Service-Learning's Ongoing Journey as a Method of Instruction: Implications for School-Based Agricultural Education

Abstract

American education’s journey has witnessed the rise and fall of various progressive education approaches, including service-learning. In many respects, however, service-learning is still undergoing formation and adoption as a teaching method, specifically in School-based, Agricultural Education (SBAE). For this reason, the interest existed to understand service- learning’s origins and its evolution as a method of instruction. As such, this historical study sought to describe the events and philosophical underpinnings presaging service-learning’s emergence as a method of instruction, and how this approach to learning has been incentivized and used in SBAE. Findings and implications from the study revealed that service-learning’s deep philosophical roots can be traced to great thinkers, including Aristotle, Plato, Rousseau, Kant, and Dewey. Moreover, the researchers suggest the core principals of service-learning align with delivering SBAE’s three-circle model in effective and powerful ways. Moving forward, scholars and practitioners of SBAE should ask themselves, “Is service-learning the teaching method of choice for conflating the components of SBAE’s three-circle model such that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts?”