Service-Learning and Community Engagement: Cognitive Developmenta ...

Service-learning scholars have emphasized the need to link service-learning to enhanced cognitive outcomes. Zlotkowski (1995) argued that the future of service-learning within higher education may rest on “a single elusive but nonetheless basic decision—whether the service-learning movement as a whole prioritizes an ideological or academic issue” (p. 126). More than 10 years later, this question remains relevant, and the answer is still unclear. Patience is waning, and skeptics are increasing in number.

Eyler (2000) reported that studies are needed to establish whether a relationship exists between academic service-learning and later civic involvement: “We know that service-learning has a small but consistent impact on a number of important outcomes for students; now we need to push ahead to empirically answer the questions about improving the academic effectiveness of service-learning” (p. 16). Jeffrey Howard (2003), editor of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, reported that researchers know a fair amount about the effects of service-learning but much less about the long-term impacts of participation. “Do students become lifelong civic participants as a result of their involvement in service-learning? How else are they influenced over the long run?” (p. 146). Service-learning researchers have insisted that quantitative methods should be supplemented with qualitative efforts, such as personal interviews or focus groups, in order to adequately study service-learning (Bringle & Hatcher, 2000; Howard, 2003).

Purpose of the Study

This study was an attempt to learn more about exemplars in order to determine whether exposure to and immersion in a service-learning program is, in fact, in any way related to cognitive development.