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The Nature of Scientific Research
The use of service-learning as a pedagogy in higher education classes has blossomed over the past 20 years in both undergraduate and graduate courses (Campus Compact, 2006). There is an acute need for high-quality research on service-learning outcomes across institutions, faculty, students, and communities (Bringle & Hatcher, 2000). For, as Eyler noted,
[Service-learning research] is neither precise nor robust enough to guide decision making about practice. Our success at implementation has outstripped our knowledge of what works best. For a field that engenders as much passion in practitioners and that we believe transforms students by engaging their hearts as well as their minds, there is remarkably little evidence of strong impact and even less evidence about the kinds of practices that lead to the effects we desire. (Eyler, 2002, p. 5)
Although research on service-learning represents a nascent field of endeavor, a number of organizations and resources have been developed to assist interested persons in their research activities. For example, Campus Compact, Learn and Serve America's National Service- Learning Clearinghouse (NSLC), Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, and the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement all have developed resources that are available on their websites to assist researchers and program planners and provide opportunities for disseminating research results. RMC Research has made available online the Compendium of Assessment and Research Tools (cart.rmcdenver.com/). The International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) was launched "to promote the development and dissemination of research on service-learning and community engagement internationally and across all levels of the education system" (International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, 2009). IARSLCE publishes a series of volumes, Advances in Service-Learning Research, developed from the annual research conference. The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning has been a premier resource for disseminating research since 1994. A number of other institutions, including government agencies (e.g., the Corporation for National and Community Service), research centers at institutions of higher education (e.g., CIRCLE at Tufts University), and funding organizations (e.g., the Spencer Foundation) have supported research on service-learning and community engagement. NSLC provides a rich set of resources to guide the development, execution, and dissemination of research.
Yet despite these resources, there is still a need for information and resources on how to conduct high quality and rigorous research on service-learning. Too often faculty, teachers, and other researchers who utilize service-learning pedagogy in their classrooms may be experts in conducting research in their own field or discipline, but are newcomers to educational research. Thus, too frequently they are unfamiliar with the literature base in service-learning, the research methodologies that are appropriate in this field, measurement procedures, and online resources that are available. This research primer is designed to address that need.
