Chapter 10
The Case for Prosocial Education: Service Learning as Community Building
Deborah Hecht and Deirdra Grode
Service learning is an educational approach to teaching and learning that provides a real-world context for understanding how prosocial education can enrich and expand student learning. As students engage in community service activities, they develop academic competencies (Billig & Klute, 2002; Raskoff & Sundeen, 1999) as well as an awareness of their roles and civic responsibilities as members of a broader community (Billig, Root, & Jesse, 2005; Youniss & Yates, 2006). Consider, for example, the experiences of students at Hoboken Charter School:
As part of an interdisciplinary unit, third-grade students learned about the health, social, and community need for water. They then considered what it would mean to be without water and discussed areas in Africa where water is scarce. Extension lessons introduced material about African languages, art, and geography. To make the examples real, students learned about a particular Ugandan community where lack of water is a serious problem and the impact that the need for water has upon education. As a class, the Hoboken Charter School students decided to take action through service learning. They wanted to educate their local community about the importance of water and its conservation and to raise money to build a water retention vessel in the African community about which they had studied. Students planned and led a water-themed community carnival to educate attendees about the need for water, the world water crisis, ways one can conserve and protect water sources, and the cultures that they had been studying. The carnival incorporated a variety of student-led activities (e.g., a water balloon toss), relevant presentations about what they had learned, singing of African songs, a display of African art created by the students, and an auction of “water ducks” created by students from scrap materials. The auction raised enough funds to help build a water retention system in Uganda. Throughout the unit, speakers from the community, including an architect from Architects without Borders, a physician, and a parent who studied in Eastern Africa spoke to the class about topics relevant to these studies. During reflection, students compared their lives to those of their Ugandan counterparts. Students’ academic and prosocial learning continued as students wrote letters to children who attended the local African school that benefited from the fund-raiser. Pictures and correspondence from Africa further reinforced the experience for students. Students felt empowered by the experience, they developed skills that allow them to make change in the world, and their course work gained new relevance and meaning.
What Is Service Learning and How Does It Work?
Such service learning experiences can have a tremendous impact upon students, teachers, and the community in multiple and sustainable ways. Service learning not only enriches learning and strengthens communities, but it also connects students to the world outside the classroom. It builds community and promotes social-emotional development in ways that can make students more aware of the impact that they can have on society (Leming, 2001). Education becomes more than learning facts and skills, but also about using and applying this knowledge. Thus, service learning has the potential to provide multiple opportunities for students to develop prosocial behaviors alongside academic learning by engaging students in activities that benefit others within the context of their school experiences.
Service Learning as a Unique Approach
Service learning can often appear to be analogous to community service or experiential learning. That is, students apply what they have learned either in or out of the classroom to address a real-world need as well as a way to gain an understanding of the content they are learning. Service learning, however, provides additional opportunities to deepen learning and to enrich prosocial education. Service learning incorporates four essential elements (planning, action, reflection, and celebration/demonstration) and provides unique experiences that make it distinct from most other educational approaches (Furco & Billig, 2002). For instance, whereas experiential education provides real-world applications, service learning connects these applications to meet real and meaningful community needs. Unlike community service, which involves students in volunteerism to address a community need (Sipe, 2001), service learning also provides opportunities for students to learn from their activities through carefully designed project periods focused on planning for these activities and reflection, which connects the service learning with their academics and other life experiences (Furco, 2006).
Unlike a content-specific curriculum for acquiring knowledge, which may or may not include pedagogically specific guidelines, service learning is itself a pedagogical approach that can be applied to various content areas (Billig, 2000). For many educators, service learning becomes the way they teach, rather than what they teach (Dary, Prueter, Grinde, Grobschmidt, & Evers, 2010). This means that service learning programs can look very different depending upon the academic content, the context in which students are learning, the needs being addressed, and the community connections being incorporated. For example, one middle school student, as part of a language arts class, might participate in service learning as a reading buddy at a senior center where the elderly have limited vision. Another middle school student might serve as a reading buddy at a preschool, working with students who are not yet able to read on their own. The types of books that they select to read, the ways that they present the material, and the questions that they ask their service learning reading buddies will differ because the context of the reading experience is so different. In each case, the students will practice and use their communication and reading skills, but in different ways, since interacting with a senior citizen will be very different from interacting with a preschooler.
