By integrating real-world problem-solving with academic theory, service learning offers students the opportunity to engage in projects that address the needs of local communities while honing their creative and design skills. This learning approach fosters collaboration, critical thinking, and innovation, allowing students to apply design…

This article examines current literature, normative practices, and essential critiques around community service and service-learning in the institution of higher education. It specifically addresses the importance of economic and racial justice in efforts aimed at liberatory social change. The argument contends that community service and…

This article describes a two-credit critical service-learning course at the University of Minnesota and its evolution to utilize both the Social Change Model and Social Action, Leadership, and Transformation models in complementary ways to support student leadership development.

Building on two common practices in higher education, the first-year seminar and service learning, this project uses a critical service-learning model guided by intersectional reflexivity to foster critical consciousness among first-year students. Working in small groups, students participate in a four-part critical service-learning project by…

Critical service learning, as outlined by Mitchell (2008), highlights the importance of shifting from the charity- and project-based model to a social-change model of service learning. Her call for greater attention to social change, redistribution of power, the development of authentic relationships, and, more recently with Latta (2020), futurity…

In this paper, I argue that the theory and practice of restorative justice can be productive for critical service-learning pedagogies. Restorative justice emphasizes repairing the harms that result from injustice and, as far as possible, restoring individuals and communities to the state they were in prior to being harmed. It emphasizes the…

Purpose: This study aims to understand master's students' experiences of service-learning, following their participation in a workshop with local social innovators whose activities had contributed to combating poverty in East Africa and to determine how this participation affected work on the students' theses. The authors also explored possible…

The distressing events of 2020 challenged the United States to reimagine how our social institutions can and should respond to demands for racial justice. These demands impacted higher education and debates arose about whether the classroom is an appropriate place for teaching abolition. I address this debate by introducing a senior-level elective…

Drawing from Stith et al.'s (2018) Critical Service-Learning Conversations Tool, this article provides a visual model for developing critical service-learning projects. This model proposes to assist the analysis of critical service-learning projects by grounding them in contemporary scholarship and literature. The model also reveals the interplay…

Educational environments have the capacity to cultivate transformative leaders who can resolve global issues and move society toward a positive social change. This chapter focuses on the value of mentorship and community-based service projects to support students' spiritual and leadership development. Lessons learned via a university case study of…

Service-Learning (SL) is a teaching method utilizing experiential learning and meaningful community service. Although SL is proven to be an effective high-impact teaching strategy, more research is needed to illustrate how SL marketing courses can provide high "societal" impact. Based on student reflection activities and in-depth…

This article contributes to the civic identity development literature by exploring how a scholarship program emphasizing entrepreneurship and economic revitalization can facilitate engagement across difference in pursuit of shared anti-poverty commitments. Drawing on theories of entrepreneurial action, civic identity development literature, and a…

In this qualitative case study, using Freire's theory of critical consciousness development, we examined the influence of a 1-credit immigration policy service-learning course on college students' motivations to act against immigration injustices. We found that after witnessing immigration issues at the Lower Rio Grande Valley area in Texas,…

Background: Service-learning is a high-impact teaching technique that aligns with feminist pedagogy to engage students in influencing social change. Nonetheless, barriers exist to implementing direct service-learning, particularly from a trauma-informed lens as volunteer work could be triggering for students who experienced victimization…

Service learning can prepare undergraduate students with the necessary civic capacities and commitments for today's solutions to wicked social problems. However, most studies on the civic outcomes of service learning, such as civic-mindedness, are student self-reports on surveys given at the end of an academic term. A more nuanced understanding of…