More Details About Service Learning

1. Effective service-learning establishes clear educational goals that require the application of concepts, content and skills from the academic disciplines and involves students in the construction of their own knowledge.
2. In effective service-learning, students are engaged in tasks that challenge and stretch them cognitively and developmentally.
3. In effective service-learning, assessment is used as a way to enhance student learning as well as to document and evaluate how well students have met content and skills standards.
4. Students are engaged in service tasks that have clear goals, meet genuine needs in the school or community and have significant consequences for themselves and others.
5. Effective service-learning employs formative and summative evaluation in a systematic evaluation of the service effort and its outcomes.
6. Effective service-learning seeks to maximize student voice in selecting, designing, implementing, and evaluating the service project.
7. Effective service-learning values diversity through its participants, its practice and its outcomes.
8. Effective service-learning promotes communication and interaction with the community and encourages partnerships and collaboration.
9. Students are prepared for all aspects of their service work including a clear understanding of task and role, the skills and information required by the task, awareness of safety precautions, as well as knowledge about and sensitivity to the people with whom they will be working.
10. Student reflection takes place before, during and after service, uses multiple methods that encourage critical thinking, and is a central force in the design and fulfillment of curricular objectives.
11. Multiple methods are designed to acknowledge, celebrate and further validate students’ service work.