Varlotta
sive experiential education (1916), Paulo Freire's
"co-intentional education" or "dialogical action"
(1970), Robert Greenleaf's "servant leadership"
(1977), or David A. Kolb's four-step Experiential
Learning Model (1984), the theme of integrating
service, learning, and education is relatively the
same, no matter whose language is used to describe
it (Kendall, 1990).
The multiplicity of this language was recently
exposed by one of service-learning's most prominent researchers and respected practitioners, Jane
Kendall. During her 1990 review of literature,
Kendall located 147 service-learning descriptors:
What is important about this diversity of language - and the resulting strong feelings and
inevitable debates about what terminology to
use - is the broad range of settings and traditions that have come somewhat independently
to the same conclusion: that there is something
uniquely powerful about the combination of
service and learning, that there is something
fundamentally more dynamic in the integration
of the two than in either alone (original
emphasis, p. 19).
In this article, I have conscientiously used several broad and essentializing concepts to describe
everything from "types of knowledges" to "types
of communities." So even though Linda Singer's
(1991) postmodern warning that cautions against
using categories that ignore the historical, paradigmatical, and political situatedness of language is
warranted, Jane Kendall's response to such warnings is perhaps more apt: one has to choose some
words to communicate. As evidenced in the following discussions, I have chosen the term "service-learning" to elucidate the connections
between alternative ways of thinking, learning, and
doing and nontraditional ways of building and sustaining educational communities. In the following
section, I will unravel its tripartite form to demonstrate how its partial deconstruction can help to
problematize some of the essentializing concepts
embedded in its language.
Service-Learning's Tripartite Form
The term "service-learning" connotes the following: 1) a type of program (Kendall, 1990); 2) an
overall philosophy of education (Kendall); and 3) a
critical pedagogy that reflects alternative epistemologies (Moore, 1990). For many readers, this
fusion in-and-of-itself may not prompt a new conceptualization of service-learning. But, when coupled with postmodern and feminist discourses, this
tripartite form illuminates many complexities operating in this educational phenomenon.
The Program
Until recently, service-learning programs have
sometimes been confused with other types of community service programs. For this reason, it is
important to distinguish service-learning from traditional community service programs in which service is disconnected from the curriculum; in which
charitable servers provide "quick fixes" to the less
fortunate; and in which the unreflective nature of
the process may perpetuate the oppressive
dichotomies of the status-quo.
Service-learning programs, on the other hand,
formally integrate service with academic study;
operate from a social justice rather than a charitable framework; and intentionally combine reflection, action, and analysis. Although programs will
vary from institution to institution and even from
classroom to classroom, "good" service-learning
programs, Jane Kendall claims, share at least two
objectives. First, they illuminate the historical,
sociological, cultural, and political context of the
need being studied, so that participants "take people's historicity as their starting point" (Freire,
1970, p. 65); second, they accentuate reciprocity -
a "doing with" instead of "doing for" - that
depends on constant and meaningful exchange
between those serving and those being served.
To promote this reciprocity (between those serving and those being served), several practitioners
and theorists (e.g., Rick Jackson, Jane Kendall,
Keith Morton, Robert Sigmon, Timothy Stanton)
cite Robert Greenleaf's criterion for engagement in
service. According to Greenleaf, service should be
provided only so long as those being served
become "healthier, wiser, freer, or more
autonomous" (1977, p. 13). Reliance on this criterion might promote the mutual respect of everyone's values, needs, and expectations when it is
broadly applied to all service-learning participants.
If, however, some participants are understood to be
"servant leaders," and others are understood to be
"those being served," this criterion could problematically corroborate at least two myths about power
relationships (between servers and servees) that
should be dismantled.
First, this criterion could reinforce the notion
that the servant leader retains the power to name
and identify other people's needs (Greenleaf, p. 13).
Moreover, it could bestow the leader with the
responsibility to "make sure...these needs are being
served" (Greenleaf, p. 13). Hence, a selective or
misapplication of Greenleaf's criterion will disempower those "with needs" if it allows others to
name, define, and act on those needs. As Freire
asserts, naming and acting are critical:
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