The middle school students will also learn something about human development, although about different phases of human development. Further, the facilitating teachers who select the sites might identify different learning goals for the students. For example, students at the senior center might be expected to make historical connections to the literature. Students at the preschool might be expected to help students use visualization of the text as a prereading strategy. Another middle school language arts teacher might decide to use service learning to deepen her students’ communication skills by having them educate the community about energy conservation through promotional materials, booklets, and public presentations that they have created. These students would also practice and use their communication skills, as well as learn more about the science of energy conservation, again in a very different context.
Although all service learning projects address some type of community need, even defining what is meant by community or a community need can be complex. Community may refer to a classroom, school, town, state, or country (Berman, 2006). The need may be local, such as serving as a reading buddy, or global, such as providing potable water to a school in Africa. Needs may be in areas related to the environment, education, safety, human rights, human service, health, homeland security, or a host of others, only limited by the context in which the service and the learning will occur. Further adding to this complexity is that students can engage in service learning as part of a regular academic class, a schoolwide project, a club, an elective, or while involved with a community organization. Additionally, even within a given grade or school, service learning projects may look very different depending upon the learning goals for students. Consider a service learning project that addresses a need for increased wheelchair access for individuals with disabilities. One service learning project might introduce the concept of social justice and history by studying the Americans with Disabilities Act (1991) and having students advocate for increased access to their own school for individuals in wheelchairs. Another service learning project might make math connections, including a study of slope and measurement as students design and build ramps into their school for individuals in wheelchairs.
The locations where service learning occurs can also vary. Service learning activities can take place within a classroom or school building, in the community, or a combination of both. Service learning can occur during the school day, outside the school day, or a combination of both. Further, it can involve a small number of students, an entire class, an entire grade level, or an entire school.
Despite these many differences, a commonality of all service learning is that it promotes prosocial education, and students are engaged in thinking about issues outside of themselves. They are interacting with others, whether in person, through writing, virtually, or through other ways. Students must learn to consider different perspectives, to appreciate the challenges that others face, and to think about solutions to real-world problems.
The Pedagogy of Service Learning
Furthermore, there is a structured pedagogy for service learning. It is generally agreed upon that a quality service learning experience must incorporate at least four essential or key elements. Specifically, these are planning, action (doing), reflection, and celebration/demonstration, also referred to as PARC (RMC Research Corporation, 2006/2009). The first phase of planning a service learning project usually begins with identification of a need or issue to be addressed. In some cases, students and teachers conduct a needs assessment to identify an issue they want to address. For example, they may notice that their school is not recycling paper and decide to educate the school and promote recycling. Or they may conduct a survey and discover that lack of recycling bins is a concern of students and teachers. In other cases, teachers may select a topic to address or content to learn through service learning activities and then develop a project. For example, a health teacher may wish to teach about illness prevention and decide to have the class plan and lead a community-wide health fair that corresponds with their unit of study.
Once a need is identified, the next phase of planning commences with students and teachers engaging in thoughtful preparation and detailed planning for their service learning project. Typically facilitated by a teacher or other adult, planning involves not only focusing on “what will be done” but also the knowledge, skills, and prosocial expectations needed to complete the project successfully. Students may spend time reading about an issue, researching a need, designing activities, and so forth. A wide variety of activities may be undertaken that will help with project implementation, ranging from ones that encourage reinforcement and development of the skills needed to complete the service learning activities to understanding and practicing the social skills needed to effectively interact with community partners. Effective planning activities create links between prosocial behavioral expectations and academic content. In some cases, planning can last several months, while in other cases it can occur simultaneously with the action or service component. Planning can take the form of traditional instruction, independent work, collaborative work, research, or reflective thinking. Students may role-play before they begin, watch relevant videos, or discuss their service learning plans, to name a few possibilities. This is also a time when students think about possible challenges and design potential solutions within the constraints of their service learning experience.
During the action phase, students use what they have learned from their planning experiences to engage in service. Action can occur in or out of school, during the day or after or before school. It can take the form of direct service, indirect service, or advocacy. Direct service learning involves students interacting with others, such as students teaching residents at a transitional home about how to prepare economical, healthy meals and working with them to create feasible, affordable shopping lists that match a weekly menu plan. Contact is direct and personal. Indirect service usually involves students working on a need without direct contact with the service recipients. For example, students create a recipe book for residents at a transitional home. Although their service learning actions benefit the residents who live in the transitional home, the students do not have direct contact with them. Indirect service learning is common with younger students and at schools that lack the resources or time for out-of-school activities. Advocacy-based service learning involves students working for a cause through activities that promote increased public awareness and public action. For example, students may advocate for the transitional home by developing a public awareness campaign to inform community members about the services provided by the home and the needs of the residents. On a more global level, the students might advocate for land mine removal through persuasive essay writing to politicians.
