How Can we increase the diversity of student participants in service-learning?

Service-learning experiences must be accessible to, and appropriate for, students of all races, ethnicities, social classes, ability levels, religions, ages, sexual orientations, life situations, political views, and learning styles. However, at many institutions, a disproportionate number of students who participate in service learning are white, middle class, and female. Butin goes a step further, noting that service-learning “is premised on full-time, single, non-indebted, and childless students pursuing a ‘liberal arts education.' Yet a large proportion of the postsecondary population of today, and increasingly of the future, views higher education as a part-time, instrumental, and pre-professional endeavor that must be juggled with children, family time, and earning a living wage. Service-learning may be a luxury that many students cannot afford, whether in terms of time, finances, or job future” (2006, p. 482).

Increasing the diversity of students who participate in service-learning requires ensuring that promotion of service-learning experiences and recruitment of participants are broad and multifaceted and that intentional efforts are made to reach out to students who do not typically engage. While class announcements, listservs, and social media can be effective, there is no better means of broadening the base of service-learning participants than personal, one-on-one invitations and recommendations. Students new to service-learning, particularly those who wonder whether service-learning is for them, are more likely to respond positively to a friend's invitation to join in an experience or to a faculty or staff member's suggestion that a student has much to contribute and to gain from a particular experience.

Offering financial assistance to students for whom participation in service-learning, either domestically or abroad, would be impossible or present a hardship is also necessary to increase access. Many institutions that offer alternative breaks also offer financial assistance through small grants or loans, either through the service-learning center or from a central fund. Others offer fellowships or financial stipends to students doing community-based research or other substantial service-learning projects that may or may not be part of capstone courses. As noted in 5.3, students who have Federal Work-Study as part of their financial aid packages can earn their wages through community-service work, either as part of a campus project or independently. Some institutions have developed strong, ongoing service-learning programs specifically to engage Federal Work-Study recipients, such as America Reads and America Counts tutoring programs. Another approach is to create service-learning scholarships that function like academic and athletic scholarships to attract and retain students recognized for past and current engagement in service-learning.

Service-learning experiences, including both service and reflection, need to be accessible to students with physical and mental impairments. Unfortunately, service-learning has too often focused on individuals with impairments as the recipients, rather than the providers, of service. It is incumbent upon faculty and staff who design service-learning experiences to provide sufficiently varied ways of engaging in and reflecting on the service so that all students can participate. Consultation with community partners and the campus office of disability services may be helpful. Reflection can be structured to enable service-learners to examine their own images of people identified as disabled, the social consequences of these images, and the societal structures and policies that disable those with impairments.

It appears that students' motivations to participate in service-learning vary according to their race, class, and ethnicity (Stanton, 2007). Practitioners are concerned that initiatives and experiences “may not attract, be culturally appropriate for, or effectively serve” students of color and from working-class backgrounds (Stanton, 2007, p. 21). Therefore, it is essential to design service-learning experiences carefully with the widest range of students in mind. Students who come from poor communities may experience deep and conflicting emotions when they are expected to serve in a community like the one in which they were raised. Some may feel guilt for having “gotten out” or may not want to “go back” because they prefer not to revisit the past or to confront people or situations they believe cannot be helped (Dunlap & Webster, 2009). An active service-learner I once worked with found it difficult to serve in homeless shelters because she and her family lived in one for a period of time. Thus, it may be helpful to offer more than one service-learning site and to provide alternatives if there is a single designated community partner. In addition, reflection should be designed and facilitated to enable students to grapple constructively with these dilemmas and to share their experiences, if and when they choose to, with peers and individuals at the community site.

It is also essential to recognize the strengths, assets, and challenges of students who are generally underrepresented in service-learning. For example, STEM students are often heavily engaged in research but may not be aware of the opportunities that service-learning offers them or how desirable their knowledge and skills may be to community partners. Student athletes may be unable to participate in service-learning during the primary season for their sports. However, we can and should reach out to student athletes and their coaches to encourage them to consider experiences that occur at less busy times and that take advantage of their special talents. Nontraditionally aged students also have much to bring to service-learning, although many view it as something for those of traditional college age. Older students often have high motivation to learn, strong connections to the community, high levels of personal agency and self-efficacy, and a variety of experiences and workplace skills. On the other hand, they may work in a career position or the equivalent of full time in several jobs and have multiple family responsibilities. Making service-learning optional may seem like a convenient way to address students' busy schedules, but I believe that we should make the extra effort to ensure that service-learning experiences are clearly relevant, flexible, conveniently located, and connected to students' academic and career goals. Providing a convincing rationale for service-learning is especially important for students with heavy academic and other commitments.

As mentioned in 3.4, no student should be required to do work or serve at a community site that creates a religious or moral conflict or other undue hardship. Sometimes it is not clear what exactly constitutes such a conflict. While it is clear that a devoutly Catholic student should not be required to work for an organization that promotes birth control and offers abortion counseling, what about a situation where reading tutoring involves a book that a service-learner believes is not appropriate for young children? Should a student in a service-learning course whose religious beliefs strongly oppose lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender civil rights be required to interact with individuals with HIV/AIDS? What about a student who self-identifies as a pacifist and refuses to work at a hospital that serves wounded veterans? In such situations, it is worth considering whether there might be an alternative aspect of the service-learning project that could be helpful to the organization and also provide a valuable learning experience for the student. In other cases, such as the student completely opposed to abortion, it is appropriate to offer a different experience or to ask the student to seek one where the work will be of similar scope, complexity, and relevance to course content.

If service-learning Is So valuable, why should It Not Be required of All students?

