Communication Currents

Service-learning, briefly defined as engaging students in some form of service in the community in order to both advance learning and provide positive benefits for the community, is not a new idea. It has grown out of approaches to learning and civic activism dating back to the early 1900s.

Service-learning is a way for college and university instructors (see resources at Campus Compact, resources for K-12 teachers see the National Youth Service League) to get students out of the campus ‘bubble’ and into communities to see how what they are learning relates to community issues and can be employed sensitively to address these issues. University administrators on the whole like service-learning because it becomes a tangible and in many cases quantifiable way the university contributes to the health and vitality of the broader community.

Contemporary talk of reclaiming higher education’s civic mission (A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future, National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012), calls for America to recommit to learning that promotes “historic and modern understandings of democratic values, capacities to engage diverse perspectives and people, and commitment to collective civic problem solving,” and expand civic partnerships  to “address common problems, empower people to act, strengthen communities and nations, and generate new frontiers of knowledge.” These goals can be advanced at the university level by expanding our commitment to and practice of service-learning as a viable and rich form of teaching and learning.

 Service-learning is not limited to any one discipline and in fact has been used in natural and social sciences, humanities, education, and business (see National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, Examples of service-learning courses across the disciplines, Mapping New Terrain).  In the discipline of communication, service-learning becomes a vital tool for helping students understand how communication, whether in the form of oral, written, or non-verbal messages, affects how we define and subsequently attempt to address social issues. In communication, service-learning has been used to offer hands-on experiences that further our knowledge of intercultural communication, interpersonal communication, public relations, group interaction, media campaigns, health communication, organizational communication, and more. But regardless of the subject matter, when it all boils down, we use service-learning for three primary goals related to student development – we seek to develop students more deeply as learners, as citizens, and as change agents.

Students as learners 

A primary goal of higher education is to create learners with the ability to critically think about how knowledge and skills are useful in the world.  Using service-learning to have students practice what they are learning and reflect on how to adapt to specific needs is one type of service-learning. The idea, emerging out of the experiential learning movement, is that we learn by doing, and in a service-learning course, that doing happens in and for the community. In order to adapt knowledge for use, this form of service-learning requires that students fully integrate and take ownership of the knowledge and skills they are learning. By reflecting deeply on how they are putting these to use in the community, students develop a type of hands-on wisdom that allows them to adapt and change as necessary. It is what Aristotle called phronetic wisdom, or a sense of what is needed and how to use the knowledge we have to respond to what is needed in the moment. In this form of service-learning, students as learners gain a sense of both their ability and responsibility to act in the world.

Students as critical citizens 

Students will not only enter the world of work when they graduate, they will also continue to grow in their roles as citizens who coexist with others in communities. Long a part of a liberal education, citizenship education seeks to develop in students an understanding of the responsibilities of civic life.  With a focus on critical citizenship, this type of service-learning serves as a way to move students into communities, and out of their comfort zones to take stock of their values and commitments. Particularly in the field of communication, this approach can help to illuminate how language affects how we view and subsequently address social issues and how both labels and structural inequities shape lived experience. This form of service-learning pushes students to, through their direct experiences with others in the community, investigate and call into question power and privilege. It asks students to reflect on the fundamental questions of democracy: Who am I in relation to others? What are my responsibilities to others and to the whole? This form engages students in reflection on how we negotiate self, society, and values.

Students as (potential) change agents  

A final way to engage students in service-learning is an approach grounded in social justice activism. This approach not only entails students investigating how language and structures create power imbalances that marginalize members of a society, but actively engaging in efforts to correct these disparities through activism and advocacy. Service in this approach must not only address individual or immediate needs, but must also strive for sustainable and meaningful change. Although all forms of service-learning benefit from a constant reminder that service should be engaged in withcommunities and not for communities, this is core wisdom in a social justice approach that aims to transform communities.

For all of these forms of service-learning, what is critical and what makes service-learning so rich is the reflection process, the bridge that connects community service and learning and that allows each to strengthen and reinforce the other. This reflection process is what makes service-learning work. When students continually reflect on what they are experiencing, learning begins to happen on multiple levels. Students become active partners in the learning process and the learning becomes a collaborative, shared process. Service-learning does require that instructors let go of some control in the classroom. Service-learning is risky, for students and for instructors who essentially find themselves out on a limb (Cyphert, 2006) But it is from this limb that we are able to glimpse a vision of the possibilities for our communities and our world, possibilities that our students will help make a reality.