Shaping Ethical and Civic Identities: The Devaluation and Revaluation of Service Learning

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the lens of “service learning” to explore some of the practical and ethical challenges of envisaging and providing preparation for social and vocational life. The first half considers some influential but narrow constructions of service learning, showing how these sit within and reproduce broader instrumentalist and transactional currents that are, at best, ethically impoverished but also seemingly corrosive of the ends they are supposed to support. The second half draws on some concepts from ethical and social theory, specifically work on relational ontology, to indicate richer and more promising directions for conceiving of the lessons of service.

KEYWORDS:

• Service learning
• service
• learning
• ethics
• relational ontology
• citizenship
• productivism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Alan Cribb is Professor of Bioethics and Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Public Policy Research, King’s College London. His interests include health and education policy analysis and he is currently working on a Wellcome Trust funded study “But why is that better?” which is investigating the contribution of applied philosophy to healthcare improvement.

ORCID

Alan Cribb http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7908-5195

Notes

1 Winch, “The Economic Aims of Education”.

2 Lucas, Claxton, and Spencer, Expansive Education.

3 Gardinier, Service-Learning through Community Engagement. Klentzin and Wierzbowski-Kwiatkowaki, “Service-Learning Program”.

4 Deeley, Critical Perspectives on Service Learning. Berger and Kaye, The Complete Guide to Service Learning.

5 Sigmon, Linking Service with Learning.

6 Furco, “Service-Learning”.

7 Van Auken, “International Service Learning”.

8 GOV.UK, “National Citizen Service”.

9 de St Croix, McGimpsey, and Owens, “Feeding Young People to the Social Investment Machine”.

10 Jump and Simetrica. If You Could Bottle It … 

11 Gewirtz, Give Us A Break”.

12 Cribb, Healthcare in Transition.

13 Cribb and Gewirtz, Professionalism.

14 Osborne, Radnor, and Strokosch, “Co-Production and the Co-Creation of Value in Public Services”.

15 MacIntyre, After Virtue.

16 Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Volume Two.

17 Griffiths, “I’ve Got Goose Bumps Just Talking about It!”.

18 Buber, I and Thou.

19 Macmurray, Persons in Relation.

20 Mackenzie, Rogers, and Dodds, Vulnerability.