Service-Learning Australia

It is critical that you do not simply “look for service-learning ideas”, or your students do not just guess community needs, but that a thoughtful analysis is conducted.  This will involve:

• research – (newspaper reviews, internet searches etc.)
• interviews (people in aged care facilities, local councilors, owners of businesses that are along a nearby stream etc)
• surveys (developing survey questions in English) and analyzing the results (in maths developing bar charts, pie charts, looking at fractions and percentages),
• school mapping or community mapping (where students walk around their community, or along a local stream, or in the school yard noting what is going on in the environment),
• brainstorming
• discussing issues with family and neighbours and reporting on these discussions.

In this way, service-learning will be real and grounded in the world.

In schools that are just starting to use service-learning as pedagogy, teachers often decide that the school community is the one on which they will focus.  They will simply ask their students: ‘What needs changing about this school? What do we want to be different in our school community?  What do we want to see happen?” and build from there.  Students then conduct a school mapping exercise, survey the school community and analyse the results, conduct some interviews, and identify a range of needs for them to choose from.  This works particularly well in primary school.  Service activities that Australian primary students have initiated are very varied, including:

• reducing the amount of vandalism in the school
• developing a garden where a demountable classroom once stood
• addressing the issue of bullying
• improving the toilet blocks
• advocating for the local council to improve the level of safety of the footpaths outside the school.

Of course, teachers need courage and creativity to encourage their students to do this.  However once your students have decided on a need they want to address and chosen an activity that is meaningful to both them and to the community they are serving, you will be surprised at the number of curriculum links you can make and the extremely high level of engagement the students will have in the learning that is connected to this service activity.