I have been asked these questions multiple times, mostly by presidents and provosts who have become convinced of the value of service-learning to students and communities. At an increasing number of institutions, one or more high-impact educational experiences—including first-year seminars, learning communities, diversity and multicultural learning, study abroad, internships, capstone experiences, and service-learning—are becoming graduation requirements. Requiring such experiences always necessitates curricular reform, extensive administrative and faculty support, and appropriation of other resources. However, in the case of service-learning, several additional issues must be considered.

First, what would be the impact of such a requirement on the community? Depending on the number of students at the institution and the number and accessibility of potential service sites, the impact could range from considerable to devastating. As discussed in Chapter Three, many community organizations do not have the capacity to engage large numbers of students productively. Large institutions, as well as small ones located in rural areas, may find that there are simply not enough community sites to accommodate the students who need to fulfill the requirement.

One also wonders whether service-learning that is required for graduation has the same educational value as service-learning that students select through a course or a cocurricular experience. Very little is known about the effectiveness of service-learning requirements in achieving desired learning outcomes or in promoting civic engagement and continued involvement in the community following graduation (Jones, Segar, & Gasiorski, 2008). While mandatory community service or service-learning in high school does not necessarily translate into involvement in college, Susan R. Jones and Kathleen E. Hill found that college students who participated in service in high school tended to continue if their motivation came from internal commitment together with family and school encouragement (2003). Without such motivation, required service-learning can easily become “just another homework assignment” (Jones & Hill, p. 524). As a result, student resistance to the requirement can lead to inappropriate behavior in the community. Student resistance is addressed in 8.3.

Pragmatically, an institution seeking to implement a service-learning requirement must determine whether it can develop and monitor sufficient placements for all students and ensure high-quality experiences for both students and communities. It is wise to begin implementation of a requirement as a pilot in a single academic program or college. Service-learning requirements should also be grounded in partnerships intentionally designed to address critical shared issues and involve capacity-building on the part of both the institutional and community partners. Offering students multiple ways to fulfill the requirement across the entire span of their college years can help to engage more students. However, this can also lead to inconsistency in the quality of experiences and questions about the purpose and value of the requirement. It takes a large, deep, and well-financed infrastructure to establish and sustain a service-learning requirement that meets the standards of quality discussed in Chapters Four and Five, is assessed thoroughly as described in Chapter Six, and addresses all the administrative issues covered in Chapter Seven. In addition, required service also carries a heightened liability exposure, because the concept of assumption of risk by student participants may not apply if service is mandatory rather than voluntary.

Why Are some students resistant to service-learning?

What Should I Do when students just “don't get it”?

How Should I handle a student who appears to Be hostile to the idea of service-learning?

Students may exhibit resistance to active engagement in service-learning for a variety of reasons. Some may resent that it is required for a class or mandatory for graduation. Those who register for a service-learning class because it fills a gap in their course schedule or because they think it is an easy way to fulfill a requirement or to build their resumes may quickly become disillusioned. Yet other students may take a class or become involved in a cocurricular activity and “find themselves in an overly stimulating environment that challenges them in a way they are ill-equipped to process” (Jones, 2002, p. 11). In such situations, students can distance themselves from their peers, community members, and the faculty or staff members associated with the experience (Jones, 2002). This disengaged behavior at the service site has been described as “service loitering” (Hill-Jackson & Lewis, 2011, p. 295, italics original). Other “passive resisters” may say that they enjoy the service experience but do not see why they need to do the readings or reflections (Jones, Gilbride-Brown, & Gasiorski, 2005, p. 12). They are not resistant to doing the service, but are unwilling to engage in using their service experience as a basis for learning.

Another phenomenon to watch for among student participants in service-learning is victim blaming. This is more likely to occur with students new to service-learning who find themselves confronting “the other” for the first time and who have not had the opportunity to reflect on the complex social systems that underlie the needs and issues they will be addressing. Such students may believe, intentionally or not, that the recipients of their service are somehow responsible for their situation. They may come from families whose hard work has enabled them to rise out of poverty or who believe, for example, that those who have HIV/AIDS have contracted it from indiscriminate or homosexual relationships or from intravenous drug use. Such students may carry their attitudes into the service site and into class discussions, with negative ramifications.

Even more difficult are the students who exhibit hostile behavior at the community site or in the classroom. Active resistance may occur when students are not able to let go of long-held or family-based prejudices or self-righteous beliefs of their own superiority over those who are different from themselves. As Penny Rue points out, “The lessons learned by a resentful participant can be reinforcement of stereotypes, cynicism about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, or other potentially negative outcomes” (1996, p. 263). The potential detrimental impacts of hostile, cynical, and other negative behaviors on community partners, their clients, and peers are significant.

It is important that service-learning educators respect and support the current realities that students bring to service-learning and engage them starting with where they are in their own development. We should prepare students thoroughly before they enter the service site or engage with clients, focusing on their expectations, fears, and doubts, as well as on the realities of the site, issues, and client population. Making explicit connections to learning outcomes and academic content, in the case of a course, can help to alleviate resistance. Engaging students in non-threatening reflection related to issues of human difference and commonality, power and privilege, and their own values and beliefs can help to prevent or address hostile behavior. Question 8.4 further discusses this process.

If it seems that a student may not be able to engage productively at the site, it is likely to be in the best interest of all to find an alternative placement or experience for that student. Careful supervision of students at the community site, by peer leaders, faculty or staff members, or community partners, can serve to identify potential negative attitudes or behaviors early, before much harm can occur.

What Is the role of multicultural education in service-learning?

