Introduction

Abstract

I first encountered service-learning in 1998 when I was asked to convene a course to international students at a Scottish university. I have taught the course annually ever since. The number of students on my course varied at different times: typically one year there would be perhaps three or four students whereas in another year there would be over twenty students. The course was not offered to home students until 2006, when, as the director of the Public Policy undergraduate programme, I introduced service-learning in the Public Policy curriculum to our honours students, as part of the MA (Social Sciences) undergraduate degree. This arrangement secured service-learning to the mainstream learning and teaching agenda at the university. To embed and support this further, I undertook a research study on the effects of service-learning on students for my dissertation as part of an MEd in Academic Practice, which I was awarded in 2007. Throughout these years of my teaching, I combed the extant service-learning literature in an effort to enhance student learning and to support my teaching. Unfortunately, it became increasingly frustrating as I struggled to find literature that would enable students’ further understanding of this innovative pedagogy. I could not find any particularly helpful literature that could be utilised appropriately as the main advanced text in the context of a university service-learning course.