Creating Our Identities in Service-Learning and Community Engagement

In this volume in the IAP series on Advances in Service-Learning Research, top researchers present recent work studying aspects of program development, student and community outcomes, and future research directions in the field of service-learning and community engagement. These chapters, selected through a rigorous peer review process, are based on papers presented at the annual meeting of the International Research Conference on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, held in October, 2008, in New Orleans.

This volume emphasizes efforts in higher education to support engaged scholarship, with chapters describing faculty development for service-learning and the ways in which engaged campuses are promoting engaged scholarship, thereby moving toward a coherent institutional identity. Models of effective partnerships between institutions of higher education and their community partners are developed in chapters looking at relationships between campus and community in terms of partnership identity or in terms of shared understanding by campus and community partners. Outcomes for K-12 and college students engaged in service learning are the focus of several studies. The impact of high-quality service-learning on K-12 student achievement and school-related behaviors is described. Racial identity theory provides a useful frame for understanding developing student conceptualizations, while another chapter emphasizes aspects of self-exploration and relationship building as bases for gains in student attitudes and skills. In a final section, chapters deal with service-learning and community engagement as a coherent research field with a distinct identity, reviewing current work and proposing directions for future research.