From Service Learning to Civic Learning
Service learning has long been recognized as an effective pedagogical technique
that combines student application of course and disciplinary knowledge and skills to
meeting community needs through organized service. As such, it contributes to students’
understanding of course and discipline content, their understanding of themselves, their
appreciation of diversity and their understanding of community issues. Because of these
contributions to student learning and because of its community setting, service learning is
often linked to civic engagement. Indeed, research on the impact of volunteerism and
service learning conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA
indicates that for many measures of civic engagement, students who participate in service
learning are more civically engaged after college than their peers who did not participate
in service learning (Denson, N., Vogelgesang, L.J., & Saenz, V. 2005; Misa, K.,
Anderson, J., & Yamamura, E. 2005).
However, those studies did not measure political knowledge, but rather focused
on participatory behavior, such as voting and community service. Furthermore, among
many service-learning faculty, including political science faculty, service learning is
rarely linked to broad civic engagement goals, but rather, to course or discipline-specific
learning goals. As John Saltmarsh (2005), Director of the New England Research Center
for Higher Education points out,
Through an agenda focused on promoting community service, a number of
organizations and campuses pursued civic learning, vaguely construed, during the
1980s. By the end of the decade, the severe limitations to advancing civic learning
separately from the core work of the academy had become clear. Thus, beginning
in the early 1990s, service and academic study were integrated. Even with this
shift, however, the emphasis was on a reflective, community-based pedagogy
rather than on civic learning outcomes. While it was assumed to occur, civic
learning was oftentimes omitted as a curricular goal. The emphasis was on
adopting service learning as a pedagogy that would allow faculty across the
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Convention