The parallel movements for public service, civic literacy, active learning, and educational reform must work together in order for each of these to be sustained and successful. We must clarify where they intersect and what their intersection offers for improving undergraduate education and producing an informed, active citizenry. When effectively structured, facilitated, related to discipline-based knowledge, and assessed, public and community service-based learning is the means for linking the development of student's social responsibility with the improvement of undergraduate education. This evolving pedagogy of "service-learning" is a key to the success of both efforts. This paper was first commissioned by the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio, for the 6th Annual Conference of the National Society for Internships and Experiential Education held October 1987 in Smuggler's Notch, Vermont. The National Society for Internships and Experiential Education is pleased to give reprint permission of this chapter from Combining Service and Learning: A Resource Book for Community and Public Service, 1990. Published by NSIEE, 3509 Haworth Drive, Suite 207, Raleigh, NC 27609. Members of the Cooperative Education Association are eligible for a discount. Please see the acknowledgment at the beginning of the volume or the enclosed brochure.
"Education for democratic citizenship involves human capacities relating to judgment, to choice, and, above all, to action. To be literate as a citizen requires more than knowledge and information; it includes the exercise of personal responsibility, active participation, and personal commitment to a set of values. Democratic literacy is a literacy of doing, not simply of knowing. Knowledge is a necessary, but not sufficient condition of democratic responsibility."
With these words Richard Morrill introduces an essay in Liberal Education in which he challenges academicians to take seriously their historical mandate to "educate for democratic values." (1982, p. 365) He suggests that this form of civic education must combine doing with knowing, that it must be both "the empowerment of persons and the cultivation of minds."
This proposition may make common sense to the average citizen. However, in the world of traditional postsecondary education, where participation is normally separate from scholarly inquiry, these are radical comments. One must often look far afield to find a curriculum that requires of students substantive academic inquiry combined with and based upon active participation in socially responsible activity. In the academy, knowledge development lies within the realm of academic departments. Concerns about work, about moral development, and about community participation lie with student affairs or residence staff, religious groups, or other non-academic administrators.
Fortunately, as a response in part to growing dissatisfaction with this fragmentation and in part to larger social movements, there is an opportunity to bridge this gap, to integrate students' community participation with critical reflection and analysis. On the one hand, there is a strong reform movement within higher education, a movement which questions both the content and the passive, didactic process of postsecondary teaching and learning. On the other hand, individuals outside the academy along with non-academic university and college administrators are expressing concern with students' self-centered attitudes. They see a need for the academy to challenge students to lead more socially responsible lives. In this atmosphere there is potential for establishing an education for democratic citizenship, which Morrill so well defines.
In this paper I trace these complementary movements, the calls for reform in undergraduate education and the initiative for civic responsibility, demonstrating that they have mutual concerns and mutual self-interests. Though largely separate from and unknown to each other, their complementarity provides the basis for joint action. By integrating efforts to increase student involvement in public service with liberal arts curricular reforms which promote active learning and critical thinking, we may establish a model of undergraduate education that promotes the development of responsible and intelligent citizens.
The recent period in American higher education has been one of intense self examination, external criticism, and debate regarding basic goals and purposes. Career-minded students have questioned the relevance and importance of traditional liberal arts education to an increasingly specialized world. Faculty on many campuses have undertaken reviews of curriculum and requirements to determine whether they effectively promote the development of critical thinking and intellectual excellence. A series of national reports calls into question whether curricula meet their defined objectives and suggests a fundamental re-evaluation of the structure and pedagogy of undergraduate education. 1
Out of this ferment and debate comes renewed attention to "excellence" in the teaching/learning process and a new focus on the importance of active, experience-based learning. The National Institute of Education's Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher Education recommended that faculty increase their use of "internships and other forms of carefully monitored experiential learning." (1984) A study undertaken for the National Endowment for the Humanities indicated widespread acceptance and understanding by faculty of internships and field studies as integral parts of liberal arts education ( Caston and Heffernan 1984). The National Society for Internships and Experiential Education (NSIEE) receives requests for assistance every day from liberal arts institutions interested in linking classroom instruction to supervised field experience in the community. With greater acceptance and utilization of internships, field studies, and other forms of off campus learning within higher education, the issue for advocates of experiential education now is not so much whether faculty will utilize these methods, but rather how to use them, both inside and outside the classroom, and how to assess effectively the learning that results.
During this same period our society is facing a variety of increasingly complex issues that demand of its citizens greater capacity for critical thinking, civic judgment, and flexible involvement than ever before. These issues - peace in the face of growing gaps between rich and poor nations, nuclear proliferation, equal opportunity for and effective integration of minority populations, poverty, and economic instability - are very complex and deeply ingrained in our social fabric. They are strongly influenced by and interdependent with our relations with the international community. They do not appear to be resolvable by experts alone. To many people they do not appear to be resolvable at all.
