Advancing a Broad Notion of Public Engagement: The Limitations of Contemporary Service Learning

The goal of this paper is to raise an awareness of the choices we make as faculty and administrators engaged in service learning. Has mainstream practice and thinking at times limited the transformative potential of the service learning movement? Our timidity, as one colleague put it, actually might be functional, creating a "'zone of indifference' that would be violated by more structural and collective approaches." This 'zone' in which controversy is minimized might be needed to function in our institutions. In highlighting what we see as the qualities of mainstream service learning, we have sought not to overturn such positions as much as we have tried to expand them, to build a more inclusive vision of service learning and to possibly narrow the 'zone of indifference.' We want to encourage communities of practitioners, and scholars to be critically reflective of the possibilities and limitations of their individual and institutional notions of what constitutes "acceptable" public engagement, and to surface the range of beliefs about what it means to be a democratic citizen in today's complex world. (author)