K-12 and CBO Service-Learning Core Components (IPARDC)

In April 2008, the National Youth Leadership Council released the K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. These standards grew out of a need to update conventional wisdom about quality practice as reflected in the Essential Elements of Service-Learning. Recent research shows that while some of the essential elements predicted outcomes for service-learning participants, others did not.

The research that informed the development of the Standards for Quality Practice also resulted in a revision of the Four Stages of Service-Learning or PARC model. In the PARC model, service-learning was conceived as a cyclical process with four interlocking phases: problem identification and preparation for service, the service activity itself, reflection, and celebration and future planning. In 2008, RMC Research published a revised description of the core components of service-learning, typically referred to as IPARDC (see the full text in Service-Learning in Action):

Investigation: Teachers and students investigate the community problems that they might potentially address. Investigation typically involves some sort of research and mapping activity.
Planning and Preparation: Teachers, students, and community members plan the learning and service activities, and address the administrative issues needed for a successful project.
Action(Implementing the Service Activity): The “heart” of the project: engaging in the meaningful service experience that will help your students develop important knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and will benefit the community.
Reflection: Activities that help students understand the service-learning experience and to think about its meaning and connection to them, their society, and what they have learned in school.
Demonstration/Celebration: The final experience when students, community participants and others publicly share what they have learned, celebrate the results of the service project, and look ahead to the future.

At each stage, both: Assessment and Reflection

From K-12 Service-Learning Project Planning Toolkit, by RMC Research Corporation and the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.

In the 2009 toolkit Service-Learning in Community-Based Organizations: A Practical Guide to Starting and Sustaining High Quality Programs, Eugene Roehlkepartain explored the applicability of this model to the community-based setting. There, he revised the IPARDC model to include the component “sustain.”

Sustaining (also called “institutionalizing”): This element focuses on making service-learning an integral part of an organization’s programming and culture—and sustaining a commitment to service and civic engagement in the lives of the participants who “graduate” from the program

Investigate, prepare, act, reflect, demonstrate and celebrate, and sustain
From Service-Learning in Community-Based Organizations: A Practical Guide to Starting and Sustaining High-Quality Programs, by Eugene C. Roehlkepartain.