Beyond service learning: Toward community schools and reflective community learners

In this chapter we examine the educational principles and practices of service learning and suggest extending it via the conceptual framework of community inquiry. This framework allows us to focus on the community as a locus and source of learning. The first section below discusses current practices of service learning and some of its shortcomings. We view service learning as a pedagogy based in constructivism and experiential education. It holds within it the potential to promote deep learning for students, faculty, and community members. But it often falls short of this potential. The second section discusses participatory action research and social entrepreneurship, processes more familiar outside of LIS and outside of the United States, which suggest the extension of service learning beyond narrowly-defined, course-based models, The third section discusses community inquiry as just such an extension, one in which the school is seen as social center of the community. The fourth section presents examples from the Community Informatics Initiative.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe