Service in Service-Learning Education: The Need for Philosophical Understanding

In this piece, the author argues that service-learning has been overly defined and because of that, it is in danger of becoming meaningless. He further argues that one way to recover service-learning from the wasteland of definition-making and thereby improve both its understanding and practice is by applying philosophical inquiry to the various conceptions that make up service-learning. The author then offers an example of how such philosophical research might lead to clarity through a discussion of how the service aspect of service-learning should be viewed and how that view would impact its practice.