Howard, Gelmon and Giles
cational practice. Campus Compact and NSEE then
co-sponsored a subsequent Wingspread gathering on
research in 1993, and while no publication resulted
from this conference, participants reported on the
progress made since the earlier conference and
affirmed the research directions identified in the 1991
report. The next identification of a set of strategic
research questions regarding service-learning
appeared in Giles and Eyler's "Top Ten Unanswered
Questions in Service-Learning Research" (1998).
Each of these earlier blueprints reflected the developmental stage of the service-learning movement at
those respective points in time. But the recent explosion in activity and interest in service-learning and
civic renewal dictated that it was time to build upon
these earlier efforts.
Evolution of this Publication
In recognition of the pivotal role research plays in
higher education reform of any kind, Campus
Compact established and convened a national
Research Advisory Council in the summer of 1997 to
discuss ways to advance the research agenda in service-learning. At that meeting participants urged
Campus Compact to convene a subsequent meeting
of leading service-learning researchers, theorists, and
practitioners to develop a strategic plan for advancing
the research in, of, and about service-learning.
Dr. Dwight Giles (Vanderbilt University) and Dr.
Sherril Gelmon (Portland State University) - guest
co-editors for this volume - led 35 service-learning
leaders (see Appendix A for the list of participants) in
a Wingspread-style meeting over two days in
November 1997 to develop, strategize, and prioritize
a national research plan. The meeting, which was cosponsored by Campus Compact and the Education
Commission of the States, adjourned with a commitment to produce a publication that would set forth
strategic directions for service-learning research, and
that would be edited by the facilitators, Gelmon and
Giles, joined by Jeffrey Howard, editor of the
Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning.
Subsequent to the meeting it was decided that the
Michigan Journal would be an appropriate vehicle for
the proposed publication. The leadership of Campus
Compact - Liz Hollander, Brooke Beaird, and John
Saltmarsh - made a commitment to fund half the cost
of this theme-based issue, and garnered the support of
other funding partners, including state compacts, a
national organization, and individual campus servicelearning centers (see p. 2 for a list of the funding partners). With funding secured, and research directions
identified, Gelmon, Giles, and Howard set out to identify topics and authors to be represented in this publication.
A preliminary Special Report was issued by
Campus Compact (1998) that identified the research
priorities that had been generated by the Denver
meeting participants. These included: understanding
community impact, pinpointing a range for a conceptualization of service-learning and its impacts,
learning from history, encouraging theory-driven
research, analyzing faculty roles and rewards, understanding institutional impact, and reviewing the
impact of research on such matters as policy and
funding. The group also identified other questions
that intrigued them, including: How do we encourage
partnerships between researchers and practitioners?,
how do we link research to other educational initiatives?, and what are the best research paradigms for
studying service-learning?
Service-Learning Research from 1991-2000
At the 1991 Wingspread conference, participants
noted that there was an absence of service-learning
research in higher education and only a few studies in
K-12. The existing research that was identified tended to be in associated areas of scholarly inquiry, such
as experiential education, community development,
and youth development (See Stanton, Giles, & Cruz,
1999, for a comprehensive discussion of more than 20
associated strands that were the "precursors" of service-learning). At that time, the research landscape
directly related to what we now understand as "service-learning" was rather barren.
In addition to the call for new research efforts and
the identification of research topics, the 1991
Wingspread participants also called for a means of
disseminating research findings, such as an exclusive
journal for the field, special issues of existing journals
and special sessions at disciplinary and professional
conferences. All of this has happened. This Journal
itself is a response to that call. Special issues of established journals, e.g., the Journal of Adolescence, the
Journal of Business Ethics, and the American
Behavioral Scientist, amongst others, have devoted
entire issues to the subject of service-learning and
civic engagement. Research sessions related to service-learning are now often "standing-room-only" at
conferences, not only at those conferences related to
the practice of service-learning but at such prestigious
research conferences as the American Educational
Research Association (AERA).
By any accounting, the growth in service-learning
research this past decade has been phenomenal, in
both quantity and quality. An aggregation of the citations in this volume's articles represents a substantive
part of this growth. Clearly there is now a large body
of service-learning knowledge in higher education
that is both national and local, qualitative and quantitative, demonstrative and exploratory [for further evidence of this growth, see the research literature review
