Enhancing the quality of service-learning practices

Abstract

The article presents a tool –a rubric– intended to assess and enhance the educational quality of service-learning (sl) experiences. It starts out from the basic principle that optimum design of pedagogical practice has a direct effect on student learning. Hence the importance of creating methodologies which, like service learning, promote the acquisition of values, skills and knowledge students will find useful in life. The article then suggests a service-learning methodology that responds to these purposes and goes on to show the most significant contributions towards its definition. Some of the most representative proposals for the assessment of service-learning activities that precede the rubric are also included and a description is made of the rubric’s construction process through the creation of a research team working on the basis of rational reconstruction methodology. The core of the text is dedicated to presenting the research results: the rubric for self-evaluation of service-learning projects. To do this, the 12 dimensions that comprise the rubric are defined, structured into three categories –basic, pedagogical and organisational– and the levels of complexity that correspond to each dimension described. The article concludes with a brief section containing the results that application of the rubric offers teaching teams and including a spider chart as a graphic expression to enable almost immediate visualisation of the level of development of a service learning activity.

Keywords

• aprendizaje servicio
• metodología educativa
• educación en valores
• evaluación
• rúbrica