Empowering Civic Responsibility: Insights From Service Learning

Introduction

In the last decade, the programs covered in engaged scholarship has been widely viewed as academic service-learning and community service, which aims to link the classroom and community through courses with a transformative experiential education (Jacoby, 2009). By promoting the interrelationship of teaching, research, and service, this initiative is significant to reach beyond interactions and contributions to the environment with more open and inclusive area. In addition to feeling comfortable to have access to space, starting point into existing in the community should maintain a reciprocal relationship with the community. To brainstorm about the challenges of what to contribute to others is necessary to create more open on opportunity in putting awareness and goodwill from the community towards the group or organization. It has to do with building civic engagement to get involved in social events (Waterman, 2014). With this regard, embracing civic values to benefit society and organization provides the good outlook with such examples as acting with ethical manners. Those are values, knowledge, skills, efficacy, and commitment. To integrate engaged scholarship into institutions of higher learning, (i.e. businesses, and governments) these organizations should ensure appropriate time and resources dedicated to its adoption in the way that may be considered in developing organizations with the resources essential for a smooth transition into engaged scholarship.

Furthermore, this process can directly benefit to the groups and organizations to produce socially responsible personality to contribute to the others. The need to work in empowering both academic service learning and community-based service to engage with the critical thinking is significant to expand social, cultural, and human capital in both local communities and universities (Kirshner, Strobel, & Fernández, 2003). While higher education (HE) should have an initiative to inculcate civic responsibility among students with the goal to produce responsible citizens and active participants in the community, service learning would contribute to the transformative experiential education. This attempt would take beneficial outcomes in connecting theory into practice in creating experiential learning opportunities to lead to the self-importance to encounter the challenging issues involving social problems, particularly those faced by universities in urban settings. This chapter will critically explore the main contribution of service learning to build civic responsibility. This attempts to develop a systematic approach in identifying literature on strengthening an actual performance of service learning to empower civic responsibility. This is followed by elucidating a set of literature on the significant essence of behaving the creative thinking for envisioning a future direction. In particular, exploring the key themes and concepts that underpin performing the kind of service learning to be involved to underlie responsibility awareness in the society would be carried out as an ability to make environments more equitable for all and how it should be a wide exchange of particular element in building civic responsibility.