Service-learning is often heralded as a pedagogy with the potential to transform students' understanding of human difference and commonality, systems of oppression, and power and privilege. As mentioned in 1.4, I and many others believe that students who participate in high-quality service-learning have the opportunity to witness the effects of racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of oppression and to confront, through reflection, their own stereotypes, power, and privilege. However, helping students productively work through the dynamics of personal and structural racism, oppression, and privilege that occur when they confront the issues, people, and places of service-learning is without doubt one of the most challenging aspects of our work (Jones, 2002).

As Carolyn R. O'Grady notes, “Without the theoretical underpinnings provided by multicultural education, service-learning can too easily reinforce oppressive outcomes. It can perpetuate racist, sexist, or classist assumptions about others and reinforce a Colonialist mentality of superiority. This is a special danger for predominately white students engaging in communities of color” (2000, p. 12). Service-learning without thoughtfully integrated multicultural education and reflection can validate those assumptions and perpetuate stereotypes and a mentality of separateness and superiority. Likewise, multicultural education without engagement with communities of difference isolates students from the individuals who are different from them and from the larger communities of which they are a part (O'Grady, 2000).

Integrating multicultural education with service-learning can help students expand their emotional comfort zones in dealing with difference, gain an increasing ability to view the world from multiple perspectives, and reflect on their own social positions in relation to others (Wade, Boyle-Baise, & O'Grady, 2001). As 5.2 illustrates, the holistic developmental framework of self-authorship is helpful in reminding us that service-learners are at different points in their development that influence how they react to people and situations, receive and process knowledge, participate in service and reflection, and make meaning of the complexities of service-learning. Self-authorship suggests that we view students as capable participants in their developmental journey, provide direction and practice in establishing internal authority, develop a sense of community among service-learners, and support students in their struggle to advance from their older, simpler perspectives to newer, more complex ones (Jones, Gilbride-Brown, & Gasiorski, 2005).

Viewing students as able participants in their own development means that we must be careful to respect and support students' current realities. This includes facing the fact that some white students have never before been asked to examine their own racial identities and privileges or to confront their stereotypes. However, it is important to note that talking about inequality, racism, sexism, and poverty can be overwhelming for anyone, particularly young people who have not been exposed to these issues before. It can come as a shock for students of privilege to come to grips for the first time with the idea that their families, communities, and institutions may, in some ways, contribute to and perpetuate these problems. Conversely, some service-learners find themselves doing their service “within community,” where they are members of the community “being served” or have experienced situations or living conditions similar to those of the community in which they are serving. They may be disempowered by conversations about injustice and inequality if they and their families know these realities firsthand.

Early reflections on the nature of their previous involvements with service-learning and community service, their views on service, and their motivations to engage in service-learning are relatively non-threatening ways to help us understand where students are developmentally. Deeper reflections can then prompt students to situate themselves in terms of their social identities and how these identities intersect with their service-learning experiences (Jones, Gilbride-Brown, & Gasiorski, 2005). Service-learning educators should be prepared to assure students that they are not to blame for these systemic inequities, either as perpetrators or victims, and that there are steps they can take to address them (Osler, 2007).

Establishing formal or informal learning communities of peers engaged in service-learning is important in encouraging students to move from relying on external formulas to make meaning of their experiences toward more internally defined paths to meaning-making. Well-facilitated, reflective discussions among peers provide both affirmation and challenge. Such discussions enable students to defend their points of view as well as to engage with others' perspectives in ways that promote both greater self-awareness and questioning of their own values and beliefs. In some service-learning courses, faculty members engage students in research and group presentations about the social issues that are prevalent at their service sites and among their client populations. Through these presentations, students generally see the issues more complexly and begin to challenge their often simplistic notions about why individuals need and access the services of particular community organizations (Jones, Gilbride-Brown, & Gasiorski, 2005).

In supporting service-learners' struggles toward self-authorship, the concept of the “consciousness bridge” helps us understand that we need to create a “bridge” that invites students to make the journey and to support them as they attempt to cross. Without a carefully constructed “bridge,” students may be overwhelmed by the challenges, expectations, and dissonance they may experience (Jones, Gilbride-Brown, & Gasiorski, 2005). Thus, the service-learning curriculum, whether course-based or not, should be “meaningful to those who will not yet understand that curriculum and facilitative of a transformation of mind so that they will come to understand that curriculum” (Kegan, 1994, p. 62). It is essential to engage service-learners in regular, sequential reflections and to provide frequent feedback to form the bridge that encourages student learning and self-authorship.

What Is the relationship of service-learning to social justice? What Should It Be?

What Are the purposes and practices of critical service-learning? How Are They different from other forms of service-learning?

How Can we prevent service-learning from perpetuating the status quo?

Is social justice the ultimate goal of service-learning?

Critical social theory, which is the foundation for critical pedagogy and critical service-learning, is concerned with dismantling social injustice and unequal power relationships. It contends that inequalities are endemic to and legitimized by social institutions like government and schools, which privilege only the knowledge of majority powerholders and thus perpetuate the status quo (Webster & Coffey, 2011). Based on the work of Freire, critical pedagogy applies the tenets of critical social theory to education and seeks to examine and counteract how schools reproduce injustice and inequality (Beck, 2005). Critical service-learning has a clear social justice orientation and views service as political action intended to dismantle structural inequalities (Mitchell, 2008). In an often-cited 2008 article on critical service-learning, Tania D. Mitchell found through a literature review “an unspoken debate that seemed to divide service-learning into two camps—a traditional approach that emphasizes service without attention to systems of inequality, and a critical approach that is unapologetic in its aim to dismantle structures of injustice” (p. 50). I am not as certain as Mitchell that there are two so clearly defined camps of service-learning educators. Rather, it appears to me that there are finer gradations along a continuum ranging from educators who promulgate service-learning experiences with a balanced focus on student outcomes and clearly defined community benefits to those for whom the primary focus of service-learning is redistributing power and eliminating social inequalities.

