Synopses & Reviews
Service-Learning in Higher Education critically examines the assumptions and implications of service-learning and offers exemplary models of practice and scholarship. It explores the limits and possibilities of teaching for social justice; it examines paramount issues of institutionalization; and it investigates issues of student resistance, student voice, and contested issues around race, class, and gender. Transformational models across the humanities and social sciences are presented and new directions for the future of service-learning are explored. By bringing together rising scholars and established experts in the field, this book offers an essential and state-of-the-art examination of the service-learning field in higher education.
Review
"Service-learning has the promise to be transformative for students, faculty, and communities, and this book reflects that promise…This book is in a class by itself, and will be the 'go-to' text for courses focused on service-learning, of which there is a growing number every day."--Jeffrey Howard, Editor,
Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning; Associate Director, Ginsberg Center
Synopsis
Service-learning in higher education has immense potential for individual, pedagogical, and institutional change towards social justice. It also creates linkages between schools and communities, theory and practice, the cognitive and affective and fosters civic engagement, openness to diversity, and the opportunity for cultural and political "border crossing," yet all too often falls short of this mark. This book offers critical perspectives and exemplary models of how service-learning can be transformed as it explores unintended consequences and alternative conceptualizations.
Synopsis
Advocates have positioned service-learning as a real-world, real-time opportunity for students to encounter academic knowledge in a meaningful and relevant manner. Service-learning in higher education settings offers a powerful alternative to traditional models of teaching and learning. Students are encouraged to develop links to local institutions, volunteer their time, and create a special bond between the university and the community in which they live. Service-learning has become a very popular alternative to standard courses in higher education and is gaining significant popularity. This book takes a serious look at the unintended consequences and alternative conceptualizations of this mode of learning and explores what it could offer us in the future.
About the Author
Dan W. Butin is Assistant Professor of Education, Gettysburg College, and editor of
Teaching Social Foundations of Education: Contexts, Theories and Issues.
Table of Contents
Preface: Disturbing Normalizations of Service-Learning--Dan W. Butin *
Part I: The Micro-Politics and Micro-Practices of Service-Learning * Getting Inside the "Underside" of Service-Learning: Student Resistance and Possibilities--Susan Jones, Jen Gilbride-Brown, and Anna Gasiorski * "Whose School Is It Anyway?" Student Voices in an Urban Classroom--Raji Swaminathan * "I Can Never Turn My Back on That": Liminality and the Impact of Class on Service-Learning Experience--Sue Ellen Henry * Beyond a World of Binaries: My Views on Service-Learning--Tiffany Dacheux * Changing Places: Theorizing Space and Power Dynamics in Service-Learning--Caroline Clark and Morriss Young * Service Learning as Postmodern Pedagogy--Dan W. Butin *
Part II: Transformative Models of Service-Learning Practice * The Evolution of a Community of Practice: Stakeholders and Service Management 101--Jordi Comas, Tammy Bunn Hiller, and John Miller * Human Rights--Human Wrongs: Making Political Science Real Through Service-Learning--Susan Dicklitch * "No One Has Stepped There Before": Learning About Racism in Our Town--Marilynne Boyle-Baise and Paul Binford * Service-Learning as a Source of Identity Change in
Bucknell in Northern Ireland--Carl Milofsky and William F. Flack, Jr. * Service-Learning as Crucible: Reflections on Immersion, Context, Power, and Transformation--Lori Pompa *
Part III: Reframing the Institutionalization of Service-Learning * The Aesthetical Basis for Service-Learning Practice--James Birge * Putting Down Roots in the Groves of Academe: The Challenges of Institutionalizing Service-Learning--Matthew Hartley, Ira Harkavay, and Lee Benson