The third element of service learning is reflection. Reflection provides a time for students to think about and critically examine their service learning actions within a broader context (Eyler & Giles, 1999). They make connections between academic learning and world experiences. During reflection, students consider not only what occurred but also explore obstacles they faced, different actions they might have taken, and the long-term impact of their efforts. Reflection can take many forms, such as group discussion, role-playing performances, and written narratives. It is especially effective when different modalities are used, thereby engaging students with different learning styles and interests (Bringle & Hatcher, 1999). Many believe that reflection is where the most significant and meaningful learning occurs. Furthermore, reflection is typically an ongoing activity that occurs both formally and informally and can occur any time during a service learning experience (Conrad & Hedin, 1987). Many programs include a weekly reflection activity beginning during the planning phase and continuing throughout as a time when students can think about what they have accomplished and use what they learned during reflection to plan further action.
Celebration and demonstration provide a time for students to share what they have learned and to celebrate their accomplishments. It is also a time when students may have additional interactions with the community and receive public feedback about their prosocial activities through service learning.
Numerous articles and reports have cited the importance of these elements—planning, action, reflection, and celebration/demonstration (PARC)—emphasizing that without each element the learning is reduced and the program may not be considered a true service learning experience (Billig, 2002; Leming, 2001). While it is unclear how much time is optimal for each element and how this varies with different service learning projects, the structure is part of what differentiates service learning from other community service and prosocial activities.
A Brief History of Service Learning
Historically, service learning can be traced back to the work of John Dewey (1916/1966) in the early 1900s and his seminal book Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. In this work, he emphasized the importance of education as a necessary component of a student becoming a functioning member of society. Dewey believed that through hands-on learning, students see real-life applications of their learning and understand how and why academic content is significantly related to engagement in society. In 1933, with the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Franklin D. Roosevelt set the stage for young people serving the community by engaging three million unemployed young men in service to their nation as they built bridges, national parks, and buildings throughout America (Wade, 1997). Further, in 1944 the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act or GI Bill created a link between service and education by providing educational incentives for Americans who had served in the military.
The Peace Corps, established in 1961 by President Kennedy, encouraged service on national and global levels and for any interested citizen. Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), the National Teacher Corps, the Job Corps, and the University Year of Action were all introduced by President Johnson to help address issues of poverty in the late 1960s. While these programs focused on youth or working adults, the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, Foster Grandparent Program, and Senior Companion Program were developed during the same period to engage older Americans in service activities to help improve the nation.
According to most accounts, the term service learning was first used in 1966 to describe a project funded by the Tennessee Valley Authority along with Oak Ridge Associated Universities in East Tennessee which linked students and faculty with tributary area development organizations (National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, 2011a). In 1971, the White House Conference on Youth publicly endorsed “an expansion of service-learning and work study opportunities in high schools and colleges,” with attention to learning goals and academic credit (White House Conference on Youth, 1971, p. 39), thus laying the groundwork for further expansion of service learning. Organizations such as the National Center for Public Service Internships and the Society for Field Experience Education (which merged in 1978 to become the National Society for Internships and Experiential Education) began to appear across the country.
By the 1980s, service learning was receiving national recognition as an important movement, particularly at the college level, with the formation of the Campus Outreach Opportunity League and Campus Compact, two organizations designed to support and promote service learning on college campuses. For kindergarten through high school youth, the National Youth Leadership Council and Youth Service America were founded in the 1980s to promote service in the primary and secondary grade levels. Further recognition that service learning was becoming an established and national movement came in 1989 when a Wingspread conference brought together more than seventy leaders and organizations in the service learning field (Honnet & Poulsen, 1989). These individuals created the Ten Principles of Good Practice in Service Learning, thereby providing further structure for current and future programs in the field. In New York, the National Center for Service Learning for Early Adolescents was established to provide training to middle school teachers and administrators interested in incorporating service learning into their curriculum. In addition, various states began to develop their own service learning support networks.
