Service-Learning in Asia: Curricular Models and Practices

3 - Building Students’ Total Learning Experience through Integrating Service-learning into the Teacher Education Curriculum

According to the recently endorsed Development Blueprint of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, 2 fostering students’ professional excellence through building their total learning experience for whole person development is one of the five strategic areas that the Institute will address in the next 10 years. To achieve this goal, students are required to make plans for and take action on various areas to complement their academic studies. One important area is active engagement in serving the community through involvement in servicelearning projects, both as participant and organizer of activities for the purpose of preparing for more extensive civic and social engagement (The Hong Kong Institute of Education[hereafter HKIEd] 2007, 34–35). In the Institute’s Strategic Plan 2006–2012, community service is also identified as one of the sub-themes within “Collaborating with the Community” (HKIEd 2006, 14–17). To recognize students’ involvement in serving the community, their service hours are recorded in the Awards and Co-curricular Activities Transcript (ACAT) under the category of Community Service. The purpose of this chapter is to explore various ways of launching service-learning projects, discuss the arguments for integrating service-learning into the academic curriculum as a part of the mandatory requirement for graduation or a credit-bearing educational experience, and to suggest how this can be implemented. What Is Service-learning? Service-learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs, together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development (Jacoby 1996, 5). It is intended to enrich classroom knowledge by providing activities that stimulate personal transformation, generate Building Students’ Total Learning Experience through Integrating Service-learning into the Teacher Education Curriculum1 Kwok Hung Lai 3 Kwok Hung Lai 48 greater understanding of the needs of others, and promote social and political engagement (Campbell 2000, Fitzgerald 1997, Hunter and Brisbin 2000, Kezar and Rhoads 2001, Mooney and Edwards 2001, Morgan and Streb 2001). Therefore, it is an integration of service and learning—the integration of community and public service with structured and intentional learning goals (Kendall and Associates 1996, Stanton 1990, Zlotkowski 1996), an effort to combine community service with academic study (Chapin 1998), and a way of teaching and learning that builds academic and transferable skills while contributing to the community. Community service should not be regarded as a supplement to the formal curriculum but as a necessary component of student learning explicitly linked to academic growth. This distinguishes service-learning from volunteer involvement. In brief, the purpose of service-learning is to provide an opportunity for students to: 1. apply their skills and knowledge learned in class in real-life situations; 2. benefit the community through meeting its needs; 3. become aware of civic responsibility and foster a sense of caring for others; 4. develop a broader appreciation of the abilities, skills, and attitudes required by society to progress and succeed; and 5. reflect on their experiences by thinking, discussing, and/or writing about their service experience. (Lai and Chan 2004) It has long been known that the effectiveness of learning is conditioned by many factors external to the classroom; systematic studies conducted in many parts of the world (Boyer 1987, Astin 1993, Pomfret and Lai 1999) support this understanding. Through serving the community, the Student Affairs Office (SAO) at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) provides an experiential learning environment for students to actualize what they have learned in class and complement their learning with aspects that are missing in the formal curriculum. This should be seamless with the total learning experience (Lai 2000b). Service experience has been shown to positively affect students’ sense of civic responsibility, academic attainment, life skills (Astin and Sax 1996, Sax and Astin 1997), and performance in work after graduation (Pomfret and Lai 2000). Besides serving the needy population, service-learning can further enhance the Institute’s collaboration with NGOs, schools, and local, national, and international organizations. Unstructured real-world experiences have a significant role to play in the design of effective pedagogical strategies and the development of lifelong learners Integrating Service-learning into the Teacher Education Curriculum 49 through maximizing students’ learning potential by abandoning the often unexamined assumption that significant academic learning takes places only on campus—in classrooms, libraries, and residence halls. Higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills grow out of direct experience, through direct involvement and real-life experiences in...