Facilitating Political Sophistication through Service Learning
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(Sigmon, 1979). Therefore, his three principles were meant to help students, faculty, and
community members recognize and maintain a balance between learning objectives and the
needs of the community. Sigmon’s principles have often been overlooked in the course of
implementing and institutionalizing service-learning on a large scale. However, they serve as
important consciousness-raising components of a truly functional theory of service-learning.
Service-learning exists on a continuum of programs which may prioritize learning
objectives or service activities (Sigmon, 1979). Correspondingly, either the server or the service
acquirer may occupy a more privileged position. If we further examine the “server” label, we can
divide this group into the university as an entity and the students. We see that Sigmon’s first and
second principles focus on the recipients of the services rather than the providers. This is
because in the service-learning context, and in the development of service-learning policy,
recipients of service may often be overlooked or fall to the position of an afterthought. As we will
see in our policy analysis, different groups may receive differential treatment in a policy context,
therefore it is important to consider the effects of a policy on all groups involved. Sigmon labeled
this group “service acquirers” to denote their agentic capacities and to lead the field away from
ascribing a strictly passive conceptualization (1979;10).
In developing service-learning programs, students may also be considered only in a
superficial way, which would place them further down on the policy hierarchy and therefore likely
to receive limited benefits. Sigmon’s third principle addresses several issues regarding the
nature of the service as well as the voice of the server. In the service-learning context, the
student is the primary learner. While service-learning encompasses a wide range of service
activities, it is important that students are not saddled with mindless, “busywork”, but rather
immersed in engaging activities that bear some relationship to the key concepts being studied in
class.
Also, since student assessments are generally based on the expectation of learning,
students should be able to express their thoughts on what they can reasonably be expected to
learn from their service experiences. In order to achieve and maintain a balance on this
continuum, both the service and the learning goals must retain equal importance and they must
complement one another to produce a coherent experience for all parties involved. In this way,
Prepared by Zahra Ahmed for the 2006 meeting of the American Political Science Association
Convention