The Office of National Service in the White House and the Points of Light Foundation were established in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush, the same year that the National Community Service Act was signed into law. Since that time, federal grant money has been awarded to schools and national service programs to support service learning from prekindergarten through college. The National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 further expanded the government’s endorsement for service learning and created the Corporation for National and Community Service to help achieve these goals. Along the way, leading educational organizations, including the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), the National Society for Internships and Experiential Education, and the Ford Foundation have endorsed service learning as an important educational pedagogy. States began acknowledging the value of service learning experiences for graduation, and by 1997, Maryland required service learning experiences for all high school students (as of this writing, Maryland still has the only state requirement, although some states, such as New Jersey and New York, have embedded service in some of their curriculum standards). Increasingly, colleges were acknowledging that students who had participated in service learning were better prepared for post–high school study (Newmann & Rutter, 1983). In their 2008 report, Campus Compact, a coalition of over 1,190 colleges and universities dedicated to service learning and civic education, reported that among the colleges and universities in their coalition, $5.7 billion were devoted to service learning and 282 million hours of service were provided to the community (Campus Compact, 2009).
The idea of service as a national movement was again reinforced in 1994 when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was designated as a day of service. Over time, additional attention, resources, and research began to focus on the implementation and impact of service learning in K–12 classrooms. In 1994, Learn and Serve America established the National Service Learning Clearinghouse (NSLC) as a national repository for service learning resources, including lesson plans, tool kits, and fact sheets for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers. The Learning in Deed initiative, started in 1998, was created to encourage schools throughout the United States to adopt service learning, to create policy change, and to examine research and practice issues that support and challenge full institutionalization of service learning. In 2001, Learning in Deed morphed into the National Service-Learning Partnership and became a major leader in policy issues around service learning.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 once again reinforced the national support of service learning when $200 million in funding was allocated to the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) to support an additional 10,316 AmeriCorps state and national members and 4,430 AmeriCorps VISTA members. This money was also used to improve the information technology infrastructure of CNCS as a way to further strengthen and support service learning nationally. The Obama administration helped facilitate the passing of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act in 2009, which supports expansion of youth involvement in service learning through the reauthorization of Learn and Serve America and the creation of Youth Engagement Zones and the Campuses of Service initiatives. Youth Engagement Zones create service learning opportunities for high-needs middle to high school–aged students to address community problems while reinforcing the importance of academic learning. The goals are to increase student attendance, prosocial behaviors, academic achievement, and graduation and college entrance rates. Campuses of Service expand support of service learning on college campuses. The Edward M. Kennedy Act also created new opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Americans to participate in service activities through AmeriCorps, the Volunteer Generation Fund, the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program, and the Social Innovation Fund. It further provided Americans with access to service opportunities through the United We Serve campaign and instituted September 11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance.
In addition to national expansion of service learning, growth has been evident on the state and school levels. According to a 2008 report from the Corporation of National and Community Service, 68 percent of the 1,847 K–12 principals they interviewed from across the nation reported that their students participated in community service activities that were recognized by their school. This percentage was up from 64 percent in 1999 (Spring, Crimm, & Dietz, 2008).
As service learning garnered increased attention from national policy makers, there were also increased calls for research demonstrating its impact and value for education. During the 1980s, the studies of Newmann and Rutter (1983, 1985) provided initial insights into the benefits of these service learning experiences. The Corporation for National Service conducted several large-scale studies in the 1990s (Henness, 2001; Potts, 2000). The First International Conference on Service-Learning Research was held in 2001 and is now convened yearly to bring together educators and researchers who critically examine the impact of this pedagogy. The need to promote and encourage new research was further seen in the establishment of the Emerging Leaders Project and the introduction of Information for Action, a journal dedicated to service learning. Gradually, practice and research in service learning have been gaining more momentum and support in the United States.
However, this expansion has been mitigated by the current economic crisis. In April of 2011, the signing of the Continuing Resolution saw the Corporation for National and Community Service budget reduced to 94 percent of the corporation’s 2010 funding. Most heavily hit by the budget cuts were programs such as RSVP, AmeriCorps, National Grants, and Learn and Serve America. In fact, Learn and Serve America experienced complete elimination of their 2011 fiscal year funding. The continuation of these service learning programs in the face of such economic hardships is a testament to the power of service learning and the impact of the pedagogy on both the service learning providers and service recipients.