Nevertheless, Mitchell offers three strategies that critical service-learning employs to enable students to become active citizens who engage in social and political reform and to create reciprocal campus-community partnerships where community issues and concerns are truly as important as student outcomes. The strategies are (1) a social change orientation, (2) working to redistribute power, and (3) developing authentic relationships (2008).

Incorporating an intentional orientation to social change into service-learning requires “rethinking the types of service activities in which students are engaged, as well as organizing projects and assignments that challenge students to investigate and understand the root causes of social problems and the courses of action necessary to challenge and change the structures that perpetuate those problems” (Mitchell, 2008, p. 53). This may involve placing emphasis on developing and expanding the resources of the community in addition to, and perhaps taking precedence over, enhancing the learning and development of service-learners (Marullo & Edwards, 2000). Mitchell suggests that we may need to look outside traditional community organizations and nonprofits to partner with groups actively working to change structures and systems (2008). Service-learning educators who wish to move toward critical service-learning need to provide opportunities for students to critically analyze their work and to learn about how to use the levers of social change that are available to them. Reflection should focus on the big questions, such as why racial and economic disparities and social problems like hunger and homelessness continue to exist and the social systems and structures that perpetuate them.

Working to redistribute power means acknowledging and challenging the differences in power and privilege inherent in service-learning. Lori Pompa describes how those differences operate in these terms: “If I ‘do for' you, ‘serve' you, ‘give to' you—that creates a connection in which I have the resources, the abilities, the power, and you are on the receiving end. It can be—while benign in intent—ironically disempowering to the receiver, granting further power to the giver. Without meaning to, this process replicates the ‘have-have not' paradigm that underlies many social problems” (2005, p. 176). As mentioned throughout this volume, service-learners will likely have more privilege—in terms of race, class, ability, education level—than many people they encounter in their service. Critical service-learning admonishes that we must not engage students in service experiences without acknowledging and challenging the unjust structures and systems that are responsible for these differences. Some ways to challenge these structures and systems include developing the kind of long-term, transformative community partnerships described in 3.9, engaging students in working alongside community members in advocacy and even direct protest work, and classroom experiences that recognize that knowledge and understanding can be developed in many ways and received from many sources. Readings, discussions, and other classroom activities should address the distribution of power, along with students' biases, unearned privilege, and power (Mitchell, 2008). Other aspects of working to redistribute power mentioned by Mitchell include reconfiguring the traditional classroom by arranging the seats so that the students and faculty member sit in a circle and having students serve as teachers or thought leaders for some presentations and discussions (2008). In addition, Sam Marullo and Bob Edwards suggest that service-learning should reach beyond students to include community members in skill development in such areas as problem solving, critical thinking, and communication (2000).

In critical service-learning, how authentic relationships are developed and sustained is central: “the relationship should be considered as both a means to social justice and a product of a more just society” (Koliba, O'Meara, & Seidel, 2000, p. 27). An important factor in developing authentic relationships is to neither ignore social inequities nor attempt to artificially homogenize all people involved in the service-learning experience (Bickford & Reynolds, 2002). Students should analyze and name the ways they are similar and different from those they encounter through their service. As a result, students involved in critical service-learning might be able to use commonalities to form bonds with community members to acknowledge the power relations that exist, work to address the inequities and injustice that underlie their differences, and create a shared agenda. Preparation of both students and community members for the service experience would need to be multifaceted, including learning how to speak one another's language, establishing ways to meaningfully interact, building trust, and acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to accomplish their mutual goals. Engaging in deep and ongoing critical reflection is essential and may include students' sharing their reflections with peers and community members to encourage students to question their own ideas, receive challenges from others, and integrate new perspectives into their thinking (Mitchell, 2008). Most advocates of critical service-learning recognize that it may be difficult to implement this approach within today's higher education institutions. Many champions of critical service-learning hope that it will someday fundamentally change higher education by dismantling the social inequities and injustices that undergird it as a social institution.

Some proponents of critical service-learning clearly favor this approach as revolutionary pedagogy because they believe that what they call traditional service-learning perpetuates the status quo of need and dependency. On the other hand, I believe that high-quality service-learning that has clearly defined outcomes that are beneficial for both students and communities and engages with the community through reciprocal partnerships does not perpetuate the status quo. My thinking is more in line with Morton's, who proposes three paradigms for service-learning: charity, project, and social change. He contends that service represented by each of these paradigms can be done in “thin” ways that impose service on others, institutionalize power differences, perpetuate dependency, raise false expectations, and magnify social inequalities. On the other hand, service done in “thick” ways is “grounded in deeply held, internally coherent values” and is “potentially revolutionary” (1995, pp. 28, 24). Thus, it is important in selecting a service-learning site to consider whether community organizations and institutions function in ways that seek to liberate oppressed racial and class groups or whether they render services to them without sufficiently challenging existing conditions of power and privilege (Chesler & Vasques Scalera, 2000). Preparation for the service experience should include careful consideration of the proposed activities to ensure that they are not the acts of “false generosity” that Freire claims validate the status quo by perpetuating the need for service (1970/1997, p. 26). As covered in 8.4, service-learning reflection should address issues of power and privilege, race, class, and oppression.

Why Has service-learning Been considered to Be apolitical?

Are There benefits to service-learning of staying independent of politics? Can It?

Is service-learning really a “politics” for transformation of pedagogy and of higher education's public purpose?

How Can service-learning lead students to deeper civic and political engagement?

