Service-Learning and Social Justice for College and University Students: Replacing Memorization with Meaning

Introduction

Service learning is authentic and meaningful; the life-changing nature of a service-learning experience for both the provider and the recipient is unrivaled by any other type of campus course. Frequently, these course-imbedded service-learning experiences are some of the most memorable and meaningful of all the courses taken by university students. Students glean so much more than book knowledge from service-learning. This service-learning themed chapter focuses on service-learning college projects that address several components of social justice including LGBTQ+, ability, race, and class. For purposes of this chapter, service-learning is defined as educational experiences in which “students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development” (Jacoby, 1996, p. 5). Rather than relying upon textbooks and lectures for students’ social justice learning, the college experiences described in this chapter embrace a pro-active stance toward lifelong learning at the college and university level. Professors, teachers, and instructors alike owe it to their students to scaffold and encourage their service-learning as students learn about life, itself, and all of its diversity, uniqueness, and wonder. As Sonia Nieto (2005b) advises:

Service-Learning is not a new concept or idea. However, service-learning in high schools and universities today reflects a unique set of variables, including a linkage with project-based learning and academic subjects. Service-learning today represents a variation of traditional paper and pencil and computer education; it is a type of education based upon experience involving the recognition of a societal issue, goal setting, planning, collaboration among group members, implementation, reflection and revised goal-setting, sharing experiences with others, and celebrating accomplishments. As Heather Wolpert-Gawron (2016) comments regarding the benefits of service-learning for both oneself and for the community served, “Service-learning is a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves.”

Thus, the present emphasis of service-learning on projects, class themes, self-reflection, and implications for self and others sets today’s service-learning endeavors apart from those undertaken in the past and, in intrinsic as well as extrinsic ways, benefits its participants—both the servers and the population served. Linda Darling-Hammond (2002) adds that schools must change in fundamental ways in order to teach our very diverse student population deep understanding, problem solving, and higher order thinking. In progressive schools of the 21^st century, traditional content areas are now supplemented and made more meaningful by including service-learning in the curriculum. Instead of teaching a college class about hunger and reading from a textbook, for example, students visit a homeless shelter and serve food to the residents. Instead of taking a multiple-choice test addressing aging in America, students make cards and crafts, deliver them to a nursing home, and interview the residents. In order to provide new meaning and an appreciative audience to a book they are reading in a language arts methods or children’s literature class, students visit a Head Start Center and perform this story as a play relating to the children’s book. Wolpert-Gawron (2018) states, “It’s about teaching empathy as well as literacy. It’s about teaching compassion as well as composition. It’s about teaching advocacy as well as algebra.” (p. 87)