Chapter 7: Experiencing the Social Issues that Impact America’s Classrooms: A Study of Academic Service-Learning in Education Courses

In the 1980s, Myra Sadker, David Sadker, and Susan S. Klein (1986), discussing gender bias in education, observed that many Americans believe that “sex equity has been achieved and there is no problem anymore” (p. 219). In my undergraduate social foundations of education courses, I too find that preservice teachers often think gender issues are a thing of the past, an inequality that has been conquered and no longer needs to be discussed. Nevertheless, after analyzing these seemingly obsolete topics in the university classroom, undergraduates, when completing academic service-learning hours, discover that these issues are certainly relevant in today’s K-12 classrooms. For example, one student, after volunteering at a low-income school just outside of Detroit, MI, noted that many of the activities in the classroom “clearly display the level of sexism that still runs rampant in our society, despite all the talk of equality.” As this student’s comment suggests, academic service-learning can be a powerful means of making connections between the theoretical course content and the reality of classroom practice. This chapter discusses an informal, small-scale study of including a community-service requirement in social foundations courses and examines the benefits and shortcomings of such a requirement.