Whether service-learning is viewed as primarily about meeting community needs or about dismantling systems and structures that perpetuate inequality, it is clearly not value-free. However, I have long advocated that proponents and practitioners of service-learning should strenuously avoid directly or indirectly influencing participants toward specific political parties or toward their personally held political views. Not only is this type of influence inappropriate and exclusionary, but it can also adversely affect an institution's willingness to integrate service-learning into its priorities and practices (Jacoby, 1996c). Service-learning's apolitical stance has been reinforced by the laws governing the federal Corporation for National and Community Service's Learn and Serve America program that provided extensive grant funding for service-learning to K–12 schools, higher education institutions, and other nonprofit organizations and consortia between 1993 and 2012. The National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 that authorized Learn and Serve America prohibited any program from using its funds toward influencing legislation; organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; engaging in partisan political activities or other activities designed to influence the outcome of an election to any public office; and participating in or endorsing any activities likely to include advocacy for or against political parties, platforms, candidates, or elected officials (National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993, 2013). Although Congress eliminated funding for Learn and Serve America in the fiscal year 2011 federal budget, many service-learning initiatives that were created under this program still retain their apolitical stance.

On the other hand, service-learning, particularly critical service-learning, may have clear liberal political motives related to social justice. As noted in the discussion of critical service-learning in 8.5, proponents of critical service-learning view service as political action intended to dismantle structural inequalities that are endemic to our social institutions, including higher education (Mitchell, 2008). In this vein, Pompa describes service-learning's political agenda as “a critique of social systems, challenging participants to analyze what they experience, while inspiring them to take action and make change” (2005, p. 189). Butin approaches the politics of service-learning this way: “Rather than continuing to think about service-learning as a politics to transform higher education and society, we might more fruitfully reverse the terminology and begin to think through service-learning about the politics of transforming higher education and society” (Butin, 2006). As such, Butin argues that service-learning should seek to become institutionalized throughout colleges and universities so that it can be used to infiltrate higher education and modify the ways things work from the inside (2006). The question of whether service-learning should be institutionalized is further addressed in 8.7 and 9.2.

While advocates of critical service-learning and its overtly liberal political motives believe that service-learning's fundamental purpose is to instill social justice in higher education and society, conservatives—including Stanley Fish, Peter Wood, and David Horowitz—virulently oppose higher education's role in educating students regarding issues of morality, democracy, and social justice (Butin, 2005b). Butin states that service-learning, like all other pedagogical practices, is partisan and that viewing service-learning as partisan “clarifies the resistance (implicit and explicit) from some students, faculty, administrators, and policymakers” (2005b, p. 100). Butin further explains that “service-learning practices do not usually promote a perspective of trickle-down economics favored by neoconservatives,” making it difficult for service-learning to “stay out of the conservative crosshairs” (2005b, p. 100).

All of this provides an interesting context for one of the most often-stated goals of service-learning: to prepare students for active democratic engagement. I have long believed that service-learning is one of the most effective pedagogies for preparing students for lives of civic and political engagement. The research and literature substantiate this view (Colby, Ehrlich, Beaumont, & Stephens, 2003; Welch, 2009). In the words of Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and a respected researcher and author on civic renewal, “service-learning epitomizes a citizen-oriented politics in which people form relationships with peers, deliberate about their common interests, and then use a range of strategies” to enhance the common good (2006, no page number). For Levine, democratic engagement necessarily involves politics, but “service-learning, at its best, is open-ended politics. We don't try to manipulate our [students] into adopting opinions or solutions that we think are right—at least, we shouldn't. We give them opportunities to deliberate and reflect and then act in ways that seem best to them. In a time of increasingly sophisticated manipulative politics, these opportunities are precious” (2006, italics original).

Along with Levine, other scholars and researchers on higher education's role in preparing students for active citizenship—Thomas Ehrlich, Anne Colby, Elizabeth Beaumont, John Saltmarsh, and Matthew Hartley—believe that educating for democratic engagement is an historic, fundamental, and critical role of higher education. They strongly advocate that political knowledge and understanding, democratic participation skills, political motivation, discussion and deliberation, and open and critical reflection should be integral to a college education. Levine adds that “civic education that teaches people to admire a flawed system is mere propaganda. We must prepare citizens for politics, but also improve politics for citizens. … Educational curricula and programs, including service-learning, if disconnected from the goal of strengthening and improving democracy, can easily become means of accommodating young people to a flawed system” (2006).

However, integrating service-learning with political and democratic learning and practice gives rise to various dilemmas. For example, is organizing a rally in support of fair wages for campus housekeepers and other physical laborers an appropriate class project in an economics course? What about students in a health education class organizing a protest of some of the programs of a local planned-parenthood clinic? A letter-writing campaign to eliminate certain books deemed inappropriate from the libraries of local public elementary schools in a child literacy course? It is undoubtedly challenging for service-learning educators to confront these dilemmas. In doing so, we must balance educating students for democratic engagement—which, by definition, involves questioning our government, our institutions, our leaders, and our laws—with the political neutrality that we feel may be required to advance service-learning as a pedagogy and practice at our institutions. An excellent resource for examples of the dilemmas inherent in teaching through service-learning is Democratic Dilemmas of Teaching Service-Learning: Curricular Strategies for Success (Cress & Donohue, 2011), which includes twenty case studies in various disciplines. The authors describe how they handled challenges they have faced in their teaching and the lessons they learned in the process. Although all the examples are based in the academic curriculum, several of them are readily transferable to cocurricular service-learning.

Is institutionalizing service-learning necessary to secure Its future?

Does institutionalizing service-learning perpetuate the need for service?

Can service-learning Be institutionalized in higher education and still seek social justice by dismantling systems and structures of power and privilege?

Should service-learning Become an academic discipline?

