"The great difficulty in education is to
get experience out of ideas."
-George
Santayana
Service Learning is an instructional/learning
method by which students learn and develop through
active participation in a carefully planned and
well-organized service experience.
Service learning provides an opportunity for students
to apply theoretical classroom learning to address
the needs of their community.
Thus,
service learning affords students a unique opportunity
to engage in meaningful, hands-on application
of classroom knowledge, which, at the same time,
begins to foster within the student a sense of
civic-mindedness.
In essence, service learning becomes the vehicle
by which students and faculty move outside the
confines of the traditional classroom and transform
both community and classrooms into laboratories
of learning.
No single definition adequately embodies the essence
of service learning. Service learning can be,
and often is, defined in a variety of ways. The
following are but a few examples of the many definitions
of service learning.
Service learning is a teaching/learning method
that connects meaningful community service with
academic learning, personal growth and civic responsibility.
National Youth Leadership
Council, 1991.
Service
learning is any carefully monitored service-experience
in which a student has intentional learning goals
and reflects actively on what he or she is learning
throughout the experience.
National Society for Experiential
Education, 1994
Service learning is strongly tied to community
service. Like community service, service learning
engages students in service to the community and
contributes to the development of student's civic
responsibility. However, though learning undoubtedly
occurs as one serves the community, there is in
service-learning an intentional effort to utilize
the community service experience as a learning
resource.
(Howard, 1993)
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