Chapter 1: Introduction

Research on service-learning has been growing and expanding over the past 40 years. While its supposed origins and focus started in the United States, it has been spreading around the world in both interest and in actual study. Universities and community organizations, from Argentina to China, started to find out the roots and their definitions and practices of service-learning in its history. Thus, more have been engaging in research efforts to better understand the concept and its implementation in different cultures and nations across the globe.

Nowhere has there been more interest in the subject than in Asia. While elements of service-learning/experiential learning were being developed in China in the early part of the last century (John Dewey spent two years teaching in China from 1919–21), collaborations with other Asian countries in the 1920s and 30s led to increased cooperation and connection with the West. Colleges exchanged faculty and programs began to emerge in the mid-century.