Service-Learning and Community-Engagement Resources for Faculty

Service learning has become an institutionalized practice in higher education. Students are sent out to disadvantaged communities to paint, tutor, feed, and help organize communities. But while the students gain from their experiences, the contributors to The Unheard Voices ask, "Does the community?" This volume explores the impact of service learning on a community, and considers the unequal relationship between the community and the academy.

This concluding volume in the series presents the work of faculty who have been moved to make sustainability the focus of their work, and to use service learning as one method of teaching sustainability to their students.

The purpose of this work is to improve service learning research and practice through strengthening its theoretical base. Contributing authors include both well-known and emerging service learning and community engagement scholars, as well as scholars from other fields. The authors bring theoretical perspectives from a wide variety of disciplines to bear as they critically review past research, describe assessment methods and instruments, develop future research agendas, and consider implications of theory-based research for enhanced practice.

Randy Stoecker has been "practicing" forms of community-engaged scholarship, including service learning, for thirty years now, and he readily admits, "Practice does not make perfect." Here, Stoecker questions the prioritization and theoretical/philosophical underpinnings of the core concepts of service learning: 1. learning, 2. service, 3. community, and 4. change. By "liberating" service learning, he suggests reversing the prioritization of the concepts, starting with change, then community, then service, and then learning. In doing so, he clarifies the benefits and purpose of this work, arguing that it will create greater pedagogical and community impact.

Service Learning in the Community is a unique, stand-alone text for courses that connect service to the community to the acquisition of academic knowledge–courses that ask students to venture into the outside world, and engage in the problems and projects of the communities surrounding their schools. Service Learning in the Community can be used in sociology and education courses, as well as in classes dealing with human development. It is also an excellent supplementary text for psychology and political science courses The book begins with an explanation of service learning, its roots, and definitions of useful terms. While other texts focus on theory, Service Learning in the Community emphasizes the how-to of the discipline, providing students with a clear roadmap for involvement in service fields.

Civic Education Across the Curriculumoffers faculty in all disciplines rationales and resources for connecting their service-learning efforts to the broader goals of civic engagement. Campuses promoting engagement are beginning to tie service-learning practices to their civic mission of preparing students for participation in a diverse, democratic society. There are, however, few resources for faculty--especially those in fields not traditionally linked with civic education--to think about how civic engagement might be incorporated into their own disciplinary perspectives and course goals. This volume distills a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on citizenship into usable conceptual frameworks. It provides concrete examples of course materials, exercises, and assignments that can be used in service-learning courses to develop students' civic capacities, regardless of disciplinary area. This volume will assist faculty in their own curricular work as well as enable them to combine their individual initiatives with others across their campus.