SPECIAL REPORT

PRINCIPLES OF GOOD PRACTICE FOR
COMBINING SERVICE AND LEARNING

by Ellen Porter Honnet and Susan J. Poulsen
The Johnson Foundation

These Principles result from consultation with more than 70 organizations interested in service and learning. These consultations were conducted by the National Society for Internships and Experiential Education. They were written in 1989.

PREAMBLE

The level of interest and sense of urgency in community and voluntary service grows greater every day. In every community, programs are being designed for participants from kindergartners to the elderly. Is there a set of guiding principles by which service programs can be designed and by which their effectiveness can be judged? Is there a set of ideas which have the potential for deepening and sustaining current movements?
The principles described on these pages reflect the grassroots experience and the thinking of thousands of people, hundreds of programs, and numerous national organizations over the last several decades. They are offered with the hope that current initiatives to create service programs will benefit from a rich recent history. The combination of service and learning is powerful. It creates potential benefits beyond what either service or learning can offer separately. The frequent results of the effective interplay of service and learning are that participants:

• Develop a habit of critical reflection on their experiences, enabling them to learn more throughout life.
  

• Are more curious and motivated to learn.
  
• Are able to perform better service.
  
• Strengthen their ethic of social and civic response.
  

• Feel more committed to addressing the underlying problems behind social issues
  

• Understand problems in a more complex way and can imagine alternative solutions.
  

• Demonstrate more sensitivity to how decisions are made and how institutional decisions are made and how institutional decisions affect people's lives.
  

• Respect other cultures more and are better able to learn about cultural differences.
  

• Learn how to work more collaboratively with other people on real problems.
  

• Realize that their lives can make a difference.

AN EFFECTIVE PROGRAM...

1. engages people in responsible and challenging actions for the common good.
Participants in programs combining service and learning should engage in tasks that the students and society recognize as important. These actions should require reaching beyond one's range of previous knowledge or experience. Active participation ...requires accountability for one's actions, involves the right to take risks, and gives participants the opportunity to experience the consequences of those actions for others and for themselves.

2. provides structured opportunities for people to reflect critically on their service experience.
The service experience alone does not insure that either significant learning or effective service will occur. It is important that programs build in structured opportunities for participants to think about their experience and what they have learned. Through discussions with others and individual reflection on moral questions and relevant issues, participants can develop a better sense of social responsibility, advocacy. and active citizenship. This reflective component allows for personal growth and is most useful when it is intentional and continuous throughout the experience, and when opportunity for feedback is provided.

3. articulates clear service and learning goals for everyone involved.
...participants and service recipients alike must have a clear sense of: (1) what is to be accomplished and (2) what is to be learned. These service and learning goals must be agreed upon through negotiations with all parties, and in the context of the traditions and cultures of the local community. ...protects the "service from becoming patronizing charity.”

4. allows for those with needs to define those needs.
The actual recipients of service, as well as the community groups and constituencies to which they belong, must have the primary role in defining their own service needs. Community service programs, government agencies, and private organizations can also be helpful in defining what service tasks are needed and when and how these tasks should be performed. This collaboration to define needs will insure that service by participants will: (1) not take jobs from the local community, and (2) involve tasks that will otherwise go undone.

5. clarifies the responsibilities of each person and organization involved.
Several parties are potentially involved in any service and learning program: participants (students and teachers), community leaders, service supervisors, and sponsoring organizations, as well as those individuals and groups receiving the services. It is important to clarify roles and responsibilities of these parties through a negotiation process as the program is being developed. This negotiation should include identifying and assigning responsibility for the tasks to be done, while acknowledging the values and principles important to all the parties involved.

6. matches service providers and service needs through a process that recognizes changing circumstances.
Because people are often changed by the service and learning experience, effective programs must build in opportunities for continuous feedback about the changing service needs and growing service skills of those involved. Ideally, participation in the service partnership affects personal development in areas such as intellect, ethics, cross-cultural understanding, empathy, leadership, and citizenship. In effective service and learning programs, the relationships among groups and individuals are dynamic and often create dilemmas. Such dilemmas may lead to unintended outcomes. They can require recognizing and dealing with differences.

7. expects genuine, active, and sustained organizational commitment.
In order for a program to be effective, it must have a strong, ongoing commitment from both the sponsoring and the receiving organizations. Ideally, this commitment will take many forms, including reference to both service and learning in the organization's mission statement. Effective programs must receive administrative support, become line items in the organization's budget, be allocated appropriate physical space, equipment, and transportation, and allow for scheduled release time for participants and program leaders. In schools, the most effective service and learning programs are linked to the curriculum and require that the faculty become committed to combining service and learning as a valid part of teaching.

8. includes training, supervision, monitoring, support, recognition, and evaluation to meet service and learning goals.
The most effective service and learning programs are sensitive to the importance of training, supervision, monitoring of progress throughout the program. This is a reciprocal responsibility and requires open communication between those offering and those receiving the service. In partnership, sponsoring and receiving organizations should recognize the value of service through appropriate celebrations, awards, and public acknowledgment of individual and group service. Planned, formalized, and ongoing evaluation of service and learning projects should be part of every program and should involve all participants.

9. insures that the time commitment for service and learning is flexible, appropriate, and in the best interests of all involved.
In order to be useful to all parties involved, some service activities require longer participation and or a greater time commitment than others. The length of the experience and the amount of time required are determined by the service tasks involved and should be negotiated by all the parties. Sometimes a program can do more harm than good if a project is abandoned after too short a time or given too little attention. Where appropriate, a carefully planned succession or combination of participants can provide the continuity of service needed.

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