Curriculum and Activities

Recommended Readings

• Introduction to Service Learning Pedagogy. Kathleen Rice. A comprehensive guide to understanding, designing, and implementing service-learning in educational contexts. Explains how service-learning differs from related approaches and provides models, principles, and practical resources. Serves as both a pedagogical framework and a practical manual for educators seeking to integrate community engagement with academic learning to foster civic responsibility and social justice.
• What are Service Learning and Civic Engagement? Christine M. Cress (2013). Introduces students to the principles and purposes of service-learning as a distinct form of experiential education that connects academic learning with meaningful community engagement. Serves as a foundational introduction to service-learning and civic engagement, emphasizing their transformative potential for personal growth, academic enrichment, and societal betterment.
• Traditional vs. Critical Service-Learning: Engaging the Literature to Differentiate Two Models. Tania D. Mitchell (2008). Provides an analysis distinguishing traditional service-learning from critical service-learning, emphasizing how the latter intentionally incorporates social justice, power redistribution, and authentic relationships into educational practice. Reframes service-learning as a radical, justice-driven pedagogy that challenges educators and students alike to critically engage with inequality and act in partnership toward meaningful social transformation.
• Service Learning as a Pedagogy of Whiteness. Tania D. Mitchell, David M. Donahue & Courtney Young-Law (2012). Critically examines how service-learning in higher education often reproduces white privilege and racial hierarchies rather than dismantling them. It calls for educators to recognize, analyze, and interrupt the “pedagogy of whiteness” that shapes much of service-learning practice in the United States. Exposes how even well-intentioned service-learning can reinforce white dominance when it centers white norms, ignores systemic racism, and silences marginalized voices. It urges educators to adopt a critical, reflective, and equity-oriented approach that makes whiteness visible, challenges privilege, and reimagines service-learning as a tool for liberation rather than reinforcement of the status quo.
• How Service-Learning Enacts Social Justice Sensemaking. Tania D. Mitchell (2014). Explores how students in service-learning programs develop their understanding of and commitment to social justice through the process of sensemaking. Using qualitative research and grounded theory methods, Mitchell analyzes data from 11 women in the Citizen Scholars Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to examine how classroom and community experiences interact to foster students’ evolving conceptions of justice and social responsibility. Mitchell argues that social justice sensemaking is an ongoing, dynamic process. The article demonstrates that critical, community-engaged education can move students beyond empathy or charity toward reflective, equity-oriented action - linking personal growth, critical thinking, and civic responsibility in pursuit of social transformation.
• Preparing Students for Effective Service Learning. Kathleen Rice. A practical guide designed to help educators and students thoughtfully prepare for meaningful, community-based service-learning experiences. It emphasizes reflection, self-awareness, and the development of reciprocal, respectful relationships between students and community partners. Provides educators and students with a comprehensive preparation framework for effective service-learning. Bridges personal development and civic responsibility, guiding students to approach service-learning as both an educational and humanizing practice.