Several days ago, Stephanie Strom of The New York Times asked “Does service learning really help?” It’s a good question. Ms. Strom, whose beat for theTimes is philanthropy, focused mainly on the question of whether the students engaged in service learning are really benefitting the nonprofit service organizations they are trying to assist. Not surprisingly, some of her respondents who run the nonprofits were not so sure that their student volunteers were worth the effort that necessarily goes into supervising them. This is the general wisdom concerning volunteers, and there is no reason to think that student service learners would be different from other volunteers.
Strom’s article was stimulated by a recent publication emanating from the University of Wisconsin, which runs the Morgridge Center for Public Service. Elizabeth Tryon, its service learning coordinator, is quoted as saying that “If service learning is not well coordinated by the academic institution, it can be a burden on the community partner,” and that seems obvious. Strom comments that “a positive experience usually requires a considerable investment of time and planning on the part of academic institutions and faculty. Ideally, service learning enriches a particular course of study, and students have the opportunity to reflect in the classroom on their experiences.” I would certainly hope so, but Strom goes on to say that “in reality, service learning often seems unconnected to any curriculum – painting park benches, for example. At its most basic, it can be hard to distinguish from plain vanilla community service.”
I suppose there may be a context in which a committed instructor could turn “painting park benches” into a teachable moment, but I have long thought that the community-service component of service learning ought to be tightly integrated into the subject-matter content of the service learning course. Sometimes, of course, the “content” will be a process. Strom cites as an example an innovative English professor, Karen Sanchez-Eppler, whose Amherst College students in a required course on “Reading, Writing and Teaching” assist high-school English teachers in nearby Holyoke, Mass., helping to put out a poetry magazine and running writing workshops. A more traditional content-related example of service learning would be the history professor whose students volunteer at a local soup kitchen and conduct oral histories of its clients for a social history of their community.
But the question posed by my example would be: How great a help to the managers of the soup kitchen would the history students be? Which comes first, the service or the learning? The obvious response is that this is a false dichotomy, for in a successful service-learning environment, both objectives are attained simultaneously – useful service is performed for the nonprofit organization, while structured analysis of the service experience forms a significant part of student learning.
My own limited experience with service learning suggests that it is difficult to achieve both goals. The academic course must be well designed and managed by the instructor, the nonprofit must provide a meaningful task environment for the volunteer, and there must be a strong fit between the classroom and the nonprofit environment. Strom concludes that universities must strive to “formalize what has until recently been an ad hoc experiment in civic engagement.” I am sure that is generally correct, but my fear is that in formalizing, we may be killing the goose that laid the golden egg. I think it must be quite difficult to maintain the creativity and spontaneity that a continuing series of positive cognitive experiences will require. We mustn’t forget the “learning” in service learning – and I suspect that we need to continue to explore new methods of assessing the outcomes of service learning experiences. In principle, service learning should “really help” both the student and the organization she serves.
15 Responses to Does Service Learning Really Help?
jffoster - January 12, 2010 at 10:04 pm
A bir push toward “service learning” and required volunteering (there’s an oxymoron for you) came out of the conference of business and educationist leaders called “Wingspread” or some goofy such name. From what I read, including stuff they put out, I concluded that it was largely about how to conscript college students for forced labor, oops, “community service”. what Ive seen of “service learning” suggests to me that it is largely a bunch of horsecrap. It is indeed a corvee, a labor levy placed on the young. I do not deny that it can be helpful to the students and the “served” — but an Honors Freshman English class starting the year by building a Habitat for Humanity house? Oh, they do write about “their experiences”. Pace an exception I’ll mention below, the people at my university who seem to use it the most are a) faculty who want to become deans and tend to suck up to the latest fad, no matter what it is, and/or b. faculty in fields or courses without much content or intellectual substance anyway, like a lot of “communications”. The exceptional category is fields that have a large clinical or practicum component, nursing for instance. There I can see a bona fide relationship and use for “service learning”. But in general and in the liberal arts and sciences college, the emphasis is effectively on the service and not the learning.There was a move to make a service learning course mandatory or otherwise make “community service” mandatory for all undergraduates. We defeated it the last time around in the late nineties but I think it will probably slip through in a year or two. The article Katz referred us to said that Tulane now has a mandatory service learning course for its undergraduates. I’m sorry. I once respected and regarded the Tulane University of New Orleans quite highly. Oh well, it still has a very good program in Admiralty Law. The fact that colleges, like many high schools, are moving toward making “service” mandatory is further evidence that this is really about something else. And these people pushing it are hypocrites unbelievable. Well, many of them are 60s liberals, or would like to have been, so I guess it isn’t so unbelievable. Not just any “service” is acceptable. They dont want to accept active membership in the Civil Air Patrol, the Coast Guard Auxiliary, the National Guard, the Ohio Military Reserve or Naval Militia, or even regular activity in the armed forces reserve. Oh, no. That’s not helping the poor. So what it really is is a labor tax on upper, middle, and working class youths to try to hold the lid on without raising taxes. And to demonstrate to Corporate America and to the Public that OUR students will work off the clock and do community service. It’s mostly a bunch of crap.
