pedagogy.

The rising tide of service learning across the globe

Whether understood as a philosophy or practice, service learning is value-laden and reflects the culture and priorities of each country and region where it has emerged. In the United States, where the practice of service learning first gained attention in the 1980s, substantial efforts were underway to incorporate more experiential learning activities into the nation’s primary and secondary school classrooms, based in large part on David Kolb’s experiential learning model (1981, 1984). Kolb posited that truly effective learning required direct experiences and intentional reflection on those experiences as a way to promote new and varied meaning that could be tested and applied in real-world contexts. Service learning was seen as one form of experiential learning in which students not only engaged in active learning activities inside the classroom, but also in community settings external to the school site, thereby connecting ideas and concepts to relevant experiences, and thus fostering a sense of belonging and responsibility to the welfare of one’s larger community.

Higher education institutions in the United States soon followed suit, but with additional and somewhat different goals from that of primary and secondary schools. Throughout the early 1990s, an increasing number of colleges and universities were adopting service learning initiatives that engaged students in course-based learning activities through which the students applied their classroom knowledge to address societal issues in a concerted effort to restore the primacy of the public service mission of higher education and its historical commitment to building and sustaining a democratic society. Prominent US scholars and academic leaders including Ernest Boyer, Derek Bok, Benjamin Barber, and Robert Putnam, just to name a few, expressed deep concern that increased competition and market forces were undermining higher education’s role in fostering, what political scientists Almond and Verba (1963) characterised as the US distinctive ‘participant civic culture’. In 1994, the US government passed legislation to fund service learning programmes in primary, secondary, and higher education. This legislation provided funding for schools and universities around the country to incorporate community service experiences more fully into the formal academic curriculum. This linking of community service with formal classroom educational experiences became what is now known as service learning. Publications, curricula, conferences, associations, and networks that focused on advancing the practice of service learning soon emerged. As the new millennium approached, a robust groundswell of service learning practice across the United States was underway.

Concurrently, service learning was also gaining notable traction in other parts of the globe. For example, in Argentina, a 1997 national service learning conference launched an expansive educational initiative for service learning (knows as aprendizaje-servicio or servicio solidario) that continues today in thousands of schools and universities throughout the country. In fact, Argentina maintains some of the most robust, advanced, and sophisticated service learning programming in the world. Throughout the early 2000s, several other countries including Singapore, Mexico, Australia, Germany, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, and other others were embracing service learning, but not all for the same reasons. Singapore, for example, began exploring service learning as a way to promote youth leadership and to cultivate young people’s capacity to serve as change agents for positive community development (National Youth Council, 2000). South Africa saw service learning as a potential for engaging universities in building national unity on the heels of the end of apartheid. Mexico saw it as a way to deepen the impact of the constitutionally required minimum of 480 hours of community service (servicio social) that all young Mexicans must complete; by tying service to the curriculum, Mexican students would be able to complete the social service required in ways that link the service activity to their educational interests and professional aspiration (Munoz, Macias, & Niebla, 2016). Germany saw service learning as a way to enhance secondary school students’ analytical problem-solving skills and citizenship development. With each new country’s adoption of service learning came new framings and nuanced perspectives on what service learning was and what it would achieve. Indeed, by the end of the 2000s, the service learning approach in one country had little resemblance to service learning in other countries.

Today, numerous countries have embraced service learning within their educational systems – albeit their own version – with a plethora of national and international service learning conferences offered across the globe each year. The cultural and community contexts that initially shaped each country’s approach to service learning have greatly influenced the specific ways in which each country practices and defines service learning today. Yet, despite the nuances, distinctions, idiosyncrasies, and unique culturally based characterisations of service learning that are found within national boundaries, there is a set of core practices and principles that qualify these various manifestations of service learning as ‘service learning’. It is this set of core practices and principles that distinguish service learning as a unique practice that is distinct from other community-embedded active learning pedagogies. So, what are the elements that make a practice ‘service learning’, regardless of the context?

Defining and conceptualising service learning

As was mentioned previously, just about every publication on service learning includes a definition of service learning. Perhaps this is because authors believe that the concept of service learning is not well known – especially among those who are not immersed in service learning work. Another reason may be that authors realise that there are many different understandings and interpretations of the term, and therefore it is important for them to state how they define service learning in order to facilitate the readers’ understanding and interpretation of the authors’ use of the term.

No matter what the reason, the service learning literature is replete with service learning definitions. In fact, as early as 1990, US experiential education researcher Jane Kendall encountered 147 terms and descriptions of service learning in the literature (Kendall, 1990). Most of the definitions originated in the United States, and in turn, incorporate particular terms (i.e. civic responsibility, citizenship) that take on different meanings when applied to other parts of the globe. Collectively, the definitions range from the simple and direct to the multifaceted and elaborate. Moreover, the varied definitions reflect the lens through which service learning is cast – as a pedagogy, as a philosophy, or as a discrete programme composed of set actions and activities. Regardless of the focus or from which part of the world the definitions emanate, they all point to a similar set of practices, principles, values, and approaches.

The following definition, which is one of the mostly widely cited definitions of service learning in the US-based literature, attempts to capture the overall essence of service learning’s educational approach and focus:

Service-learning is a credit-bearing, educational, experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility.

(Bringle & Hatcher, 1995, p. 112)

What is notable about this definition is that it emphasises the educational, academic nature of service learning. This is due in large part to the fact that since its emergence, many have confused the practice of service learning with conducting volunteer work or performing community service. This persistent confusion raised questions among educators as to whether the practice of service learning had sufficient academic rigour to be incorporated into curriculum (Abes, Jackson, & Jones, 2002). Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the definitions that appeared in the early years sought to clearly distinguish service learning (an academically based pedagogy) from community service (a non-academic service activity).

However, others felt that these attempts to present academically focused definitions diluted the importance of the community benefits that service learning promoted. In turn, a number of national service learning advocacy groups produced definitions that service learning was not only about benefitting the academic enterprise, but also about providing benefits to the communities being served. For example, the US National Service Learning Clearinghouse defined service learning as follows:

Service learning combines service objectives with learning objectives with the intent that the activity changes both the recipient and the provider of the service. This is accomplished by combining service tasks with structured opportunities that link the task to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the acquisition and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge content.

(National Service Learning Clearinghouse, 2000)

Definitions such as this focused on making sure that the service component of service learning remained front and centre.

As service learning was finding its footing in various parts of the globe, the definitions that emerged tended to reflect the respective country’s goals, intentions, and purposes for advancing service learning. We also began to see national service learning efforts that sought to balance the service learning’s educational goals with its community service goals. The national service learning initiative that Argentina launched in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Foundations of service learning within Europe
• Part II Europe Engage: Approaches to service learning
• Part III European higher education practice: Case studies
• Part IV Future considerations for service learning in Europe
• Index