Service-Learning

Service-learning
-provides students the opportunity to work with others, gain valuable insights, and
acquire different skills. Through varied community projects, they can apply what they have been
taught in class by formulating appropriate solutions to the problems they encounter in their
chosen communities.

Characteristics of Service-learning
The common characteristics of service-learning include the following:
1. It brings good, substantial, and practical results for the participants.
2. It promotes cooperation rather than competition where the skills associated with
teamwork and active community involvement are developed.
3. It gives appropriate rather than simplified solutions to problems that seriously affect the
community.
4. It provides real-life experiences wherein students gain knowledge from a particular
community engagement activity rather than from a textbook. Through these direct
experiences, service-learning offers great opportunities for students to develop their
critical thinking skills and learn how to identify relevant and emerging issues in
community settings.
5. It gives students a deeper understanding of concepts and real-life situations in the
community through immediately observable results.
6. Through an immediate understanding of a situation in the community, service-learning
becomes a more significant experience for students, leading to their emotional and social
development and cognitive learning.

What service-learning is NOT

1. An episodic volunteer program
2. An add-on course to an existing school or college curriculum
3. Logging a set number of community service hours in order to graduate
 4. Compensate service assigned as a form of punishment by the courts or by school
administrators
5. Only for high school or college students
6. One-sided, that is, beneficial only to the students or the community

The distinctive element of service-learning is that it improves the community

through the services provided, and it also results in the improvement of the students and
the other people providing services.

Service-learning theory

- Based on the idea that experience is the foundation for learning, and the bases for
learning are the different forms of community service (Morton & Troppe, 1996).
Service-learning, therefore, is a form of experiential education wherein learning
occurs through cycles of action and reflection. Students work with others in applying
what they have learned in class to solve community problems, while, at the same
time, reflecting upon their experiences as they seek to attain their goals for the
community and to develop skills for themselves (Eyler & Giles, 1999).

Legal Bases of Service-Learning

- Based on RA 8292, also known as the Higher Education Modernization Act of 1997.
o This law reiterates Section 2(1) of Article XIV of the 1987 Constitution by
declaring that the “policy of the state is to establish, maintain, and support a
complete, adequate, and integrated system of education relevant to the needs
of the people of the society.”
 This policy can be attained through the HEIs’ trilogy functions --
academics (teaching-learning), research and extension (community
service) – and their keeping in mind of their legal responsibility to act
as effective agents of change and development.
HEIs on Service-learning
Community extension (one of the trifocal functions of university)
-according to Tariman (2007), its duty to the youth is to make them literate and
functional, so they can make good decisions regarding the problems affecting
their health, families, and duties and responsibilities to the community.
-youth should be provided with opportunities for cooperative undertakings
affecting the welfare of the entire community, so they can develop into young
men and women who look upon their own interests in terms of the welfare of
others.