Where's the Learning in Service-Learning

Please accept the enclosed book as a gift for your professional library. It deserves a place on the bookshelf of all college and university educators. I know you have long been concerned with fostering positive community relations, in addition to focusing on our academic goal. Ample empirical evidence supports that the relationship between town and gown can be anchored around learning; service-learning provides the bridge. Vanderbilt University professors Eyler and Giles provide a rich comprehensive study of serviceleaning, the most progressive pedagogical strategy of the past decade. By triangulating qualitative and quantitative data in two awesome research projects, sponsored by the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) and the Corporation for National Service (CNS), they conclude that service-learning (SL) works. Concerned about critics and the relative marginalization of SL in academe, they courageously title their book Where's the Learning in Service-Learning ? to address detractors and focus on the mission of learning. Their book follows other recent and important publications addressing SL in higher education (Jacoby and Associates 1996). Let me summarize the book's most important features for you. Where's the Learning is well developed. There are seven resource sections, including a list of the 45 colleges and universities participating in the study, socio-demographic information about the sample, survey instruments, interview guides, and statistical tables. It contains a fairly extensive reference section. Where's the Learning anchors SL in the pragmatist tradition of John Dewey, discusses its significance, links SL to contemporary social problems, and frames this vital pedagogy in the context of learning outcomes. Chapter two reports their first set of findings on student SL with student personal and interpersonal development. Results reveal that SL participants increase in tolerance of others, appreciate people from diverse backgrounds, develop greater leadership and communication skills, enhance their self efficacy, and value a helping profession more compared to their non-SL participant peers. For me, the sociologist, a pedagogy that consistently reduces negative stereotypes and honors diversity demands attention. Note the discussion of closer

Experiential learning · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Service-learning · Diverse Educational Innovations Studies · Psychology · Service-Learning and Community Engagement

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