If we are to respond effectively to these issues, we need a citizenry with a broad understanding of the interdependence of peoples, social institutions, and communities and an enhanced ability both to draw upon and further develop this knowledge as they confront human problems. We need people with a strong commitment to act out ethically and thoughtfully what John Gardner calls the democratic compact: 'Freedom and obligation, liberty and duty, that's the deal." (1984)
Yet, in the face of these social problems, educators and social researchers report that students are becoming increasingly isolated and their vision more narrow and self-centered. According to the annual ACE-UCLA surveys of college freshmen, students since 1972 have attached decreasing importance to helping others, promoting racial understanding, deaming up the environment, participating in community action and keeping up with political affairs. During the same period, the percentage of students placing high priority on "being well off financially" jumped from 40 to 73 percent. The goal of "developing a meaningful quality of life" showed the greatest decline, almost 50 percent (Cooperative Institutional Research Program, 1974-1984). Surveys by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Newman, 1985) and the Independent Sector (1985) show similar trends.
This research suggests that as the problems facing our society increase in severity and complexity, the interest of most college students in these problems and in acting to solve them appears to diminish. This shift in student attitudes may be due in part to students' perception of more limited economic opportunities over the last decade. Or it may be a function of cynicism developed in response to the size, complexity, and seeming insolubility of the problems. Whatever the cause, this sense of student disinterest and disconnection from social involvement has stimulated many people to examine the role of the academy in encouraging students to serve community needs at the local, national, and international levels and in developing citizens with both "civic literacy" and leadership skills infused with civic values.
Frank Newman argues in Higher Education and the American Resurgence that "if there is a crisis in education in the United States today, it is less that test scores have declined than it is that we have failed to provide the education for citizenship that is still the most significant responsibility of the nation's schools and colleges." (1985, p. 31) He identified a failure in the structure and the content of our educational system. Structurally, we have not provided a means of linking classroom study with students' direct experience of social problems and issues. In the area of content, we have failed to educate students effectively with both an understanding of these social issues and an awareness of the traditional responsibilities of democratic citizenship. In response to this situation, college presidents, education scholars, politicians, and others have begun to call for integration of the ethic and practice of social involvement, critique and analysis into the mission and values of higher education. 2
Thus, alongside the national call for renewal and strengthening of undergraduate education, there has been successfully rekindled a debate on one of the academy's traditional goals: the development within students of civic literacy, responsibility and participation. In response, internships and other forms of active learning are being recognized as effective in promoting students' cognitive skill development and acquisition of knowledge (traditional academic goals), as well as personal and career development (normally considered extra-curricular concerns). Universities and colleges are creating public service centers and other structures which enable students to become involved as volunteers, both to provide community service and to develop in students an awareness of public issues and community needs, leadership skills, and a lifelong commitment to social responsibility.
These are considerable accomplishments, and they have resulted in significant movements for change on campuses in a short period of time. However, to date these two movements - undergraduate education reform and the initiative for social responsibility within higher education - have run along largely separate tracks with little contact.
The undergraduate education reform movement has been undertaken largely by academic administrators, researchers, and faculty concerned with improving the structure and process of liberal arts education. While recognizing the important values of public service, they often view it as inherently lacking in academic substance and best pursued apart from the curriculum.
The movement for student social responsibility has been led by university presidents, legislators, social critics, experiential educators, and civic educators on the one hand, and student affairs and community service program staff on the other. This movement has concentrated on stimulating and enabling students to become involved in community service, focusing attention on the virtues of giving service and the resulting personal development of students rather than on facilitation of students' academic learning through critical reflection on their service activity.
Although these movements share a common concern with the basic aims of higher education, they have engaged in little sustained, cross-group dialogue. Neither group has fully considered the explicit relationship between public service and the core, academic mission of higher education institutions. Neither has effectively addressed the place of community service and what students learn from it within the curriculum.
Though they work out of distinct traditions, an examination of recent literature from those concerned with improving liberal arts education and those advocating public and community service reveals a common concern with the purpose and pedagogy of undergraduate learning. Though they have worked along separate tracks, these groups articulate similar objectives for students. Could these separate, but complementary perspectives be integrated? Would such integration serve the goals both of improving liberal arts education and developing committed, involved citizens?