englishwlu - January 13, 2010 at 7:12 am
Service learning isn’t right for most of the courses I teach, but it’s perfect for one of them: Children’s Literature. In a course that takes place in April and May, my volunteers (they aren’t required) spend 12 hours over 6 weeks with kindergartners in the local schools doing literacy work, and in the 6 week period they often help those children learn to read. In class they read the alphabets, primers and readers collected in the superb Norton anthology and learn the controversies over phonics, whole word, and whole language theories. The relevance of what might seem an abstract debate comes home when they teach a kid from a whole-word taught classroom to “sound out.” The thrill shouldn’t be underestinated: some discover teachig vocations. Students bring their experiences with children right back into my classroom and report great satisfaction with the intellectual payoff of the experience. I have good support from an on-campus service learning coordinator who handles placement and runs interference (as when a local teacher fobs off scut work on a student–often a product of scheduling rather than true misunderstanding). That’s essential. But the whole endeavor is a huge amount of work for the professor–there’s no question about that.
ruthven - January 13, 2010 at 7:47 am
It’s also perfect for my undergraduate paralegal course in Elder Law. It’s one thing to study the elderly and legal aspects of planning for and/or dealing with the problems of aging, but it really helps give the course an added focus and makes its issues more relevant to get the students into elder care facilities interacting with the elderly and their problems (and wisdom). Their volunteer service is coordinated with the facilities, and an important component is the requirement of a student reflection paper in which the students must synthesize what they’ve learned in the course and what they’ve experienced. It’s been a rewarding part of the course.
22007671 - January 13, 2010 at 8:24 am
Readers might also look at the set of principles developed several years by the International Partnership for Service-Learning and Leadership (IPSL), which address some of the issues both Dr. Katz and other commentators have raised about the value of service-learning both to students and to the communities/agencies being served. You can find the principles on-line at http://www.ipsl.org/advocacy/declaration-of-principles.aspx. I’d also recommend two conferences on service-learning research and practice that will be sponsored later this year by the Center for Service and Learning at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis; go to http://csl.iupui.edu/conferences.asp for further information.
lelandjordan - January 13, 2010 at 9:26 am
Internships, as in colleges of education programs, not so long ago were subject to derisive comments by purists from the liberal arts. Do we now realize that such vocationally-oriented programs after all were ahead of the pack?Additionally, we should note that those internships were carefully structured, planned, and supervised. See comments 2 and 3.
calvinslc - January 13, 2010 at 9:38 am
Mr. Katz suggests, rightly, that the relationship between service and learning in the service-learning movement is complex. This is as we should expect it to be. All learning is complex. And measuring any kind of learning, including traditional classroom learning, is complex and difficult. Measuring how much “help” students are in their service placements is also complex. As the director of a service-learning program dating back to 1964, I interact with dozens of community partners, many of whom have been in partnership interaction with my small private liberal arts college (4,000 undergraduates) since the mid-1960s, and they are not generally looking simply at today’s bottom line for their agencies – these are thoughtful, engaged citizens who understand that an educated and service-oriented citizenry is a valuable thing to invest in, and they are willing – for now going on five decades in our city – to invest in it for the long haul. Service-learning is not for every course, but it is for more courses and more faculty than are currently utilizing it. Effective service-learning requires the kind of difficult preparation that any good teaching requires, and it can be a whole lot messier, but also a whole lot more rewarding. Tyron and Stoecker’s book, which Mr. Katz references, is an important contribution to the development of this pedagogy, but we shouldn’t assume that because something is difficult it shouldn’t be done. On the contrary, this should probably be a call to more, not less attention to a way of teaching and learning that fosters not only learning, but contributes to the development of an active and engaged citizenry. Higher education needs more of this, not less.
