This essay welcomes readers to the third in an ongoing series of special sections in the "Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning" devoted to sharing the work of the Service-Learning and Community Engagement Future Directions Project (SLCE-FDP). In this essay, the authors, the five curators of the SLCE-FDP, both introduce the…

What is one value that grounds you in your civic engagement work? How are you walking the talk of that value in your assessment work? Or, how might you? And, what both helps and gets in the way of your doing that? These questions were posed to service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) faculty and staff gathered for an assessment institute…

Twenty years ago, reflecting on the possibilities for service-learning (SL) to help re-envision higher education, Zlotkowski (1995) considered the question, "Does service-learning have a future?" and concluded "nothing less than a transformation of contemporary academic culture," a transformation of higher education…

In this article we share the theoretical framework of threshold concepts--concepts on which deep understanding of a field of practice and inquiry hinges and which, once understood and internalized, open a doorway to otherwise inaccessible ways of thinking--and explore its relevance to learning how to teach, learn, serve, partner, and generate…

Requiring and fostering shifts in perspective, practice, and identity, the counter-normative pedagogy of service-learning can be challenging for faculty to learn. Meyer and Land's (2003, 2005) work on threshold concepts may enhance understanding of the troublesome yet transformative nature of learning to collaborate reciprocally with students and…

Reciprocity is a foundational concept in service-learning and community engagement, yet it is frequently referred to in the literature without precise conceptualization or critical examination, in effect suggesting a shared understanding of the concept among practitioners and scholars. However, understandings and applications of the term vary…

As a defining aspect of service-learning and civic engagement, relationships can exist among faculty members, students, community organizations, community members, and administrators on campus. This research developed procedures to measure several aspects of these relationships. Investigators collected information from 20 experienced…

The question of how best to fulfill the academy's role in civic life animates many discussions about the identity and function of higher education in the twenty-first century. Service-learning is emerging as a central component of efforts to connect both disciplinary learning and general education with this historic and increasingly salient…

Service-learning is a unique pedagogy, and its very differences from traditional teaching and learning strategies make it both appealing and challenging to implement. Students and faculty alike are the products of traditional learning environments and often find service-learning unfamiliar and, as a consequence, experience dissonance, discomfort,…

The value of reflection on experience to enhance learning has been advanced for decades; however, it remains difficult to apply in practice. This paper describes a reflection model that pushes students beyond superficial interpretations of complex issues and facilitates academic mastery, personal growth, civic engagement, critical thinking, and…

Intentionally linking the assessment of student learning outcomes of service-learning with reflection allows each to inform and reinforce the other. This paper traces the evolution of a strategy that uses reflection products as data sources to assess and improve both individual student learning and program-wide approaches to reflection. Two tools…