The Liberal Arts Perspective. Liberal arts educators frequently articulate their purpose as the development of a "habit of mind":
. . . The liberal arts mind seeks freedom through creat1v1ty, through reshaping and improving on the past in order to give new meaning to the present . . . There is an emphasis on the fair judging of evidence, on writing and thinking with clarity. There is a concern with discipline and order and also with flexibility, a tolerance for ambiguity. There is an effort to envision alternative solutions to a single problem, to see every particular as part of a network or series of networks, rather than in splendid - but ultimately false - isolation. (Coburn, 1985, p. 8)
In addition to and perhaps because of the debate about which content areas should comprise the "common learning" or general education of liberal arts students, these educators have begun to focus on cognitive skill outcomes of a liberal education - "abilities that last a lifetime" (Edgerton, 1984). Current research into the undergraduate experience reinforces this thrust, stressing the importance of these skills and the ability to apply one's learning as benchmarks for student assessment:
We contend that acquiring or storing knowledge is not enough. Unless one carries knowledge into acts of application, generalization, and experimentation, one's learning is incomplete. (Loacker et al., 1986, p. 47)
Perhaps the most consistent finding that we have discovered is that the amount of knowledge of a content area is generally unrelated to superior performance in an occupation and is often unrelated even to marginally acceptable performance ... In particular it is not the acquisition of knowledge that distinguishes the outstanding performer, but rather the cognitive skills that are exercised and developed in the process of knowledge acquisition and use that constitutes our first factor of occupational success . . . These skills transcend analysis, which consists of the identification of parts, and are closer in spirit to the ability to synthesize information from a prior analysis through a process of induction. (Klemp, 1977, p. 43)
The recent national reports, while reaffirming liberal arts traditions, criticize the passive and impersonal nature of instructional methodologies. They call for a pedagogy that is more active and involving, that enables learners to take more responsibility for their education, and that engages them in direct contact with the subjects of their study. Instructional research demonstrates that learning activities which require learners to apply knowledge and skills to the solution of problems ·more often develop the higher cognitive skills than do traditional classroom methods (Cross, 1987). The National Institute of Education's Study Group on the Conditions for Excellence in American Higher Education recommended use of internships and other forms of monitored experiential learning, saying that such "active modes of teaching require that students be inquirers ... creators, as well as receivers, of knowledge" and noting that "students are more apt to learn content if they are engaged with it" (1984). The learning students obtain from such experiential education opportunities is increasingly seen as linking and integrating their intellectual growth with their moral, personal, and career development.
The Public and Community Service Learning Perspective. Advocates of public service and civic education work to promote and support students' involvement as volunteers, interns, and researchers in the affairs of communities outside their campuses. Responding to an awareness that democracy requires civic responsibility as well as individual entrepreneurship, they seek opportunities for students to develop "skills, beliefs, and confidence that will enable them to be committed, compassionate citizens." (Newman, 1986)
Some of the goals of public service advocates, such as providing community service and leadership training, lie outside the academic missions of their institutions. Yet, many articulate objectives for "service learning programs" - programs that emphasize the accomplishment of tasks which meet human needs in combination with conscious educational growth - that are very similar to ones put forth by their liberal arts colleagues. Examples of these objectives include: "learning how to apply, integrate, and evaluate knowledge or the methodology of a discipline"; "developing a firsthand understanding of the political and social action skills required for active citizenship" (Duley, 1981, p. 602); and "developing perspectives and practicing analytical skills necessary for understanding the social ecology of organizations engaged in the delivery of goods and services." ( Stanton, 1983)
To ensure that service promotes substantive learning, service learning practitioners seek to connect students' experiences to reflection and analysis provided in the curriculum (Sagen, 1982-83). They point to the importance of contact with complex, contemporary social problems and efforts to solve them as an important element of a complete education (Lynd, 1945). They see service learning, when it combines action with critical reflection, conceptualization and abstract experimentation with analysis, as standing very much within the liberal arts tradition.
As Dewey states, this process at least results in a "reconstruction" of experience ( as in the formulation of the Newtonian laws of motion or in Einstein's reformulation), a recodifying of habits (as in overcoming racial bias), and ongoing questioning of old ideas ( a habit of learning experientially). Thus experiential learning so pursued transforms the individual, revises and enlarges knowledge, and alters practice. It affects the aesthetic and ethical commitments of individuals and alters their perceptions and their interpretations of the world. (Keeton, 1983)
For service learning practitioners, community service and academic excellence "are not competitive demands to be balanced through discipline and personal sacrifice [by students], but rather . . . are interdependent dimensions of good intellectual work" (Wagner, 1986). They see their challenge as "devising ways to connect study and service so that the disciplines illuminate and inform experience and experience lends meaning and energy to the disciplines." (Eskow, 1980, p. 21)
Liberal arts educators appear to be searching for active educational experiences for students, experiences which enable and require students to reflect critically on the world around them, to link theory to practice and vice versa, and to induce, synthesize, and experiment with new knowledge. Opportunities made available to students through public and community service programs would appear to be a most important means of providing these experiences.