deliajones - January 13, 2010 at 12:30 pm
I’m not sure just what group of priviledged learners service learning is designed to serve. I teach at a CC and my students already have full plates. They are fitting in classes between one or more jobs, taking care of parents and children and struggling to study and prepare for class. I could learn plenty from their energy and hard work and would certainly not presume to require additional hours for “service learning.” I encourage an “active and engaged” citizenry by bringing up current events, especially local and state issues, and providing them with access to their own representatives’ phone numbers and emails. I notice that with many of my students they are posting to discussion boards or taking tests after midnight, after they have worked quite full days.
g8briel - January 13, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Even though I am faculty now, it was not long ago that I was a student, so I’m going to speak from that side of service-learning.The best way to sum up my experience was that it was the most memorable and important thing I ever did in graduate school (an employers loved seeing it too). Rather than huddle in our classrooms and review hypothetical situations, I and a number of other students, developed our own service-learning course that included travel around the state of Wisconsin engaging with tribal officials and and library professionals (for more details, look here: http://tlam999.wordpress.com/). Yes, in many ways it was a pain and a lot of work, but the lessons learned there were much more relevant than wading through another article or listening to a professor pontificate.I suspect that most people critical of service-learning lack understanding of what it can or should be. It is not for every course. That is obvious. But there is no reason to think that some form of service-learning wouldn’t be relevant to every student. To use expletives to deride it is a sure sign that you are clueless about the potential of service-learning. A well-formed program will tap into the initiative and creativity of the student and can be something quite inspiring. Yes, there are examples of service-learning gone awry, but I could easily create a longer list of traditional classes that were abject failures.Service-learning is often an experimental and creative pursuit, which sometimes means things don’t work out as planned since they take place in the real world. These failures are still successful for students as long as something is learned in the process, and a service-learning endeavor can still be successful overall if instructors are willing to make long-term commitments and adapt when things fail.
seth_pollack - January 13, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Stan Katz is on the right track, asking a very important question. For 15 years, CSU Monterey Bay (CSUMB)has implemented a service learning graduation requirement in every undergraduate major. What we have learned through these years, is that while the “doing service” is important, the real value of the program is the learning agenda that emerges, that truly connects our academic questions with community realities. In other words, service learning is a fabulous vehicle to enable academic programs to truly be relevant to vital community concerns. IF, and this is the important caveat, faculty members and community members are spending time together exploring the connections between the learning agendas of the academic programs/students, and the real-world concerns and issues that community organizations are confronting, then the learning and the doing merge, and a vital service learning agenda emerges at well. Yes, soup gets ladled. Benches get painted. Kids get tutored. BUT, the real value is the deeper questions that our students and our community partners explore that then inform our academic programs, research and community engagement initiatives.This is made more readily achievable at CSUMB because each academic program has identified learning outcomes related to service, social justice and civic engagement that are relevant to their discipline or field. These learning objectives then inform our conversations with our community partners, whose insights and realities ultimately are embodied in the evolving course outcomes themselves. It is this community-university dialogue around learning and social change which is at the essence of service learning. As Katz infers, the learning of both the student and the community are driving the process, as we all strive to understand and address deep-seated issues related to injustice and inequality in our society. It is an oversimplification to just look at “hours served,” “students tutored,” “cans donated,” etc. as the measure of impact! Nor is it meaningful to make some convoluted connection back to an abstract discipline-based academic question as proof of learning. BUT, if we see that a legitimate goal of higher education is to educate “civically engaged” graduates and community members, then service learning is a great vehicle to move our institutions (and the knowledge-base of our academic programs) closer to the realities experience by our communities. For more info on CSUMB’s outcomes-based social justice-oriented service learning proram, visit: http://service.csumb.edu.p.s. We are also a hispanic-seving institution, and in no way working with a “privileged” student population. Still, every one of our students does 2 semesters of service learning during their 4-year degree. And, evaluation data consistently shows that 90+% of students see the experience as having been valuable.
plindsay - January 13, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Comment #10 gets it right (no wonder, with all the experience). I’d only add that I remain unconvinced of Katz’s claim that service and learning “is a false dichotomy.” Yes, it is a success when “both objectives are attained simultaneously,” but only if success is measured by standards that encompass both the academic and the community institutions. The primary concern for academic institutions is, however, learning, and it is entirely possible that that could occur in a context where the service objectives are not attained. As regrettable (from the community’s point of view) as that outcome may be, it would (from an educational point of view) be no less of a success.
