LATIN AMERICAN CENTER FOR SERVICE LEARNING

A Few Definitions of Service-Learning:

• According to Dr. Andrew Furco, Director of the Service-Learning Research and Development Center de la Universidad de California-Berkeley,
  “Service-Learning is a pedagogy under which students learn and develop through active
  participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences that meet community needs.”
  [FURCO, Andrew. Service-Learning Research and Development Center http://gse.berkeley.edu/research/slc/]

• Timothy Stanton connects service-learning to the so-called “experiential learning”:
  "Service learning appears to be an approach to experiential learning, an expression of values -- service to others, which determines the purpose, nature and process of social and educational exchange between learners (students) and the people they serve, and between experiential education programs and the community organizations with which they work."
  [STANTON, Timothy. Service Learning: Groping Toward A Definition, from: KENDALL, Jane C. and Associates, Combining Service and Learning, Raleigh, National Society for Internships and Experiential Education, 1990.]

• In the United States, as a result of an agreement between Democrats and Republicans, it was decided that federal funds should be used to finance service-learning projects in schools. With this recognition of the necessity of such projects came a need for a precise definition of the types of activities that should be included under this category. Later, through a series of discussions on both the national and state level concerning the nature of service and its relation to education, Congress passed the “National and Community Service Trust Act” in 1990, in which service-learning was defined as a method:
  • under which students learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences that meet actual community needs;
    that is coordinated with a primary or secondary school, with a higher education institution or with a community service program;
  • that provides structured time for students to think, talk or write about what they did and saw during an actual service activity;
  • that helps to foster the development of a sense of caring for others, good citizenship and responsibility;
  • that is integrated into the students’ academic curriculum;
    [“National and Community Service Trust Act,” originally passed in 1990, ratified and expanded in 1993. United States Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Education and Labor, Subcommittee on Employment Opportunities, The Voluntary National Youth Service Act and the Select Commission on National Service Opportunities Act of 1985, 99th Congress, 1st Session, 1986.]