American College Service Learning

Service-learning in American universities and colleges is a teaching strategy with its distinguishing feathers. It belongs to the experiential education, and it emerged and developed on the basis of traditional service. The key feather of service-learning is that it can break through the traditional service. It connects the students' community service with their academic study, and these two aspects are reciprocal to each other. It applies the knowledge from the class into the service so that enhancing the service quality, and also uses the experience from the service to promote the academic achievement. And in the meanwhile it fosters the students' civic and citizenship consciousness.The essay analyses American service-learning in universities and colleges from four parts:The first part simply introduces the developmental process of service-learning and introduces the present situation of service-learning in American universities and colleges.The second part analyses the basic theories of service-learning. This part firstly introduces the theoretical foundation of service-learning, confirming that the service-learning belongs to the experiential education and the experiential education offers the theoretical basis for it. Secondly, this part introduces the different definitions of service-learning from different experts or organizations, also putting forth the writer's own definition for service-learning. And then, this part induces and summarizes the characteristics and the significance of service-learning.The third part analyses the practice process of service-learning in American universities and colleges. In this part, the essay elaborates the orientation of every participant taking part in service-learning. This part also introduces the essential steps to practise the service-learning and some principles which must be followed in the practice process.The fourth part forecasts the trends of service-learning's development and poses some problems existing in service-learning.