Higher education community engagement, and especially service-learning, seem to be built around the concepts of “learning,” “service,” “community,” and “change.” But these are actually highly problematic ideas. This session will unpack their meanings and show how they can confuse and limit our work. Randy Stoecker Professor University of Wisconsin-Madison University of Wisconsin-Extension

1. Problematic Concepts of Institutionalized Service Learning
Learning:
 Experiential
 Student-focused
 Pragmatist
Service:
 Charity
 Hours
 Assimilationist
Community:
 All encompassing
 Exchange-based
 Mythical
Change:
 Devalued
 Individualist
 Functionalist
Institutionalized
Service Learning
Learning:
 CBR
 Critical SL
Service:
 Reciprocity
 Project-based
Community:
 Social capital
 Asset-based
 Communitarian
Change:
 Satisfaction study
 Outputs
Partial Fixes Liberating Service
Learning
Change:
 Sociological imagination
 Two types of change
 Conflict-based
Community:
 Constituency-focused
 Use value-focused
 Outcome goal
Service:
 Allyship
 Community Organization
 Knowledge power
Learning:
 Popular education
 Constituency-centered
 Participatory Action Research
Randy Stoecker (rstoecker@wisc.edu), Upper Midwest Civic Engagement Summit, 2014