As argued in 9.2, I and most other service-learning advocates believe that service-learning must be institutionalized if it is to survive and thrive into the future. However, institutionalization gives rise to critical issues that must be balanced along with the many benefits that it affords. In fact, several service-learning scholars and practitioners have questioned the assumption that institutionalization is necessary to ensure the future of service-learning. In his foreword to Problematizing Service-Learning: Critical Reflections for Development and Action (Stewart & Webster, 2011), Furco voices their concern: “… the way we have approached the institutionalization of service-learning has been to use it as a strategy to help accomplish academic and other goals within the current educational system—a system that many would agree needs serious repair. But perhaps this is not the best role for service-learning. Might it be that service-learning can become the force that transforms the ways in which schools function by challenging and ultimately changing the epistemological and pedagogical norms that drive current educational practices?” (2011, p. x).

Taking this line of reasoning a step further, Furco's challenge to service-learning as a force to transform higher education raises the question of whether service-learning can be integral to higher education institutions and pedagogy and simultaneously pursue social justice by seeking to dismantle structures and systems, including higher education, that perpetuate inequality and oppression. Would service-learning lose its transformative potential if it became a mainstream higher education practice? Or does institutionalizing service-learning effectively institutionalize need for service? On the other hand, Marullo, also speaking from the critical service-learning perspective, believes that institutionalizing service-learning as a “revolutionary pedagogy because of its potential for social change” is important “because it provides an opportunity for institutionalizing on college campuses activism committed to social justice” (1999, p. 22). A dilemma indeed!

To further complicate matters, Butin believes that the institutionalization of service-learning is what will enable it to achieve its mission of transforming higher education: “the possibilities for service-learning … lie in embracing rather than rejecting the very academy the service-learning movement is attempting to transform” (2006, p. 493). Butin believes that service-learning is an intellectual movement and proposes that advocates should seek to institutionalize service-learning as an academic discipline so it can garner resources to support its sustained dialogue, self-critique, and identity formation. He argues that intellectual movements are centered around specific research agendas and that research agendas in the academy are based in the academic department (Butin, 2011). Further, the academic department “is where particular micro-workings play out to structure, solidify, and maintain an intellectual movement's relevance and legitimacy. … [T]he disciplining of a movement is a necessary precondition for its ability to work within and through the context-specific mechanisms of higher education” (Butin, 2011, pp. 23–24). Butin cites women's studies and black studies as intellectual movements that became academic disciplines organizationally housed in academic departments so that they could acquire a sufficiently strong understanding of higher education's bureaucratic processes and outcomes to use in effecting change within them (Rojas, 2007).

Butin believes that the service-learning field could accomplish this goal by making service-learning or community studies a discipline, a “mode of inquiry rather than using the community as a political project” (2006, p. 492). Using as a model the arc of the institutionalization of women's studies in higher education over the last quarter-century, Butin observes that the field of women's studies has institutionalized itself as an academic discipline because its scholarship “is able to both look outward (to examine an issue such as education or the criminal justice system) and inward (to internally debate and determine what issues are worthy of study by what modes of inquiry, and to what ends)” (2006, p. 492). In the pursuit of disciplinary status, women's studies has had to distance itself “from the ‘street' and from the fervent activism therein” and instead pursue funding and faculty lines through bureaucratic processes and procedures (Butin, 2006, p. 493). Through disciplinary institutionalization, women's studies has been able to strengthen its political, social activist agenda from its position within higher education and the constellation of academic disciplines.

The Center for Engaged Democracy in the College of Education at Merrimack College, of which Butin is the dean, serves as the central hub for the development, coordination, and support of academic programs that focus on service-learning, civic and community engagement, and social justice. There are more than fifty majors, minors, and certificate programs (Merrimack College, 2013).

In conclusion, since its inception, service-learning's advocates have believed that institutionalization through integration with organizational priorities and structures is necessary in order for students, communities, and higher education institutions to realize its many potential benefits. I am surely one of them. Nevertheless, questions raised more recently by some of those same advocates, together with more recent questioners and analysts, place service-learning squarely in a double bind: “If it attempts to be a truly radical and transformative (liberal) practice, it faces potential censure and sanction. If it attempts to be politically balanced and avoid such an attack, it risks losing any power to make a difference” (Butin, 2006, pp. 485–486). It is my hope that challenging and strenuous critique of service-learning's principles and practices will continue with vigor through research, along with difficult conversations, debate, and deliberation. I further advance my argument regarding the positive and necessary role of institutionalization in securing the future of service-learning in 9.2.

Is there a shared understanding of reciprocity among service-learning educators and advocates? Between higher education and communities?

Are the disparities in power, resources, and sphere of influence between higher education institutions and communities Too great to allow equitable partnerships to develop?

As discussed in Chapter One, reciprocity is one of the essential elements of service-learning. Its early proponents began to address questions about the meaning of reciprocity after observing that community voice and engagement were often overlooked in the 1960s and 1970s, the early years of service-learning (Kendall, 1990; Sigmon, 1996). Sigmon emphasized the importance of achieving a balance between learning goals and service outcomes (1994), while Kendall directly addressed lessons learned from the past: “We are learning that without an emphasis on the relationship between the server and ‘those served' as a reciprocal exchange between equals that relationships can break down. … Paternalism, unequal relationships between parties involved, and a tendency to focus only on charity—‘doing for' or ‘helping' others—rather than on supporting others to meet their own needs all became gaping pitfalls for program after well-intentioned program” (Kendall, 1990, pp. 9–10).

