The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning (review)

In The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning, Randy Stoecker, Elizabeth Tryon, and their colleagues observe that the perspectives of community organization staffs are largely absent from higher education’s discussions and literature on service-learning relationships. The editors’ goal is to “amplify the unheard voices” (p. vii) and in doing so to take an important step in the work to “transform service learning into a practice that serves communities” (p. xv).

In addition to its interesting focus and grand ambition, Unheard Voices is an intriguing piece of work in that undergraduate and graduate students contributed much of the book’s content. Stoecker and Tryon limit their role in most chapters to that of editors or supporting authors.

Chapter 1 opens with the question: “Who is served by service learning?” After briefly citing studies describing the rise of service learning in higher education and the benefits to students from engaging in service-learning opportunities, the chapter discusses the literature challenging whether service-learning programs have offered significant results to the communities ostensibly being served through those programs. Noting the absence of in-depth research on the perceptions of community service organizations about their experiences in service-learning partnerships with universities, the balance of the chapter describes the study reported in the subsequent chapters and its limitations.

Chapter 2 discusses community organizations’ motives for participating in service-learning partnerships. Why are organizations that are often not sufficiently resourced to address the significant social purposes spelled out in their mission moved to take inexperienced or lightly experienced students into their operations? The obvious answer is to extend their human resources assets, but this chapter provides evidence that these agencies actually have fairly modest expectations about students’ potential contributions. Instead, these groups suggest three other motives as being more salient: (a) serving as a center for student learning; (b) developing future support for their group or their work; and (c) forging or strengthening relationships with the universities.

Chapter 3 outlines the experiences and insights of community service organizations in selecting participant students. In addition to the highly practical comments and recommendations on student selection, the chapter identifies as problematic for community service organizations the typically short-term opportunities resulting from universities’ construction of service-learning programs.

Discussion of this problematic construction continues in Chapter 4. Specifically, the short-term structure presents four challenges for community service organizations: (a) a low ratio of benefit to be derived in a short time versus amount of time required for training; (b) incongruence between the short-term structure and time needed to develop relationship with clients in direct service delivery programs; (c) problems with the timing of short-term experiences and project initiation or life span; and (d) issues stemming from students’ lack of availability at certain times in the academic year (e.g., midterms, finals, or breaks).

The chapter concludes with recommendations from community service organizations on how to make the most of students taking part in short-term experiences but also presents an argument for universities about the potential value to both organizations and students of rethinking the time construct for such learning experiences.

Chapter 5 addresses the experiences and perceptions of community organization staff regarding the training, supervision, and evaluation of students participating in service-learning opportunities. Like Chapter 3, the description and recommendations are rich and highly practical.

Chapter 6 focuses on the relationship between the host organization and sponsoring institution. Noting the resource constraints of the community service agencies and their staff, not the least of which is time, this chapter’s foremost recommendation is to facilitate open and respectful communication between agency and institution.

The complexities of diversity as they relate to service-learning opportunities are the subject of Chapter 7. As noted, the challenges include the extent to which the students do or do not reflect the diversity of the community being served, the degree to which the students are prepared to engage in...