Service learning: An evaluation of the Assumption College experience

This study investigates the effectiveness of service learning in curriculum integration to facilitate student learning, students\u27 exercise of reflective thinking and their practice of civic responsibility. Using a descriptive approach, grade school and high school students were asked to evaluate their service learning activity on four criteria; (a) curriculum integration, (b) reflection, (c) quality service and (d) civic responsibility. The study is based on a variety of literature advocating the effectiveness of service learning as a new teaching method that improves not only cognitive but social and emotional development as well. Resulls of the study suggest that service learning provided students with the opportunity to experience social realities as they happen and relate these with what they had learned. Integration therefore allowed them to see the different parts of a whole, and how each field of learning was related to the others. The reflection exercise gave students the venue to refine their academic skills which bore fruit in their willing commitment to act and to serve. Their involvement in community helped them learn to care for others. They got to understand how they can impact and make a difference in the community/society. Indeed, service learning helped our young and carefree students to be more responsible citizens. What emerges from the findings of this study is the need to define more clearly what quality service means in the Assumption. Results indicate that there seems to be an ambivalent stance as to how the service aspect is carried out. Docs the service aspect come with learning or is it a product of learning? To be true to its name; a clear distinction should be made between service learning and other similar activities such as exposures, immersions and the like