Chapter 8: Methodological Challenges and Potential Solutions for the Incorporation of Sound Community-Based Research into Service-Learning

Service-learning has the potential to engage faculty in scholarly research by activating discipline-based societal inquiry and activism (Sherman & Torbert, 2000). It also provides a venue through which faculty can conduct research focusing on sociopolitical action that seeks to improve conditions in their local communities. Moreover, service-learning can complement conceptual academic material by having students apply what they learn in class to the challenges of community-based interventions, while reducing their possible negative biases about unfamiliar community populations.

A course development model around which to structure service-learning classes, such as the one developed by Maureen Rubin (2001), can provide a framework for the exploration of the methodological issues that surround the use of service-learning for community-based research. The seven steps of Rubin’s course development model are: (1) Defining student learning outcomes, (2) Defining faculty members’ personal scholarship outcomes, (3) Planning community collaboration, (4) Designing the course, (5) Arranging logistics and creating forms, (6) Planning exercises to help students reflect, analyze, and deliver, and (7) Performing assessment and evaluation of and among all critical audiences. This model assembles and organizes many of the elements commonly considered essential to the development and implementation of a comprehensive and successfully university-based service-learning program (for further information on these elements, the reader is referred to Bringle & Hatcher, 1995; Driscoll et al., 1998; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Eyler, Giles, & Schmiede, 1996; Kellett & Goldstein, 1999).