The Importance Of Service Learning

Service-learning, also called community engagement is a mode of learning that combines learning goals and service to the community in ways that enhance the growth of the learners and the common good of the community. It encourages students to actively participate in organised services that are conducted in, and meet the needs of, communities. Service learning fosters civic responsibilities among learners, while it also provides them with a structured time to reflect on the service experience. The quality of results achieved by service-learning teams is affected by a number of factors, key among them being the way individual members or participants in the team perceive themselves, the way individual team members perceive other members of their

Each team member has his/her own values, personality, and motivating factors. Values, to begin with, are the stable life goals that individual have, and they reflect what individuals think are important to them (Bauer and Erdogan). Service learning teams have different objectives, and the accomplishment of such objectives is influenced by taking into account the different values of the team members. For example, a service learning team may have the objectives of helping the community it is located in turn their garbage into manure. A team member with a high orientation towards science will help in the actual process of turning the waste into manure, while a member with orientation towards entrepreneurship may come up with ways of marketing the manure to generate some income for the

Attitude refers to the opinions, beliefs, and feelings that individuals have towards their environment (Bauer and Erdogan). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment are the two attitudes that greatly influence the attitude of workers, service learning team members in this case. Job satisfaction is the attitude workers, team members in this case, have towards their job, which is service learning in this case. Organizational commitment refers to the emotional attachment that individuals have towards the companies they work for, the service learning team and the community in this case. Since a strong relationship exists between things that make people happy on their jobs and their commitment to their jobs, an overlap exists between job satisfaction and commitment to the organization (Bauer and