Implementing Effective Service Learning: What We Know from Research and Practice
The history of service learning demonstrates that as a model for prosocial education, service learning is well established. Although it is clear that there is federal and local support for engaging youth in service learning activities, what has generally been lacking is a full understanding of the academic, behavioral, affective, and prosocial benefits for students and teachers who have participated in these experiences. Common sense suggests that providing structured ways for youth to engage in activities that are interesting, are connected to their own lives, and require them to apply the knowledge and skills learned in school will have a positive impact. One rarely hears parents or community members complain that youth should not be engaged in activities that benefit the community. In fact, the judicial system has often called for youth to engage in service as a way to remediate negative behaviors. Teachers typically report that students are more engaged and less distracted, feel better about themselves, and often develop a deeper understanding of the world and world needs after experiencing service learning in their classes.
However, even among those who enthusiastically endorse service learning, concerns are often raised about whether participating in service learning contributes to the development of academic skills in substantial enough ways to justify it occurring during the school day, and questions are sometimes raised about whether service learning takes too much time from regular classroom activities. In 2007, ASCD launched its whole child initiative, which highlighted the importance of addressing the needs of students beyond content knowledge (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2007). Yet school-based decision makers are often driven by federal, state, and local demands for accountability and policy decisions influenced by state test score proficiency. This tension between addressing the needs of the whole child, as advocated by ASCD, and assessing students as academically proficient in the core content areas is evident in the research.
A review of relevant service learning literature suggests that there are positive outcomes from participating in service learning. Evaluation reports, doctoral dissertations, master’s degree theses, teacher action research, youth research, and empirical research studies, to name but a few, suggest that service learning has the ability to improve academic achievement, build character, promote understanding, enhance self-efficacy, reduce risky behaviors, and enhance civic engagement (e.g., Billig, Root, & Jesse, 2005; Lerner, Dowling, & Andersen, 2003; Lundy, 2007; Raskoff & Sundeen, 1999; Youniss & Yates, 1999). Further, through facilitation of service learning, teachers develop new pedagogy, greater self-awareness, and increased personal self-efficacy and civic engagement (Slavkin & McGovern, 2008). School and classroom climates are improved, and school–community relationships are strengthened (Billig & Conrad, 1997). Moreover, impact is not limited to the student service providers or teacher facilitators. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service (see the “Impact of Learn and Serve America” section of their website), as a result of service learning projects, communities gain thousands of hours of needed services, parks are beautified, buildings are restored, health needs are met, and students are tutored.
There are numerous published and unpublished documents that have reported the results of investigations into the impact of service learning experiences, of which only a few have been cited here. A search of the combined terms “service learning” and “research” resulted in over fifty million hits through Google, and when conducted in ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), a repository of educational research, over eight hundred articles were located. Furthermore, with the growth of service learning resources such as the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse and Learn and Serve America, locating relevant current and past research reports about service learning has become even easier. A resource list at the end of this chapter provides recommendations of places to search for relevant literature.
While locating literature and research that support the value of service learning is not difficult, finding studies that meet the rigorous empirical standards recommended by the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is more difficult. The majority of documented findings would be considered inconclusive and the studies methodologically weak against these standards. Frequently, sample sizes have been small and only representative of narrow populations. Rarely are students or teachers randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, and instead studies often rely upon samples of convenience or existing groupings. Many studies only examine pre-post differences, leaving the reader with no way to determine if change occurs because of the intervention or maturation or some other factor that impacted the group. Furthermore, students often begin service learning either believing they can change the world or thinking that their input means nothing. By virtue of their participation, they gain the ability to have a more realistic view about their potential impact on society. For some students, this may be recognition that change is slow and requires hard work; others might realize they have more ability to effect change than they originally believed.
Assessing Service Learning
The assessments that are administered often lack data regarding their validity and reliability for the populations being studied. A review of assessments included within the Compendium of Assessment and Research Tools (CART), a repository of assessment tools for service learning, reveals that many do not report psychometric properties, therefore raising questions about the meaningfulness of the research findings that are based on studies using these assessment tools. Issues related to fidelity of implementation are rarely addressed in research studies, and even when some judgments about the strength of program implementation are included, these are typically based on subjective assessments or self-report measures. An additional concern with current research about service learning is the limited use of sophisticated statistical approaches for examining the data. Furthermore, the unit of analysis is often unclear, poorly specified, or not aligned with the program design. Most studies reach conclusions about student-level impact without accounting for the fact that service learning typically occurs in a group setting, and individual student change is likely to be mediated by multiple factors including the teacher facilitator, the group with whom service is performed, and the characteristics of the service experience. While there is potential for research in this area using multilevel data models, very little has been conducted.
