User:KautharIbrahim/Service-learning

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Critiques

There are numerous critiques of service-learning. In 1979, Robert Sigmon acknowledged criticisms that called service-learning, "a utopian vision" and "too demanding and impractical." He called for research into outcomes related to service-learning. Towson University Professor John Egger, writing in the Spring 2008 issue of the journal Academic Questions, argued that service learning does not really teach useful skills or develop cultural knowledge. Instead, Egger maintained, service learning mainly involves the inculcation of communitarian political ideologies. Tulane Professor Carl L. Bankston III has described his own university's policy of mandating service learning as the imposition of intellectual conformity by the university administration on both students and faculty. According to Bankston, by identifying specific types of civic engagement as worthy community service, the university was prescribing social and political perspectives. He argued that this was inconsistent with the idea that individuals in a pluralistic society should choose their own civic commitments and that it was contrary to the ideal of the university as a site for the pursuit of truth through the free exchange of ideas.

However, these organizations face challenges in working with the students. Communication with faculty is often inconsistent, so organizations do not always understand their roles and the roles of the faculty in students' service projects. Some organizations' representatives stated that faculty assigned students projects that were not allowed in their organization. Often the demographics of students do not match well with the demographics of the clients they serve, which can make it difficult for the students to relate to the clients or create an uncomfortable situation for the clients. The academic calendar students follow tends not to work well with the organizations' schedules, since students' volunteering schedules are interrupted for holiday breaks, finals, and other activities. Also, the small number of hours students are required to spend volunteering can cause problems for organizations and their clients. Some organizations require more hours for volunteer training than students are required to volunteer, and making a personal connection with clients only to break it off soon after can be more hurtful than helpful.

Representatives of community organizations where service-learning students volunteer expressed interest in working with colleges and universities to change service-learning programs so that they work more smoothly for the organizations. Their suggestions included establishing more consistent communication between faculty and organizations, creating longer-term partnerships between colleges and community organizations, and ensuring that the students and their projects are matched well with the organizations they serve.

In Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public, Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg question whether service-learning is contributing to privatizing or downsizing citizenship practices. Responding to this, Christopher Koliba wrote that education providers may have the opportunity to change this trend.

The service aspect of service learning tends to be thought of uncritically as something good. Some scholars argue that service learning in itself only gives students satisfaction without little or no benefit to the communities. Eby makes the claim that traditional service learning has no real connection with communities and their problems. Without addressing the root of social issues, students gain no real understanding of the problems facing the communities in which they volunteer/serve. Instead, they will unknowingly be pawns in the systemic institutions and use their privileges to “preserve” these systems in place. Service-learning has become popularized but it has less focus on the people and more focus on the individual's “good deeds”. Another critique of service learning is that the research focus on this sector is mostly done by scholars, while community locals and organizations are left out from the discussion. These community organizations and partners are left without a voice and there is no connection between the academic learning and the service. The emergence of critical service learning as a new sector addresses some of these critiques of traditional service.

Comprehensive Action Plan for Service Learning (CAPSL)

• CAPSL Identifies four constituencies on which a program for service learning must focus its principal activities: institution, faculty, students, and community.
• CAPSL also identifies a sequence of activities (Planning, awareness, prototype, resources, expansion,; recognition, monitoring, evaluation, research, and institutionalization) to pursue for each of the four constituencies (institution, faculty, students, and community).
• CAPSL provides a heuristic for guiding the development of a service learning program in higher education.
• Advantages of CAPSL: it is general enough that the execution of each cell can be tailored to local conditions.
• Disadvantages of CAPSL: it is not possible to detail how each step can be successfully accomplished to take the sequence of activities from the whole CAPSL model and apply it to any cell in the matrix.

Engineering education

Main article: Service-learning in engineering education

Many engineering faculty members believe the educational solution lies in taking a more constructivist approach, where students construct knowledge and connections between nodes of knowledge as opposed to passively absorbing knowledge. Educators see service learning as a way to both implement a constructivism in engineering education as well as match the teaching styles to the learning styles of typical engineering students. As a result, many engineering schools have begun to integrate service learning into their curricula and there is now a journal dedicated to service learning in engineering.

Religious aspects

Service Learning emphasizes the learning process of the experiences we have had or observed and how we then apply it to our lives and thought processes. Jesus Christ of the Christian Gospel not only was benevolent to the world around Him but engaged the suffering by stepping into their misfortune with them. In the New Testament book of Colossian, Apostle Paul writes from a prison cell that “…there’s a lot of suffering to be entered into in this world—the kind of suffering Christ takes on...” (Peterson, Eugene. The Message Bible Remix) This speaks plainly of Jesus’ work but also His walk with suffering people.

In Where's the Learning in Service-Learning?, Janet Eyler and Dwight E. Giles Jr. wrote, "Although fewer students chose spiritual growth as an important outcome of service-learning—20 percent selecting it as among the most important things they learned and 46 percent selecting it as very or most important—it was important to many students...Some saw service as a definite opportunity to fulfill their religious commitment."

Service-learning has both a service and a learning component. Eyler and Giles Jr. in Where's the Learning in Service-Learning? apply the term service-learning "to programs where the two foci are in balance, and study and action are explicitly integrated.

Eyler and Giles Jr. have found that service-learning students, upon reflecting on their experience, find reward in helping others and in developing close personal relationships. The second focus in the term service-learning, that of learning, is defined by R. L. Atkinson as "a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from practice."

In addition to the service and learning components stressed by Eyler and Giles, author David Bornstein references motivation in service. In How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, he states: "The key difference [between highly successful and average entrepreneurs has] more to do with the quality of their motivation."

Service learning is about taking the student out of the classroom and placing them in an environment where they can make a difference while also learning. Service learning strengthens not just the community that is being helped but the person who is giving their time and effort to their cause, which benefits them socially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. For many service learning is simply tending to basic human needs: food, water, clothes, and housing. Some organizations, such as The Salvation Army, also seek to attend to the spiritual side of service learning. They used the motto "soup, soap, and salvation" to show what they wanted to do with their ministry. "The Salvation Army sees no conflict between spiritual and social ministry. It seeks to serve people so as to satisfy both the spiritual and social dimensions of their needs."

Critical service learning

Focusing on a critical service learning approach vs a traditional one, alleviates some of the problems of traditional service learning. With critical service learning, a community aspect and civic responsibility aligns with educational learning, which brings about an excitement and willingness to help out the society and shifts the focus from benefits to the volunteer student alone. Critical service learning allows students to take their learning discourses and use it to connect to their personal experiences  for  social development and the welfare of others According to Mitchell, there are three different approaches required to achieve a critical learning service status. These are: redistributing power to marginalized groups of people; developing meaningful partnerships with community members/partners and those in the classroom; and, approaching service learning through the lens of making impactful social change. Warren-Gordon, Frank, and Scott add that reflection amongst teachers and students is a significant factor for the critical service learning approach. According to Mitchell, traditional service learning needs seemingly ignore the systemic inequalities embedded in institutional services while critical service learning needs to carefully approach service with a focus on tearing down systemic inequalities. We can see through this sector's history that traditional service learning meets individual needs of volunteers but does not necessarily address the political or social aspect of that need. Critical service learning focus is social justice for marginalized communities and the systemic institutions that placed them where they are. “Critical service learning forces students to see themselves as “agents of social change” and use their experiences of service to address and respond to injustice in their communities”. This sector's main focus is to address political and social power relations and how it leads to the systemic inequalities that marginalized communities face.​​ The goal is to connect students' services to their learning discourses. Critical service learning gives students the chance to ask themselves how their services create political and social change in these communities.