Partnerships for Service-Learning: Impacts on Communities and Students (review)
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As the author of Building Partnerships for Service-Learning, published in 2003, it became clear to me years ago that service-learning is all about partnerships. At that time, I noted that many of us in the field are all too familiar with examples of “partnerships in name only,” in which the partnership exists primarily in a university promotional brochure or a grant application. I observed as well that too many communities have complained about being used as “learning laboratories” or [End Page 416] having been “partnered to death” by well-meaning universities (Jacoby, 2003, pp. xvii–xviii). While these sad situations still exist, it is heartening that at least two excellent volumes on service-learning partnerships have recently appeared. One is The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning (Stoecker & Tryon, 2009), and the other is the subject of this review.
Partnerships for Service-Learning is essentially a compilation of case studies that describe real service-learning partnerships from the perspective of both the community and the university. The first section of the book includes five profiles of partnerships with a focus on their community contexts. The second section presents four partnerships with an emphasis on pedagogy and learning outcomes. However, this distinction is more cut and dried than how the case studies actually come across, because the authors of each are careful to provide a balanced view of their partnerships.
Part 1 begins with the case study by Jeffrey B. Anderson, Christopher Daikos, Jon Granados-Greenberg, and Audra Rutherford depicting a successful collaboration between P-12 schools and a preservice teacher education program. Through this partnership, high school students gain knowledge, skills, and commitment to working for social justice while preservice teachers gain the expertise and experience to implement meaningful service-learning projects with their future students.
In Chapter 2, Keith Morton and Jane Callahan reflect on partnerships with schools at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. They thoughtfully and honestly recount its “uneasy origins” (p. 39) and complexities, conveying lessons learned that will be useful to many.
The next chapter, by Robert Shumer, Susan Shumer, Rebecca Ryan, Joanna Brookes, M. Alejandra Reyes Cejudo, and Karin DuPaul vividly portrays the partnership that created a library that links and mutually benefits Metropolitan State University and several key community constituencies in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Nancy Nisbett, Sally Cahill Tannenbaum, and Brent Smither follow with a description of how to advance service-learning through program evaluation. In addition to recounting the conception and implementation of the partnership between the Recreation Administration and Leisure Studies program at California State University-Fresno and the county Department of Safe and Healthy Kids, the authors assess the program’s strengths and weaknesses and provide helpful information for those who are designing assessment studies.
Chapter 5 by Judith H. Munter, Josefina V. Tinajero, Sylvia Peregrino, and Reynaldo Reyes III profiles in detail Project Action for Equity, a service-learning partnership with a gender-equity focus that crosses the U.S.-Mexico border.
The chapters in Part 2 address service-learning as pedagogy, highlighting the kinds of learning that may take place, how learning can be assessed, and how we can maximize learning potential. In this section’s first chapter, Chapter 6, Linda C. Foote and Julie Di Filippo examine the effects of the Lawrence Math and Science Partnership on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) literacy, cultural awareness, and civic engagement for service-learning students at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, who provided instruction to middle-school youth. They also assessed the heightened academic success, interest in STEM, and future college aspirations of the middle-school students.
Chapter 7, by Deborah S. Yost and Elizabeth Soslau, is about Project Achieve, an action research partnership between the authors and the principal of an urban middle school in Philadelphia. They critically examine whether service and/or learning are better because of the quality of the partnership.
The next chapter offers Douglas Prime and...