Practitioners of public and community service learning seek opportunities for students to reflect on their service experiences and to relate them to their academic learning. There is growing recognition among these professionals that use of the cognitive skills developed in liberal arts education must be stressed in public service in order for their programs to meet the developmental and civic literacy goals they hold for students, and in order for the service provided to have a desirable impact in the community.
The separation of these two movements is unfortunate, for as Richard Morrill points out, civic literacy "requires more than knowledge and information; it includes the exercise of personal responsibility, active participation, and personal commitment to values." (1982, p. 365) Those who are "liberally educated" are those with the ability to make "an action out of knowledge - using knowledge to think, judge, decide, discover, interact and create." (Loacker et al., 1986, p. 47)
There is a need to bring these movements together to explore how their distinct, yet complementary traditions, and their complementary goals for and positions within the academy can become mutually enhancing in strengthening both students' undergraduate learning and their service to the community. There is a need for agreement upon a rationale for integrating public service within the curriculum, and for a national agenda to ensure that this integration is carried out in a manner that supports the goals of liberal education and that merits the sustained support and involvement of faculty and administrators at liberal arts institutions.
Ironically, because we lack such agreement, students' public service activities remain largely separate from the academic curriculum despite the fact that experience-based learning is becoming more accepted within higher education. And the curriculum, stressing individualized activity isolated from community experiences, issues and values, has become a primary disincentive to students' public service involvement.
This separation of service from learning reflects higher education's traditional distinction between theory and practice and between teaching and research. It inhibits both the effectiveness of students' service efforts and the depth of their learning while they are involved in service. It leaves the development of citizens who are committed to thoughtful, value-oriented participation in public life to be more of an accidental, secondary outcome of higher education rather than an explicit educational objective.
If there is potential for convergence between these two distinct, but complementary traditions, then faculty participation and support of students' public and community service becomes integral. Faculty have a central role to play in ensuring that these experiences are continually challenging and educational as well as useful for the community on the receiving end. As interpreters of the college's or university's mission, faculty are in the critical position for supporting students' interest and activities in public and community service. More importantly, they must assist students in reflecting critically about their public service experiences and in relating them both to broader social issues and to liberal arts disciplines. They must develop an "academics of human reality." (Payne, 1987) Why?
Higher education is founded at least in part on the premise that learning is deepest when it is sponsored and facilitated by instructors. As advocates and sponsors of student community involvement, these institutions have the unique responsibility to: ( 1) facilitate, assess, and accredit service-based learning; and (2) relate that learning to our common intellectual, social, political, and multiculture heritage.
Much is written about the public roles of postsecondary institutions, about the need for civic literacy among students, and about the need for active modes of learning and curricular reform. There is not much conceptualized or articulated, however, that combines these overlapping movements. These complementary perspectives must be brought together to ensure that the current interest in public service becomes sustained and integrated with that of curricular reform. We must clarify and articulate the ways in which they intersect and what their intersection offers to the movements to improve undergraduate learning and to produce an informed, active citizenry.
The current climate of debate about the aims and pedagogy of undergraduate education has created an opportunity for such dialogue and exchange. We can draw from and combine what has been learned from:
By drawing from what has been learned from these streams of work, we can establish a means of effectively integrating public and community servicebased learning into the liberal arts curriculum. We can articulate a coherent set of principles of good practice 3, and we can assist faculty and staff in building these methods and structures into existing instructional offerings.
When effectively structured, facilitated, related to discipline-based theories and knowledge, and assessed, public and community service-based learning is the means for linking the initiative to develop students' social responsibility with the efforts to improve undergraduate education. This evolving pedagogy of "service learning" is a key to ensuring the development of graduates who will participate in society actively, ethically, and with an informed, critical habit of mind.
I wish to acknowledge with deep gratitude the valuable assistance of Steven Schultz, Jane Kendall,Jon Wagner, Susan Stroud, Catherine Milton, Carolyn Lougee, Donald Kennedy, Catherine Howard, Zelda Gamson, Dwight Giles, Madeline Holzer, Irving Spitzberg, Dick Cone, Ed O'Neil, and Ted Lohman. Their perceptions, suggestions, and criticism have helped shape both the content and the presentation of this paper. - Tim Stanton
Timothy Stanton is Associate Director of the Public Service Center at Stanford University. He has also directed the Field Study Office at Cornell University, coordinated a community-based program for high school students, and served as President of the National Society for Internships and Experiential Education.