CHAPTER 3: Opening up Service-Learning Reflection by Turning Inward: Developing Mindful Learners Through Contemplation

Service-learning holds the utility of reflection as paramount. It is the glue that allows service activities to manifest into actual learning. Combined with Dewey’s pragmatism, reflection is part of service-learning’s basic epistemology and is what distinguishes it from other types of experiential education. The problem, however, is that reflection by definition (“bend back”) asks students to focus on the past and, if done correctly, then asks them to critically apply their learning from this process to future learning and experiences. Reflection does not focus on present thoughts, emotions, senses, and behaviors. Further, reflection in service-learning has arguably taken on a hyperpragmatic, product-oriented place as a project management and assessment tool. It is an extrospective practice, driven from the outside on transitory external stimuli, and maintains the teacher as intelligence expert who has pre-determined not only what knowledge is, but the process to achieve that knowledge.