Service-Learning Australia

Service-learning involves students in real-life situations and complex problem solving.  They may learn from these experiences, however they may not learn what you had hoped or intended.  For example, through interactions with those they are serving, students may not gain respect for diversity, but may instead have stenotypes reinforced.   As Dan Conrad and Diane Heidin (1978, p 39) point out: "To say that experience is a good teacher.... does not imply that it's easily or automatically so. If it were, we'd all be a lot wiser than we are. It's true that we can learn from experience. We may also learn nothing.  Or we may, like Mark Twain's cat that learned from sitting on a hot stove lid, never to sit again, learn the wrong lesson."   A study by Conrad and Hedin revealed that “the key factor in stimulating complex thinking and improving the problem-solving ability of students was the existence, regularity, and quality of a reflective component" (1987, p. 40).