Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement

Randy Stoecker has been “practicing” forms of community-engaged scholarship, including service learning, for thirty years now, and he readily admits, “Practice does not make perfect.” In his highly personal critique, Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement, the author worries about the contradictions, unrealized potential, and unrecognized urgency of the causes as well as the risks and rewards of this work.      

Here, Stoecker questions the prioritization and theoretical/philosophical underpinnings of the core concepts of service learning: 1. learning, 2. service, 3. community, and 4. change. By “liberating” service learning, he suggests reversing the prioritization of the concepts, starting with change, then community, then service, and then learning. In doing so, he clarifies the benefits and purpose of this work, arguing that it will create greater pedagogical and community impact. 

Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement challenges—and hopefully will change—our thinking about higher education community engagement.

• Service-Learning in Theory and Practice: The Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education
• Research on Service Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Assessments: Students and Faculty (Higher Education)
• Black Youth Rising: Activism and Radical Healing in Urban America
• Service-Learning Essentials: Questions, Answers, and Lessons Learned (Jossey-bass Higher and Adult Education Series)
• The Community Engagement Professional in Higher Education: A Competency Model for An Emerging Field
• The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning
• Voices of Dissent: Critical Readings in American Politics (9th Edition)
• Publicly Engaged Scholars: Next-Generation Engagement and the Future of Higher Education
• Learning Through Serving: A Student Guidebook for Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Across Academic Disciplines and Cultural Communities
• CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action