Service learning practitioners must devote more resources to systematic, scientific assessment of service learning outcomes across students, faculty, institutions, and communities. Provides recommendations for generating meaningful information about service learning, including: evaluating hypotheses derived from theory, using multiple-item…

Discusses fundamental issues of contention regarding educational research on service learning, including standards of validity and who is represented in the research. Examines the crisis in legitimization and demonstrates how various research paradigms are necessary and appropriate for understanding the impact and process of service learning…

Discusses the need to develop a comprehensive research agenda to build knowledge about service learning assessment and refine concepts of best practice for assessment, examining: what is known about the subject; principles of good practice for service learning assessment; what knowledge is needed to develop the research agenda; and how this agenda…

Discusses service learning research, emphasizing: why institutions are interested in service learning; service learning to promote community involvement; college presidents' role in promoting service learning; creating the capacity for change; and a research agenda. Emphasizes how much can be gained from communication between higher education…

Examines the design of service learning research using psychologist-philosopher Ken Wilber's fourfold scheme. By interfacing Wilber's two dichotomies (interior versus exterior and individual versus group), researchers can access a comprehensive framework for conceptualizing the full range of service learning outcomes to study. Wilber's framework…

Examines the interplay between service learning policy and research, noting their impact on practice. Discusses traditional roles of research in policymaking, describing an alternative approach to understanding policy. Recommends that service learning practitioners and researchers make usable knowledge available to help clarify contested concepts…

Action research is an approach to knowledge generation that can strengthen communities and institutions and is ideally suited to the advancement of academically-based service learning. Presents the history and goals of this approach to service learning, defining current challenges, providing examples from three action research projects responding…

Recommends bringing practitioners and researchers together to strengthen future service learning research, suggesting a more empirically based approach to practice and more practical approach to research. The empirically based approach would help practitioners strengthen programs and influence the direction of research. The practice oriented…

Experiential learning research and service learning research are both fairly rudimentary. Researchers in both fields should collaborate to make greater progress toward answering various shared questions (e.g., how field-based experience shapes and is shaped by classroom learning, what pedagogical strategies best foster learning, and how both forms…

Explores the rationale for establishing a national center for research on service learning, outlining various current issues and challenges in conducting service learning research and describing how the establishment of a national center can raise the standards and visibility of service learning research. Offers several suggestions about how the…

Evaluated the effects of infusing a 20-hour per semester service learning requirement into a large introductory child development course. Participating students outperformed previous classes; this advantage was apparently the result of stronger performances on narrative assessments (midterm and take-home final essays) and only manifested itself…

Data from 50 daily reflection journals of college students participating in service learning were used to draw a descriptive map of the social-psychological stages that occur during service learning. Textual analysis revealed that students progress through three identifiable stages of development: shock, normalization, and engagement. (EV)

Compared course-based service learning and generic community service through a quantitative, longitudinal look at over 22,000 students at diverse colleges and universities. Compared student outcomes related to values and beliefs, academic skills, leadership, and future plans. Of particular interest was the finding that connecting service with…

Surveyed supervisors from 30 community-based organizations about their perceptions of each service-learning student located at their site at the end of an academic term. Factor analyses yielded two reliable factors explaining over 74 percent of the common variance: students demonstrated service skills (e.g., constructive relationship with others,…

Administered the revised Community Service Involvement Preference Inventory (CSIPI) and investigated if college students' involvement preferences changed during a 10-week term as a result of participating in a service learning course. Found significant differences in mean scores for the Exploration and Assimilation involvement preferences, and no…