Charity and Social Change: The Impact of Individual Preferences on Service-Learning Outcomes

Students from seven institutions of higher education reported their preferences for different paradigms of service at the beginning of their service-learning course. At the end of the courses, they described the associated service activities in terms of the same paradigms and also completed scales describing their learning outcomes and attitudes toward civic issues. Students who expressed positive preferences for Charity or Social activities or both kinds of activity showed more positive learning outcomes and attitude change when there was a match between preferenc and service than when they experienced a mismatch. For a group of students with a limited enthusiasm for either Charity or Social Change activities, the most facilitative service involved both Charity and Social Change experiences. The implications of these finding for service-learning practice and for future research are discussed.