Chapter 9: Service-Learning And Interdisciplinarity: A Library Science Perspective

Service-learning scholars face significant day-to-day challenges to conduct literature reviews in this interdisciplinary area. This study attempts to assist them by providing a framework for understanding and developing strategies for working within this research context. Also providing an impetus to this work is the fact that the service-learning movement is at a crucial stage in its development, with its leaders paying increasing attention to the needs of the field as a field. To recognize an individual scholar’s or an entire field’s interdisciplinary nature can be an important aid for thriving under these challenging conditions. For the servicelearning field, which is still facing significant struggles both to gain institutional footing in the K-12 and higher education sectors and to establish a rigorous evidence base, recognizing the extent of the field’s interdisciplinary nature may be especially valuable for developing strategies for supporting and conducting research in this context and for further fieldbuilding efforts more generally. To date, however, the degree and implications of the field’s interdisciplinary approach have not been adequately analyzed.