{"id":4325,"date":"2003-11-07T10:13:15","date_gmt":"2003-11-07T10:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4325"},"modified":"2003-11-07T10:13:15","modified_gmt":"2003-11-07T10:13:15","slug":"service-learning-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4325","title":{"rendered":"service-learning research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Salt Lake City: I gave the keynote luncheon address today at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sa.utah.edu\/bennion\/sl-conf\/SLConf\/\">International<\/p>\n<p>Service-Learning Research Conference<\/a>. I argued that we need research<\/p>\n<p>to test whether service-learning (i.e., combinations of community service<\/p>\n<p>with academic study) works as well or better than competing approaches<\/p>\n<p>to civic education. The best way to prove causality is an experiment<\/p>\n<p>in which students are randomly assigned to the &quot;treatment&quot;<\/p>\n<p>(here, service-learning) or to a control group, and then the two groups<\/p>\n<p>are compared. That&#8217;s the &quot;gold standard,&quot; although there are<\/p>\n<p>ways to approximate random selection if it proves to be impossible.<\/p>\n<p>There has never been anything like a random experiment to test whether<\/p>\n<p>(or how well) service-learning works as civic education.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Several people who spoke from the floor expressed the views that (a)<\/p>\n<p>research will never settle any debates in education, because the results<\/p>\n<p>are always murky and contested; and (b) policymakers won&#8217;t listen to<\/p>\n<p>research, no matter how strong it may seem. I said that for us, research<\/p>\n<p>is necessary but not sufficient. I realize that scholarly papers don&#8217;t<\/p>\n<p>just jump off the shelf and pass legislation; we also need political<\/p>\n<p>organization. The service-learning movement is beginning to organize<\/p>\n<p>itself, as shown by the robust defense of Americorps this fall. But<\/p>\n<p>research is necessary because we lack a large or wealthy constituency,<\/p>\n<p>so policymakers don&#8217;t have to listen to us. Fortunately, there are some<\/p>\n<p>decision-makers in government, higher education, and philanthropy who<\/p>\n<p>genuinely want to achieve the best outcomes, and they would support<\/p>\n<p>service-learning <em>if<\/em> it really seemed to work. At present, they<\/p>\n<p>have reason to be skeptical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Salt Lake City: I gave the keynote luncheon address today at the International Service-Learning Research Conference. I argued that we need research to test whether service-learning (i.e., combinations of community service with academic study) works as well or better than competing approaches to civic education. The best way to prove causality is an experiment in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advocating-civic-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}