One reason for these limitations is likely related to the very reasons why service learning is a unique and highly effective model of prosocial education. Service learning is not an intervention that can be identically implemented in multiple sites. According to the Standards and Indicators for Effective Service-Learning Practice (RMC Research Corporation, 2008), service learning projects should
Yet, the ways in which these are manifest in projects and the degree to which each is evident and stressed varies greatly even across what are considered very strong programs. It is unknown what combination of these program characteristics is optimal, for which students, and in which contexts. This presents a unique challenge to anyone interested in studying service learning. Rob Shumer (2000) developed the Self-Assessment for Service-Learning, which provides some guidance for characterizing the strength of service learning programs. This tool is designed more for formative assessment and helping programs engage in self-reflection rather than to operationalize program strength. It is a strong tool that includes essential components of service learning expected to be present in programs. This assessment and others may be found online through the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse or the National Youth Leadership Council.
The Challenge of Documenting Impact in Times of Accountability
Despite the methodological challenges, the need for strong research evidence demonstrating the benefit of prosocial educational programs such as service learning is critical. With the evidence-based practices (EBP) movement, educators must often select from among a multitude of possible educational initiatives to employ in their schools or classrooms. Increasingly, the standard for educators and policy makers is empirically validated programs that have methodologically rigorous empirical research demonstrating their academic benefit. Experimental or quasi-experimental studies with representative samples using valid and reliable measures are considered essential. As part of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) review of character education, two programs that specifically mention service learning were reviewed. Each presented one study that met the What Works Clearinghouse “evidence standards with reservations,” suggesting that the study provided some of the rigor needed. Both studies focused on areas of knowledge, attitudes, and values, in contrast to behavior or academic achievement. However, simply applying the types of research criteria that What Works Clearinghouse recommends will not necessarily provide data that support the types of outcomes that practitioners frequently describe.
Complexity of Evidence about Service Learning
As noted elsewhere, service learning is a complex, contextually grounded program that is based on strong partnerships and is responsive to the changing needs of the students, teachers, and community. This suggests that there may be a need to reconsider what is being studied and how studies are conceptualized. If a study of service learning fails to take into account the contextual factors that make service learning unique, it likely ignores many of the key reasons teachers insist that service learning is such a powerful way to engage students in learning. Furthermore, operationalizing context is difficult, since context can refer to where service learning occurs, the partnerships and who participates, the community need being addressed, and how the essential elements of service learning—planning, action, reflection, and celebration/demonstration—are incorporated, to name a few examples.
For example, consider two schools in very different locations that decide to implement a service learning project to address a need to help stock the local food pantry. Students at both schools might learn about nutrition. They might also both learn about economics as they study the costs of foods today and fifty years ago. However, in each case students will learn and provide service within the context of their own community. In a rural farming community, students decide to create a school garden and grow food that could be given to a local food pantry. They study the costs of growing food and the ways in which farming has changed over the past fifty years. Students work with local farmers to identify which crops to grow. They would learn about weather and soil conditions and how to fertilize the plants without using pesticides. Students work with the health teacher to learn about the nutritional value of the foods that they will be growing and donating. Contrast these experiences with those of students at an urban school. After these urban students study hunger and homelessness, they hold several canned food drives. They research the nutritional value of canned and processed foods and compile a list of inexpensive but nutritionally rich canned food products. They study the cost of feeding a family today in contrast to fifty years ago. Students organize the canned food drive at five local neighborhood supermarkets and provide each shopper with their list of recommended foods. Students also approach local grocers and restaurants asking them to donate healthy yet overstocked food or meals that the students then collect and deliver by foot to the pantry each afternoon after school.
A study of these two programs might examine the academic knowledge that students learn about nutrition or economics, but the context and specific details of what they learn is very different. Since service learning experiences are grounded in students’ own lives, what they learn will likely have more meaning and may result in deeper understanding than if they learned about nutrition and economics from studying a textbook with “real-world” examples. Both groups of service learning students will likely develop a deeper sense of understanding of their own community and their civic responsibilities as they engage in a service learning activity that allows them to interact with and reflect on their own community’s needs. However, unless the assessment tools are capturing these differences, the depth of what students learn about the academic content as well as their own community and civic responsibilities within that community is unlikely to be revealed in the data.
