Service Learning
Theoretical Underpinnings
As noted by Morton and Troppe, service-learning theory "begins with the assumption that experience is the foundation for learning; and various forms of community service are employed as the experiential basis for leaning" (1996, p. 21). Many other authors (most notably Carver, 1997; Kolb, 1984; and also Kraft, 1996) have stressed the importance of John Dewey's theory of experiential education to the service-learning philosophy. According to those authors, modern service-learning initiatives are direct beneficiaries of Dewey's ideas about the fundamental role experience plays (or should play) in education. In his very influential work on experiential learning, Kolb (1984) extensively quotes Dewey's 1938 Experience and Education in order to formulate his own cycle (or model) for experiential education, which triangulates personal development, work, and education, placing equal importance on each one of the vortices (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Experiential Learning as the Process that Links Education, Work, and Personal
Development (Kolb, 1984, p. 4)
According to Kraft (1996, p. 132), Dewey's theory of experiential education also is reflected in other critical service-learning components, such as the construction of learning outcomes, the use of group-based activities in the learning process, the use of "educative" rather than "miseducative" experiences, the reliance on the organic link between what is learned and personal experience, and opportunities for students to learn the value of altruism and personal responsibility.
From a pedagogical point of view, there seems to be much agreement among service-learning researchers that this type of experiential education positively enhances student learning. Markus, Howard, and King (1993, p. 417), for example, surveyed University of Michigan undergraduates who were taking a political science course and found that students in the service-learning sections demonstrated enhanced intellectual development as well as more positive values and orientation toward the community.
Boss (1994, p. 195) compared student learning in two different sections of an ethics undergraduate course and found that students who engaged in service learning demonstrated "better grasp of the course content and made significantly greater gains in moral reasoning than their counterparts in the non-service section" (quoted in Morton and Troppe 1996, p. 22).
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