You learned what?...

What exactly is it that we are learning when we do service-learning? It is interesting, few teachers would walk into a classroom and be content with students learning absolutely anything. Instead, syllabi are designed and goals are set wherein content is constrained so as to teach students certain things and not other things. The result, no one class can ever provide students with the whole picture, but it can keep the standards high and set those students on a path towards developing a rich and deep body of knowledge. But then we come to the issue of service-learning, wherein the boundaries and goals are not nearly so clear.

To offer some explanation of service-learning, it as a reciprocal exchange wherein the dichotomy of server and learner are deconstructed to reveal that serving and learning happens simultaneously, and so the traditional conceptions of a person helping and a person being helped are done away with in favor of a more dynamic and organic model that reflects the fluid nature of human relationships. It is relationships that are at the bottom of service-learning. In every experience of service we form a relationship with someone, someplace, or something, and therein we consciously or unconsciously set in motion a process whereby we both affect and are effected.

Questions quickly arise, though, as to what service and learning are and look like inside of this model. I would venture to say that for better or worse we have a clearer conception of what acts of service might look like (though in a future post this would be another issue worth exploring), but we are not so clear about the learning part of the service-learning experience.

Each year the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College organizes and implements a large scale event called Streetfest for new, incoming students to the college. During this event, students spend most of the day visiting a local area non-profit, helping them with whatever needs or projects the organization might have for them that day. After completing some work with the organization, students gather in small groups to reflect on their experiences, discussing what they have learned. My question is, what kinds of things are students supposed to learn? I am not asking what students must walk away saying they have learned, but rather, is service-learning so open that any and all kinds of lessons learned are desirable? Or rather, does the pedagogy of service-learning actually intend something, in particular, to be learned?


Perhaps the answer to this question is academic based service-learning wherein teachers utilize service-learning as a tool to accomplish the goals of their course. In this classroom setting, a teacher can direct students to reflect on certain things so as to form conclusions about specific material, issues, or questions. But does service-learning then also take place outside of this structured classroom environment? At Calvin College, beyond academic based service learning, there are also service-learning programs such as Streetfest and community partnerships within the residence halls that students take part in. In these programs, the settings are far less structured and defined. Does this mean that the domain of possible lessons learned is broadened for this type of service-learning? Or could it be that service-learning is not a nuetral practice, and regardless of whether teachers or classrooms are involved, the very act of service-learning disposes students towards learning something particular? Could it be that, just as the pedagogy of service-learning is born out of a deconstruction of the traditional binaries of server and served, and places a subsequent emphasis on appreciating the dynamics of relationships wherein exchange takes place that it also then inscribes that same disposition in students in the form of learning about close analysis, an appreciation for complexity and tension, and perhaps, just maybe, even political convictions relating to seeking justice. If this is the case, then a whole series of questions follow, most interesting among them, though, is whether service-learning is, in fact, the bi-partisan, safe, cute, tame, and nice pedagogy that so many seem to think it is, or is it something that is volatile and risky as it threatens to disrupt the status qou, set practitioners ill at ease in their previously unexamined thoughts and opinions, and call into question the very systems of society that give rise to and support the problems facing any given community?