P-16+ Service Learning

Service Learning in Illinois

Executive Summary

During the Great Flood of 1993, students stacked sandbags to hold back the rising Mississippi. Besides sore backs and aching muscles, they learned from the flood. That September, in their service-learning classroom, the students calculated precipitation, water levels, and the force on the levees. They wrote in their journals about what they had witnessed. Some students interviewed senior citizens who had lived through several floods to answer questions about why people stayed on their land even when threatened by future floods. In other words, students could relate the real world to their math, writing, reading, and communication.

What is service learning? Service learning is an instructional strategy that blends community service with academic learning. Emphasis is placed on reflection, active student participation, and connecting the curriculum to the real world. The setting for service learning doesn't have to be something as dramatic as a flood, it can be a hospital, housing project, classroom, or nursing home or where students can find meaning in their education.

Support for Service Learning

What we know about service learning, based on our survey, is that it already exists in at least 74 elementary and high schools, 16 community colleges, 15 universities, and that 267 faculty preschool through higher education (P-16) have incorporated service learning into their curriculum. This is most likely the tip of the iceberg. According to the 341 surveys completed by educators, lawmakers, businesses, and the media, 80% support or strongly support service learning , 7% do not support it, 13% have no opinion.

The most common comment about service learning is that it connects education to the real world, a them that was echoed by Senate Minority Leader Emil Jones, "Service Learning applies techniques and lessons from the classroom to real-life situations. For several years now, business community has been telling lawmakers that practical experience should be part of the curriculum. Service learning provides that experience."

Unlike many other educational initiatives, service learning is not a cash guzzler. It has minuscule costs, primarily in staff planning time and connecting with the community. More than 50 national educational organizations have endorsed service learning, such as the National Education Association that recently passed a resolution saying that "learning through voluntary community service should be encouraged as an integral part of a student's education."

Those Who Don't Support Service Learning

Let's look at those who do not support service learning. One of the main reasons given in the survey is that teachers and professors know little about it or find it an unfamiliar way of teaching. Some educators see service learning as another unfunded mandate. Others view a lack of support from top administrators especially in promotion and tenure policies, to be draw backs. Chancellor Michael Aiken of UIUC, a strong advocate of service learning, agrees with that critique and believes that we should give faculty incentives to try it and consider the possibility of service learning as a more important part of promotion and tenure policies.