Service-learning.(Editorial)

This special issue features a variety of scholarly articles that explore applied research on service-learning and its potential for expanding student learning, improving communities, and building bridges across cultural/social/geopolitical boundaries. Several of the authors include specific guidance on course development, discussing the challenges and opportunities for implementing student-led projects in diverse contexts (urban and rural, K-12 and higher education, global and domestic). Foley describes his own five years of experience in teaching a service-learning course, describing the ways in which he has learned through experience the value of integrating objectives such as development of cultural awareness and appreciation of diversity in shaping the ongoing evolution of a capstone course in Construction Management. Purmensky explores expanding roles for technology in enhancing reflective feedback in service-learning courses, building capacity in collaboration with community partners, and strengthening learning communities.

A unique component of service-learning project design is its focus on reciprocity and mutual exchanges of new knowledge and understanding. This dimension is highlighted in articles by Jones & Esposito, Millhouse, Gibson, Paris, and Kapucu et al. Articles by Jones & Esposito and Millhouse examine some of the unique challenges of developing authentic partnerships between universities and communities in the context of foreign studies programs. Their articles illustrates the opportunities for continual learning and reflection while striving to find the balance between responding to community needs in unfamiliar cultural terrains and developing college students' academic/professional skills. Gibson carries this point even further by reflecting on the role of faculty members in designing, evaluating and documenting the value of service-learning courses and programs of study. Rather than striving to maintain a neutral stance and remain on the outside as a disengaged observer, Gibson writes about the powerful ways in which her students' community service learning projects ...