Service-Learning Australia

If parents express doubts about service-learning as rigorous pedagogy, discuss the "learning challenge".  In traditional courses, academic credit and grades are given for academic achievement reached by the student.  In service-learning, academic credit and grades are given for academic and civic learning achieved by the student.  As J. Howard states in his Principles of Good Practice for Service-Learning Pedagogy, “The perceived ‘soft’ service component actually raises the learning challenge in a course. Service-learning students must not only master academic material as in traditional courses, but also learn how to learn from unstructured and ill-structured community experiences and merge that learning with the learning from other course resources. Furthermore, while in traditional courses students must satisfy only academic learning objectives, in service-learning, students must satisfy both academic and civic learning objectives. All of this makes for challenging intellectual work, commensurate with rigorous academic standards.”