Service Learning

 

 

Service learning involves students volunteering or otherwise doing service as part of course requirements. It generally falls under the larger heading of “experiential learning” and thus pushes students to connect the theory they learn in class with “real world” contexts. It is also often meant to deepen the experiences of students at institutions whose student bodies are primarily both white and affluent. Service learning has somewhat fallen out of favor, however, because it has some problematic features that prove challenging to resolve. First, for students who come from underrepresented communities, service learning requirements can incite feelings of disconnection, alienation, and reified “otherness” by being asked to go “serve” with “needy” communities or populations similar to those they grew up with. 

For these same students, service learning can put undue pressure on them to represent and speak for their communities. Second, as Tamara Williams and Erin McKenna (2002) point out in “Negotiating Subject Positions in a Service-Learning Context: Toward a Feminist Critique of Experiential Learning,” well-intended service learning intentions can backfire and instead reinforce existing stereotypes about marginalized communities:

If, for example, predominantly white upper-middle-class students are only exposed to Latino men in jail, or to African American women in a women’s shelter, or to gay men in an AIDS hospice, or to the “poor” in the lines of a soup kitchen, there is a real risk of affirming pre-existing stereotypical views. … A course with an experiential component can yield a situation where prejudicial perceptions of privilege and power are fortified and enhanced by “an experience” made legitimate by a given academic course of study. (p. 140)

Last, service learning focuses more on acquiring credits and fulfilling course requirements, rather than on fostering student passions, developing student leaders, or centering community needs. Because of these foundational concerns with traditional service learning models, this toolkit embraces other pedagogical and research methodologies, namely community-engaged learning and participatory action research.