What are the Characteristics of Service-Learning?

Authentic service-learning experiences, while almost endlessly diverse, have some common characteristics (taken mostly from Eyler & Giles, Where's the Learning in Service-Learning?, 1999):They are positive, meaningful and real to the participants. They involve cooperative rather than competitive experiences and thus promote skills associated with teamwork and community involvement and citizenship. They address complex problems in complex settings rather than simplified problems in isolation. They offer opportunities to engage in problem-solving by requiring participants to gain knowledge of the specific context of their service-learning activity and community challenges, rather than only to draw upon generalized or abstract knowledge such as might come from a textbook. As a result, service-learning offers powerful opportunities to acquire the habits of critical thinking; i.e. the ability to identify the most important questions or issues within a real-world situation. They promote deeper learning because the results are immediate and uncontrived. There are no "right answers" in the back of the book. As a consequence of this immediacy of experience, service-learning is more likely to be personally meaningful to participants and to generate emotional consequences, to challenge values as well as ideas, and hence to support social, emotional and cognitive learning and development. Service-learning is not:An episodic volunteer program An add-on to an existing school or college curriculum Logging a set number of community service hours in order to graduate Compensatory service assigned as a form of punishment by the courts or by school administrators Only for high school or college students One-sided: benefiting only students or only the community The distinctive element of service-learning is that it enhances the community through the service provided, but it also has powerful learning consequences for the students or others participating in providing a service. Service-learning is growing so rapidly because we can see it is having a powerful impact on young people and their development. It is a dynamic process, through which students' personal and social growth is tightly interwoven into their academic and cognitive development. According to scholars Eyler and Giles (1999), with the service-learning model "experience enhances understanding; understanding leads to more effective action."