Learning Sevice: Concepts and Keys
For a few years the name of learning-service (APS) has begun to be heard more and more frequently in the educational field, from primary education to university. Now, what is service learning?
The APS is a program, a philosophy and a pedagogy. This last approach aims to highlight psychopedagogical activities through which students are educated, but the question is to determine what type of mechanisms the educators start up and what kind of processes children live to assimilate the transformations we end up calling development and training.
Therefore, a definition of learning-service in the field of education is what Jacoby (1996) exposes: service learning is a form of education based on experience in which students commit themselves to activities that relate personal needs and of the community with intentionally designed opportunities in order to promote students’ development and learning. Reflection and reciprocity are key concepts in APS.
As the appointment says, service-learning is a form of education based on experience in which learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection thanks to which students work with other classmates in a process of application of what who have learned to community problems and, at the same time, reflect on the experience of pursuing real objectives for the community and increasing their own understanding and skills. That is, "they develop the multiple human dimensions – intelectual, affective and practical – and cultivate civic and social responsibility" .
In this process, students identify in their next environment a situation whose improvement is committed, developing a solidarity project that puts knowledge, skills, attitudes and values into play.
An example of this methodology can be in the project: “Food collection campaign”, where adolescents improve their knowledge and attitudes about nutrition, hunger and inequality, designing and carrying their own campaign in collaboration for example, with the food Bank.
But why is it worth promoting this learning-service process in educational centers? As for students, it emphasizes that it favors meaningful learning, improves motivation and academic results and promotes their personal and social development and, in relation to teachers, concrete education for citizenship, facilitates the evaluation of basic competences, improves coexistence In the classroom and favors the relationship between school and community. Similarly, for the entire community there are also benefits and these are that it improves the living conditions of people, reinforces the feeling of belonging of its members and stimulates citizen participation ’.
Therefore, we are talking about a pedagogy that starts from real activities carried out by students, which are always completed through reflection on each and every one of the aspects of experience and, finally, activities designed so that The relationship between young people who provide a service and service receptors is reciprocal: both must win something and both must offer something.
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