Publication: Charity Basket or Revolution: Beliefs. Experiences, and Context in Preservice Teachers' Service-Learning.

• Donahue, David M.

Given what one observer calls the "vast disparity of
definitions that faculty can bring to service learning—from
what is basically the charity basket approach to the
revolutionary," service learning can vary tremendously,
from reading to elderly residents of a nursing home to
organizing a boycott of a sneaker company. With such
diversity before teachers, what influences them in the way
they design service learning? How do preservice teachers,
for whom so many ideas about teaching are emerging, make
such choices? Two case studies suggest that preservice
teachers' beliefs, experiences, and the context where they
teach play an important role related to if and how they use
service learning. Beliefs and experiences are especially
important because, although service learning is often
presented as supporting apolitical values—empowerment and
responsibility, for example—for which broad consensus
exists, such values are also ambiguous and open to
interpretation. Teacher educators and advocates of service
learning need to acknowledge the ambiguous political nature
of service and service learning. By doing so, they have an
opportunity to make the political context of teaching
explicit for preservice teachers. Such education in service
learning for new teachers goes beyond "training" in the
logistical and technical details of implementing a new
pedagogy to thoughtful reflection on the value-laden act of
teaching.