Service-Learning and Social Justice

Engaging Students in Social Change

By (author) Susan Benigni Cipolle

Not available to order

Publication date:

15 March 2010

Length of book:

172 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781607095200

Service-Learning and Social Justice provides everything administrators and teachers need to build service-learning programs that prepare students as engaged citizens committed to equity and justice. Cipolle describes practical strategies for classroom teachers along with the theoretical framework so readers can deftly move beyond the book to a meaningful program for their schools. Writing in a conversational style, the author explains service-learning's unlimited potential in terms of student empowerment and academic achievement and as tool in developing a student's a lifetime commitment to service and social justice. This book's contribution to new knowledge and practice is three-fold as it promotes (a) understanding of how individuals become committed to social justice, (b) identification of how one's orientation to service-learning and social justice changes as one develops a more critical consciousness, and (c) practical strategies that teachers can use to support and guide students as they become more critically aware. Practitioners will improve their service-learning programs and have a framework for preparing students for their experiences, as well as ideas for reflection activities. Educators will gain a better understanding of the psychology and sociology of developing a commitment to service for social justice.
Service learning can be a salve to individual conscience or an opening for collective action. In this provocative and practical text Sue Cipolle explores how service learning can be practiced as a form of critical pedagogy and its role in developing a counter-hegemonic, critical consciousness. It is a must read for teachers and administrators at all stages of education striving to connect service learning to the wider struggle for social justice.