Service-Learning in Theory and Practice: The Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education

Service-learning in theory and practice: The future of community engagement in higher education. Dan W. Butin. (2010). New York: Palgrave MacMillan. 174 pp. (ISBN 9780230622517).Many organizations support ever increasing numbers of service-learning initiatives in colleges and universities across the continent (Hollander, 2010), making an examination of such initiatives of particular interest to Canadian scholars involved in comparative and international research. Dan Butin maintains that a lack of one unitary model for service-learning creates difficulties for integration into traditional conventions of higher education. For this reason Butin establishes limits and possibilities for service-learning, explores philosophical shifts needed for an institutionalizing of service-learning in higher education and offers suggestions for an attainable future for service-learning.Following an informational foreword by Elizabeth Hollander and an impassioned preface by the author, Butin demonstrates the limitations and potential of service-learning in higher education. Throughout Chapter 1 Butin attempts to define and conceptualize service-learning from multiple perspectives, and tenders technical, cultural, political and antifoundational typologies. Chapter 2 explores the pedagogical, political, and institutional limits of servicelearning and the impediment that these limits pose to its institutional longevity. In Chapter 3 Butin explains how external and internal limitations of service-learning represent powerful and transformative possibilities in higher education.Chapter 4 examines the disciplining of service-learning as an intellectual movement comparable to women's studies. While Chapter 5 explores how some programs are already institutionalizing service-learning through recognized certificates, minors, and majors. Butin utilizes Chapter 6 to take the reader through an examination of other disciplines that provide additional insights into the evolution and incorporation of community engagement within the academy.Butin persuades service-learning scholars and practitioners to reexamine "what they do and how they do it" since he believes that service-learning and community engagement should be no more novel or noteworthy than any other scholarly task (126). Chapter 7 helps faculty to view community engagement as another means of being a good scholar through the production and dissemination of knowledge and the search for truth. While Chapter 8 places servicelearning and community engagement within the larger picture of the major contemporary trends and tensions in higher education.A solid and logical structure is provided by Dan Butin which aids the reader since his arguments can sometimes be rather complex. This book should not be a starting point for scholars new to the field of service-learning since it is not concerned with the fundamentals of community-engaged learning models but it does offer insights useful to those concerned with the future of such programs in higher education. Butin focuses on defining and conceptualizing service-learning in higher education and the place it occupies within the sphere of academia.Hironimus-Wendt & Lovell-Troy state, "[i]ndeed some of our own colleagues have questioned the strong emphasis on a 'transformative' role ascribed to service learning, particularly regarding community change" and suggest a "more broadly theoretical foundation for service learning is warranted in order to encourage other educators to consider its adoption and implementation" (1999, p. 363). To support this suggestion, they reference the work of John Dewy and George Herbert Mead who are considered by some to be the originators of the servicelearning concept, demonstrating that even in the preliminary stages, during the early 1900s, the leading experts held very different beliefs as to the exact role that experiential education could play in student development.This publication is suitable for a scholarly audience already familiar with service learning, and are interested in a deeper examination, classification and possible future evolution of the phenomenon. …