What is Service-Learning?
Service-learning links classroom learning with service to communities. Service opportunities are developed through collaboration among faculty, students, and individuals, and organizations in the community. Service placements are designed to meet two criteria: to enhance the educational goals of a course and to serve the public good by providing a needed service to individuals, organizations, schools, or other entities in the community. Students involved in service-learning make a commitment to engage in a service project or to complete a specified number of hours of service work. Through structured activates of reflection and analysis, they are asked to integrate their service experience with other materials of the course.
Service-learning goes beyond extracurricular community service because; it involves participants in reading, reflection and analysis. Credit is awarded not for service alone, but for academic work integrating the service experience. At its best, service-learning enhances and deepens students’ understanding of an academic discipline or subject, while providing them with experience that develops, leadership and life skills and engages them in critical reflection and about individual, institutional, and social ethics.
Service-Learning and the Program in Education
The Program in Education has been deeply involved in service-learning since the early 1990s when tutoring programs were created which matched Duke undergraduates with children at risk for school failure. Along with other Duke Departments such as the Hart Leadership Program, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Community Service Center, Office of Community Affairs, African and African-American Studies, Spanish, Sociology, and Documentary Studies, the Program in Education has taken the lead in integrating public service with academic coursework.
Three service based programs have been developed for undergraduates who are enrolled in Education courses. These three programs provide Duke undergraduates with the opportunities to combine the academic study of educational issues with service in local schools and community centers.
More Information on Service-Learning
For more information please contact David Malone (dmalone@duke.edu). The web links below may be helpful to you.
- Learn & Serve America
- Learn & Serve Clearinghouse
- Phi Delta Kappan S-L Resources
- Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning
- UCLA Service-Learning Clearinghouse
- National Society for Experiential Education
Project Child Tutors