Includes bibliographical references and index.

Prelude: Confessions and AcknowledgmentsI The Problem and Its Context1 Why I Worry2 A Brief Counterintuitive History of Service Learning3 Theories (Conscious and Unconscious) of Institutionalized Service LearningInterludeII Institutionalized Service Learning4 What Is Institutionalized Service Learning’s Theory of Learning?5 What Is Institutionalized Service Learning’s Theory of Service?6 What Is Institutionalized Service Learning’s Theory of Community?7 What Is Institutionalized Service Learning’s Theory of Change?III Liberating Service Learning8 Toward a Liberating Theory of Change 9 Toward a Liberating Theory of Community10 Toward a Liberating Theory of Service11 Toward a Liberating Theory of Learning12 Toward a Liberated World?PostludeReferencesIndex

"Randy Stoecker has been "practicing" forms of community-engaged scholarship, including service learning, for thirty years now, and he readily admits, "Practice does not make perfect." In his highly personal critique, Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement, the author worries about the contradictions, unrealized potential, and unrecognized urgency of the causes as well as the risks and rewards of this work. Here, Stoecker questions the prioritization and theoretical/philosophical underpinnings of the core concepts of service learning: 1. learning, 2. service, 3. community, and 4. change. By "liberating" service learning, he suggests reversing the prioritization of the concepts, starting with change, then community, then service, and then learning. In doing so, he clarifies the benefits and purpose of this work, arguing that it will create greater pedagogical and community impact. Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement challenges--and hopefully will change--our thinking about higher education community engagement"-- Provided by publisher.