The author begins this essay by reflecting on an article penned twenty years earlier, "Does Service-Learning Have a Future?" (Zlotkowski, 1995) that called educators to attend seriously to the academic aspects of service-learning (SL), to situate the pedagogy strongly within the academy as a means of legitimizing and expanding the work.…

"Service-learning" is a multilayered term with a complex historical evolution. In the last two decades, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) have flourished in higher education as staff, faculty, and students have realized it can be a high-impact teaching and learning practice to promote student learning and development.…

Low-income students who are the first in their family to attend college continue to drop out at alarmingly high rates. Previous studies have shown that service-learning can have a positive influence on student retention. However, little research exists to explore how low-income, first-generation (LIFG) college students experience service-learning,…

This paper reports on the first two semesters of an ongoing longitudinal study exploring how 22 pre-service teachers' involvement with change-oriented service-learning impacted their thinking about citizenship and civic education. Drawing upon Westheimer and Kahne's (2004) notions of citizenship, we analyzed three data sources: pre- and…

Approaching reflection from the perspective of a teachable skill set implies that research may inform how to help students reflect. Employing a framework of making connections often used in reading comprehension, this study aimed to characterize how making connections between the service-learning experience (SLE) and prior experiences in similar…

A multi-campus research survey of undergraduate students enrolled in service-learning courses asked students to describe how the service-learning course was designed in terms of the degree of integration of the learning and service component, the nature of the reflection activities, and the quality of the learning experience. Results indicated…

This qualitative study includes focus group research involving 99 experienced community partners across eight California communities using community-based research techniques to capture community voices about their service-learning partnerships with different colleges and universities. Partners commented on their perspectives regarding…

Reports on a service-learning seminar at Stanford University (California) for nine faculty and three administrators designed to stimulate faculty interest in connecting student public service to academic study and provide knowledge and resources for course design. Data are drawn from participants' seminar learning plans, assessments, and follow-up…

As social scientists engage their own subjectivity, there is greater awareness of their own touristic "gaze," or at least the power relations that are evoked in the researcher-subject interaction. In teaching students involved in community service learning, the challenge is to provide a learning experience that addresses power inequities…