Identification of Outcomes
From a methodological perspective, there may be solutions to at least some of these challenges. Given an adequately large number of classes, willing teachers, and adequate funding, one could randomly assign students to classes and classes to conditions (service learning or traditional learning). A quasi-experimental study might match service learning classes with traditional learning classes in the same school on predetermined relevant characteristics. A single academic content area (e.g., math, English language arts, social studies, science, art, music) and grade (e.g., pre-K, fifth, twelfth) could be studied, thereby further reducing variability. The researcher could specify how much time would be spent in each area of planning, action, reflection, and celebration/demonstration activities, and careful record keeping could document any changes made by the service learning teacher facilitator. Instead of only collecting data at the start and end of a service learning project, data could be collected at multiple times since our experience has shown that on the preassessment, students often have unrealistic views about themselves and their abilities to create change.
Even if one can apply methodological rigor to studying service learning, questions remain about the appropriate outcomes to investigate. The academic content is not always clearly specified or transparent. For example, if students participate in a service learning project to prepare first-aid kits for a local day care center, it is expected that students will learn about first aid. However, service learning outcomes typically overlap with a variety of domains in addition to the academic content. Learning goals may cover multiple content areas. Students often learn and practice communication skills, problem solving, tolerance, and teamwork skills in addition to any academic content (Billig, 2000). Furthermore, teachers frequently report that they measure the success of a service learning project not in the traditional sense (e.g., a good grade) but rather by students’ willingness to explore possibilities and question the status quo.
Thus, what is meant by a successful outcome is often unique to the classroom context, individual student, and teacher. Successful student outcomes in service learning experiences frequently depend as much on social, emotional, and prosocial behavioral change as academic achievement. Since there are numerous ways to operationalize success for service learning from a programmatic and educational or teacher perspective, these difficulties add to the many reasons why service learning research is unique and challenging. In contrast, the study of an academic subject “intervention” usually involves a specific learning goal and determining whether or not students have achieved competency in that area.
Service Learning Experience as a Variable
While the types of methodological issues that can confound service learning research are challenging, they are not unlike the challenges that many educational research studies encounter, especially ones that fall under the umbrella term of prosocial education. Research that employs increased control and methodological rigor may inadvertently ignore some of the characteristics that participants report make prosocial education programs such as service learning such powerful educational experiences. For example, how can a school that advocates for cancer research following the diagnosis of a child at their school be compared to another school that advocates for cancer research based on a health lesson about cancer? Consider further if data collected from these two experiences should be combined with data collected from students at two schools that decide to plant flowers in a community garden. One school is located in a suburban community, and students want to add color to what everyone feels is an unattractive garden. Students research colorful flowers and the conditions needed for their growth and design a garden that will bloom throughout the summer. At the second school, students decide to plant flowers in an abandoned lot, which used to attract drug dealers. They research hearty flowers that can thrive with limited amount of care. Although students at both schools are involved in service learning that is meaningful to their community, it is likely that each group will learn some similar knowledge but also context-specific knowledge. Because of this, combining data across the sites may dilute the impact of service learning. It is likely that practitioners and researchers would have a difficult time accepting “research findings” that compared such different service learning experiences. Furthermore, while different service learning projects may address similar prosocial knowledge and skills, such as empathy, leadership, or teamwork, the ways the knowledge and skills are demonstrated and even defined will likely differ greatly.
Policy and Practice: Building a Case for Service Learning
While research findings demonstrating academic benefits of participating in service learning are somewhat inconclusive, it is clear that service learning activities are highly feasible within K–12 classrooms. Teachers are able to find the service learning lessons, manage the activities, and make academic connections. Teachers report that service learning is worthwhile and belongs in schools. In New York State, it was found that social and community goals for service learning were as important to educators as academic goals (Hecht, 2011). Teachers who embrace service learning often state that it has the ability to engage the previously disengaged student (Kirkham, 2001) and can motivate students to perform in their academic classes. It is not surprising that projects developed by students to address community needs that they recognize are important would be interesting to those students.
Focusing only on academic achievement when studying service learning limits any study and will likely produce mixed findings. Service learning helps students develop deeper content understanding, which allows them to apply what they have learned in real-world settings. In many instances, academic achievement may be an indirect outcome or may not be immediately evident but only observed when students encounter the content in new and novel settings. Whether service learning projects take needed and valuable time away from test preparation and direct academic instruction is a value question, only answerable by an individual school administrator or teacher. However, as greater demands are placed on educators to demonstrate student academic achievement through state and national tests, many educational programs and innovations will likely face similar questions. Some teachers have found that service learning is an effective approach to teaching test skills that are assessed on state tests. For example, middle school students can write persuasive essays as part of a service learning advocacy project.
