What is Service-Learning? - The Difference

According to the National Commission on Service learning, service-learning:   

• Links to academic content and standards
• Involves young people in helping to determine and meet real, defined community needs
• Is reciprocal in nature, benefiting both the community and the service providers by combining a service experience with a learning experience
• Can be used in any subject area so long as it is appropriate to learning goal
• Works at all ages, even among young children

Service-learning is not:

• An episodic volunteer program
• An add-on to an existing school or college curriculum
• Logging a set number of community service hours in order to graduate
• Compensatory service assigned as a form of punishment by the courts or by school administrators
• Only for high school or college students
• One-sided: benefiting only students or only the community

The distinctive element of service-learning is that it enhances the community through the service provided, but it also has powerful learning consequences for the students or others participating in providing a service. Service-learning is growing so rapidly because we can see it is having a powerful impact on young people and their development. According to Eyler & Giles, 1999,   

service-learning is a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students work with others through a process of applying what they are learning to community problems and, at the same time, reflecting upon their experience as they seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves.

In the process, students link personal and social development with academic and cognitive development. Eyler and Giles (1999) summarize their observations by saying that in the service-learning model, "experience enhances understanding; understanding leads to more effective action."   In general, authentic service-learning experiences have some common characteristics (taken mostly from Eyler and Giles 1999).   

• They are positive, meaningful and real to the participants.
• They involve cooperative rather than competitive experiences and thus promote skills associated with teamwork and community involvement and citizenship.
• They address complex problems in complex settings rather than simplified problems in isolation.
• They 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.
• They 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.

*The information found in this section can be found at www.servicelearning.org