As service-learning grew and proponents developed more and more community partnerships, scholars began to describe an attendant phenomenon: some communities felt—and some still feel—that they are being used as “learning laboratories” or being “partnered to death.” Despite huge inequities in resources, too many colleges and universities have attempted to develop partnerships with community entities that do not have the human and organizational resources or infrastructure necessary to be able to serve as full partners (Jacoby, 2009b). Further, some so-called campus-community partnerships do not involve much more than a mention in a grant application or glossy university publication.

In response to these concerns, a substantial literature, including several sets of principles and best practices for campus-community partnerships, has evolved. These principles can be found in Exhibits 3.1 and 3.2. While they do not specifically use the term reciprocity, they are all grounded in the concepts of reciprocity, authenticity, and mutuality (Jacoby, 1996c, 2003b). In addition, although reciprocity is a foundational concept of service-learning, it is frequently mentioned in the literature without being precisely defined or examined (Dostilio, Brackmann, Edwards, Harrison, Kleiwer, & Clayton, 2012). In 1998, John Saltmarsh defined what, at the time, he viewed as “true reciprocity”: “to learn what it means to be part of a community is to participate in the life of the community in such a way that power and its relations are analyzed and critiqued in the context of a reciprocal relationship—what affects me affects the wider community, and what affects the wider community affects me. The consequences are indistinguishable” (1998, pp. 7, 21). However, in a 2009 white paper, Saltmarsh, Hartley, and Clayton go further to explicitly distinguish between mutuality, which they define as exchange-based relationships, and reciprocity, the generative relationships of true democratic engagement. Building on this contrast drawn between mutuality and reciprocity, as well as the distinction that Enos and Morton draw between transactional and transformative partnerships (2003) as described in 3.9, Jessica K. Jameson, Patti H. Clayton, and Audrey J. Jaeger distinguish between “thin” and “thick” reciprocity (2011). They describe “thin” reciprocity as “grounded in a minimalist … understanding of the commitment to reciprocity that has become the standard for authentic engagement” (2011, p. 263). In their view, “thick” reciprocity “emphasizes shared voice and power and insists upon collaborative knowledge construction and joint ownership of work processes and products [that] aligns well with … democratic approaches to civic engagement [that] encourage all partners to grow and to challenge and support one another's growth” (2011, p. 264).

That said, service-learning educators do not necessarily agree about what reciprocity means in practice. At a minimum, it is about establishing and sustaining partnerships that adhere to the principles of good practice reproduced in Exhibits 3.1 and 3.2. The principles emphasize respect, trust, genuine commitment, balancing power, sharing resources, and clear communication. I and most proponents of service-learning also believe that the combination of action and reflection is fundamental to achieving reciprocity by challenging students to address what are often referred to as the big questions, such as why hunger and homelessness exist in the world's wealthiest nation in the twenty-first century and why economic disparity is growing among social classes. As discussed in 8.5, advocates of critical service-learning seek to move service-learning well beyond traditional conceptualizations of reciprocity to focus squarely on redistributing power and overturning systems and structures that perpetuate inequality, injustice, and multiple forms of oppression.

Are we overemphasizing international service-learning at the expense of needs in our local communities?

Can students learn as Much from intensive service-learning That Is domestic rather Than international?

Is global service-learning really a form of “academic tourism,” or worse, “poorism”?

What possible difference Can we make in distant communities where people Are living in extreme poverty?

What Are the long-term implications of engaging in community development in other nations?

International service-learning is one of the fastest growing dimensions of the field. U.S. colleges and universities universally recognize their role in preparing students to engage responsibly and productively in a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent. More than 283,000 American students, an all-time high, studied abroad for credit during the 2012–2013 academic year (Institute of International Education, 2013). These numbers do not include the students who participated in international alternative breaks. As both service-learning and study abroad grow, more colleges are developing programs that combine these two high-impact educational practices.

Almost every institution's mission statement contains language about educating students to be global citizens who are prepared “to understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world” (Wilson-Oyelaran, 2007, cited in Jacoby, 2009b, p. 99). Service-learning advocates have reasons to be pleased by the proliferation and potential of global service-learning experiences that institutions are establishing to fulfill this mission, but we are also aware of a host of concomitant concerns. What does it mean to “live successfully” within a diverse world? What is “enlightened leadership”? Talya Zemach-Bersin, in describing her study abroad experience in Tibet as a student at Wesleyan University, notes “an international education that focuses on American-based discursive ideals rather than experiential realities can hardly be said to position students in this country for successful lives of global understanding. Rather such an education may inadvertently be a recipe for the perpetuation of global ignorance, misunderstanding, and prejudice” (2008, p. A24).

These questions and issues are not new. In 1968, Ivan Illich, in his well-known speech, “To Hell with Good Intentions,” observed: “‘Mission-vacations' among poor Mexicans were ‘the thing' to do for well-off U.S. students earlier in this decade: sentimental concern for newly discovered poverty south of the border combined with total blindness to much worse poverty at home justified such benevolent excursions” (no page number). In this vein, several community leaders close to my institution and in other university communities I have visited have asked me why we spend so much time and money sending students to other countries for short periods of time to do service when there is so much ongoing need in the very shadows of the universities. Others have noted that there is virtually nowhere in the United States without an immigrant population. Immigrant communities rich in ethnic, cultural, and language diversity in close proximity to the campus could provide profound intercultural experiences for students without the issues and expense related to international travel. Global problems, such as homelessness, hunger, educational inequity, disease, and environmental degradation, are also domestic problems. As a result, it is important that we closely examine our desired learning outcomes for students in the process of designing and implementing service-learning experiences and consider whether they might be able to be achieved through work in local communities. Local service-learning is far more accessible to students for whom international travel is challenging in terms of time, money, and other responsibilities. Ongoing local campus-community partnerships also have the potential for sharing of resources, learning, and engagement that are facilitated by proximity.