Another challenge facing researchers is that service learning can look very different in different locations. Further, the reasons that educators implement service learning projects can be very different, as there is no one standard for success or for even defining what service learning looks like. Yet researchers sometimes study service learning as if it is a curriculum that is implemented consistently across different populations, thereby suggesting that data can appropriately be aggregated across diverse programs. The results from such analyses can be confusing and unrelated to classroom practice. On another note, teachers are often not trained to interpret and use formative and summative assessments or research to improve student learning. Researchers need to engage educators as more than providers of data but rather as collaborators developing the research questions and building knowledge together. Our own work in preparing this chapter reflects the richness of collaboration between research and practice. As a school-based principal and a university-based researcher, we have worked together to examine how research and evaluation can inform practice and how academic practice can be deepened and enriched by what is learned through a research project.
The effort to bridge research, practice, and policy is a challenge that service learning advocates have recognized for many years (Steinberg, Bringle, & Williams, 2010). Learning in Deed, established by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in 1998, was a national initiative that made direct and intentional connections among policy makers, educators, and researchers to expand service learning in schools. Practitioners want information that will help them teach and support students. Researchers want information that meets standards for high-quality research. Policy makers want information that demonstrates that programs are worthwhile to support. The connections between research and practice must be strengthened if the field is to move forward. Practitioners must be more than “providers of data” or an “audience for research results” and instead become partners with researchers. They must value research and use what is learned to improve practice. Researchers, in turn, need to involve practitioners in all phases of a study’s design, conduct, and interpretation of findings. We tried to model this approach in how we developed this chapter. Working collaboratively, using our different backgrounds as researcher/evaluator and administrator/teacher, we discovered a richness that neither one of us alone could have brought to the task. Each brought a different perspective on what service learning looks like, what research can tell us, and why service learning is a valuable addition to a school or classroom.
With appropriate resources, service learning programs have the potential to have a variety of positive impacts on youth development. Not only does participation in a curriculum that uses service learning provide students with opportunities to be active citizens and build skills that will enhance their future civic involvement, but these students also tend to do better in school and exhibit more positive prosocial behaviors.
While there is controversy surrounding the mandating of service of youth, all schools can provide meaningful opportunities for students to become involved in their communities. With the appropriate support and funding, it is possible that all youth can be exposed to the beneficial effects of participation in service learning activities. Not only will students benefit, but as a result of the students being involved in their communities, society as a whole will ultimately benefit as well.
Next Steps and Future Implications
As a model of prosocial education, service learning provides a rich history of policy, practice, research, and funding. When well implemented, service learning engages students in exciting, academically grounded service activities that address real community needs. Students practice and apply skills that they need to succeed not only in school and on tests but also in life. The challenge for researchers is to clearly define the characteristics, activities, and processes of service learning and to ensure that programs optimize these characteristics in their delivery. Further, student activities must align with student learning outcomes in ways that educators, policy makers, and parents will value and understand. Service learning advocates have long claimed that as a pedagogy, service learning belongs in the school day. Perhaps one of the challenges is understanding and accepting that unlike an educational program or curriculum, service learning is an approach to teaching, consistent with the idea of prosocial education (chapter 1). Experienced service learning educators can see the service opportunities and service extensions in a wide range of classes. However, unlike the integration of two academic subjects where the focus is to demonstrate the ways that each enriches the understanding of the other, introducing service learning into a subject area involves application of knowledge outside the traditional classroom setting. The student is encouraged to recognize that what is being taught has value to others. What makes service learning research so challenging is that it is not an intervention or class that can be applied in the same way in different settings. Rather, it is an approach to teaching a class.
Connecting schools and the outside community is an honorable goal, but to what purpose? Service learning studies, in the broadest sense, tell us that these relationships are beneficial to students and promote positive school climates. The specific features of this relationship and how it can be enhanced remain unknown. Is it that students need to be leaders in building these relationships? Are discussions in classrooms about these relationships adequate? Do students need to experience these relationships? Researchers can and should attempt to answer these difficult questions and use their findings as a starting point for opening up a discussion forum between practitioners, policy makers, and themselves. Not only must data be presented to multiple audiences (e.g., policy makers, administrators, teachers), but it is also necessary to rethink what that evidence means to each member of the diverse audience.
For More Information
Compendium of Assessment and Research Tools (CART): http://cart.rmcdenver.com
Learn and Serve America: www.learnandserve.gov
National Service-Learning Clearinghouse: www.servicelearning.org
National Youth Leadership Council: www.nylc.org
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