Learning Service or Service Learning: Enabling the Civic

Presently, service learning is utilized as a tool for learning about something other than service, such as: gaining civic dispositions, learning subject matter, practicing inquiry techniques, or questioning inequality. What might happen if, instead, an exploration of service itself grounded classroom studies and field work, fostering explicit consideration and critique of ethics, standards, and distinctive forms of learning through work with others? In this paper, the idea of service learning is turned on its head and "learning service" is considered as a means of enabling the civic, particularly in regard to higher education.