Departmental Papers (ASC)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
September 2000
Abstract
Service learning is typically distinguished from both community service and traditional civic education by the integration of study with hands-on activity outside the classroom, typically through a collaborative effort to address a community problem (Ehrlich 1999, 246). As such, service learning provides opportunities and challenges for increasing the efficacy of both the teaching and practice of democratic politics. To better understand these opportunities and challenges, it is necessary to make explicit the goals of service learning and to consider how these goals intersect those of more traditional approaches to teaching about government and politics. We believe that one place these sometimes competing models could find common ground is in the learning of factual knowledge about politics.
Date Posted: 09 January 2008
This document has been peer reviewed.
Comments
Reprinted from PS: Political Science and Politics, Volume 33, Issue 3, September 2000, pages 635-637.
NOTE: At the time of publication, the author was affiliated with Columbia University. Currently January 2008, he is a faculty member of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.