suomynona - January 13, 2010 at 10:52 pm
#8 (deliajones),Re. scheduling to avoid overburdening full-plated students: My one service-learning experience (as a student) was structured more like an independent study, for which there were only a couple of class meetings to punctuate service hours, which replaced would-be classroom hours. The professor was available for additional meetings and certainly any complaints (for students or on-site project directors). We submitted a midterm essay and then a final paper that incorporated fieldwork data from the service end of the project. It seemed to go rather well, and, to be honest, was less work than what I would typically put in for a regular course.
nsushka - January 14, 2010 at 9:42 am
Though a student service-learner may be a burden the first time s/he serves an organization, the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th may see that student developing skills and experience that become vitally important for that–or a future–organization/social issue. When faculty have support staff and resources (like a service learning coordinator), one can often overcome all of these issues–not for every student, but in a way that makes the whole endeavor worthwhile for the majority involved.As for “priveleged” learners, I absolute disagee. At our 2-year institution, service-learning can be one of the only ways our students get direct experience in the fields that interest them. When an English-learning immigrant with no formal experience in computer skills works with a non-profit to complete a data-entry project, it’s a win-win for them both. Now the student has contacts and references, the non-profit was able to focus on clients, not data entry, and both have a relationship that can continue into the future. And I’ve seen that happen often.
fortysomethingprof - January 14, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Several of the comments posted said, effectively, “service learning works for MY course” and then they described a course in a professional service discipline (!!) like law. Like most educational fads (clickers, group assignments, peer grading, etc.), service-learning has a finite scope, but the administrator who forces it into his university’s core curriculum gets to say he did something. It’s easier to incorporate some buzz-fad into your course than it is to measure and imporove learning outcomes.I see a connection to the inclusion of “extracurriculars” on college admission applications. Grade point averages are useless because there’s been so much grade inflation in secondary education that a 4.0 is considered mediocre. The best colleges have figured out how to ask, “So you got a 4.3 grade point average … but did you get it on 3 hours of sleep every night?” Coming back to the main point, universities can extend the volunteerism-under-duress concept well beyond the four-year boundaries of their own programs (a) by requiring applicants to have done extensive service already in high school and (b)competing to see how many graduates they can place into the Peace Corps and Teach for America. And I agree with the earlier comment that military service is somehow not considered as useful as vaccinating the poor.
etryon - January 14, 2010 at 2:44 pm
As the co-editor of the book (“The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning”) referred to in this article that the NY Times story was focused on, I think it’s wonderful that the article has generated some lively dialogue. Something to keep in mind: the premise of the book is not that student don’t benefit from service learning – that has been documented – but rather about the burdens on the community organizations in relation to the benefits derived. There are issues to be addressed to avoid a dialectic where agencies turn down service learners because they don’t have staff capacity to take on the responsibilities the academy assumes they can.So rather than suggesting that we abandon the practice, the book states the challenges, as well as suggestions from community partners on ways to mitigate them, from minor things like the problems created by short-term service, to the need for infrastructure to support faculty in what is certainly a teaching methodology that takes more time and energy. As an aside to the discussion thread, our study found that many agencies dislike mandatory service-learners, saying they can spot them a mile away and they don’t make good volunteers!! Therefore, if service is mandatory, we owe it to the community to orient and train the students at least to the point of not being surly! Not to say that there aren’t some splendid, glowing reviews of some students, like the one above in comment 9. Even there, it’s important to recognize that the attitude “failures are still succesful for students as long as something is learned in the process” doesn’t address the failure from the community’s vantage point. Not to be overly dramatic, but an analogy would be if we sent untrained people to put out a fire in a building, and they failed, they still learned something from the experience, but…Seth Pollack’s comment shows that he gets it. In order for service learning to reach its potential, we need to develop course content based on what is actually going on in the community, by collaborating on course design or doing participatory research on community needs as well as assets. That is the way we will be able to improve our practice of community-engaged learning, and at the same time, create more authentic student learning, because the community’s input has been solicited in a respectful, reciprocal way.
jffoster - January 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Etyron (15), re your last paragraph — a lot of us “get it”. We just don’t agree. Most education is not about “community engaged learning”. Very little of the Calculus is, most chemistry is not, and a senior college, like a California State University, that makes all or most of its programs about “community-engaged learning” is parochializing, provincializing, and shortchanging its students. But I must thank you for bringing in the material above that — about the drawbacks and easily spottedness of mandatory service “learners”. I had suspected that might be the case but wasn’t aware of the research.