To date, there is little research comparing student learning from immersive programs abroad versus those that are domestic or regarding whether programs distant from the campus versus those that are locally based yield more substantial outcomes for students and communities. The results of the emerging studies are conflicting. In some studies, local service-learning had a stronger relationship with social justice outcomes than international or domestic immersive programs (Littenberg-Tobias, 2013). On the other hand, Niehaus and Crain found several significant positive differences in the experience of students who participated in international alternative breaks when compared with student participants in similarly structured domestic experiences (2013). Additional research that further explores these differences is required to enable service-learning educators to shed light on the question of whether the primary focus of service-learning should be local or global.

As globalization continues to homogenize traditional study abroad sites through the dynamics of international migration and the proliferation of multinational shops and restaurants that affect the character of many places, educators are seeking to establish more programs in developing countries (Crabtree, 2008). This trend has been increasing since the early 1990s, and Crabtree and others note that it requires interrogation (2008). Study abroad in developing countries has been described as “an unholy trinity of national political interest, a missionary tendency, and the voyeuristic pursuit of exotica” (Woolf, 2013). While it seems that good practice in establishing community partnerships abroad would mean partnering with local governments or non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Crabtree raises a concomitant concern: “ISL [international service-learning] courses and co-curricular experiences are implicated in development's history whether through our sometimes naïve hopes for projects, collaborations with NGOs about which we know too little, or tacit complicity with governments that fail to adequately address the needs of the most marginalized communities and populations” (2008, p. 24).

Another concern is how to engage with communities abroad in ways that are well synchronized with local customs, mostly unspoken, and also sustainable over time. Elizabeth McGovern addresses the subtleties of such issues as she describes two water projects in Malawi, where she served with the Peace Corps in two different communities. In one project in which a contractor entered a village to install a new sewer system to prevent flooding once the rains came, work on the project was halted when all the pipes were stolen from the contractor before the work could begin (1998). In the second project, a self-help project in which the community was deeply involved, the residents purchased the pipes themselves. The equipment was not stolen because it was valued by the villagers, who guarded the pipes day and night (McGovern, 1998). In addition, Crabtree found that the more substantive the engagement of the community, the greater the learning is for the students (2008).

In regard to educating students for “enlightened leadership” in our global society, using Wilson-Oyelaran's terminology, developers of international service-learning experiences must take care to ensure that we avoid McGovern's admonition: “I've realized that the strongest impression I carry since my return is how easily we in America assume that we have the best solutions—our presumption of moral rightness” (1998, p. 29). As a result, we must take great pains to avoid “the Western tendency to believe that ‘we' have the right answer to the problems of the ‘underdeveloped' countries” (Doerr, 2011, p. 80). Zemach-Bersin observes:

because the curriculum did not include critical discussions about the ways in which my classmates and I were interacting with our surroundings … I came home confused and unable to respond to the flood of questions such as “How was your time abroad?” Or assumptions like “It must have been amazing. I'm sure you have gained and grown so much.” Like many other students who study abroad, I found that the program's curriculum … [avoided] the very issues that were in many ways most compelling and relevant to our experiences. Why had we not analyzed race, identity, and privilege when those factors were informing every one of our interactions? Why was there never a discussion about commodification when our relationships with host families were built on a commodified relationship? Wasn't a history of colonialism and contemporary imperialism affecting the majority of our experiences and influencing how host nationals viewed us? Was there nothing to be said about the power dynamics of claiming global citizenship? [2008, p. A24]

Another challenge for international service-learning is that the issues that affect all campus-community partnerships may affect international partnerships to an even greater extent. While understanding enough about community culture, dynamics, and issues to effectively work with and in domestic communities is challenging, it is far more so in distant international settings. Further, the recent trend toward shorter experiences abroad, often one to three weeks in duration, has profound effects on communities. As with domestic service-learning, we must do all we can to assure that the duration and intensity of service-learners' contributions are of sufficient substance and quality to offset time and resources contributed by the community. It is also worth questioning whether sufficient intercultural learning on the part of both students and community members is possible within the context of short-term international experiences. To address this concern, service-learning educators need to understand culture shock and facilitate cross-cultural adjustment, particularly for students experiencing lesser-developed cultures for the first time.

Crabtree reminds us that there may also be long-term unintended consequences to even the most thoughtfully designed and implemented international service-learning experiences. Examples of these potential consequences include service-learners inadvertently introducing local children to material possessions of which they become enamored; community members arguing over project ownership, exacerbating internal political and interpersonal divisions; members of neighboring communities wondering why no one has come to help them; and service-learning reinforcing for communities that development requires external benefactors (Crabtree, 2008).

It is dilemmas such as these that lead me and many other service-learning educators to be intellectually and emotionally conflicted about international service-learning. Nonetheless, as Crabtree aptly asserts, “At the end of the day, ISL [international service-learning] projects are not about providing material support to our partners in developing countries and communities—after all, how much can we really do in the face of such extreme poverty and structural inequality? ISL is about producing global awareness among all participants, providing opportunities to develop mutual understanding and creating shared aspirations for social justice and the skills to produce it” (2008, pp. 29–30). After much internal deliberation, I agree with Crabtree that the greatest benefits of international service-learning are most likely to be for the service-learners, who have derogatorily been called “the t-shirts” in at least one international setting. However, I also believe that it is among the purposes, and most substantial challenges, of service-learning in higher education to educate students, t-shirted or not, for responsible global citizenship and to serve as the catalyst for sustained, mutually beneficial partnerships between U.S. colleges and universities and higher education institutions, NGOs, and communities around the world.