A comprehensive framework for community service-learning in Canada

It does this in ways which are connected to and consistent with the core academic mission of universities and colleges.”1 With these words, the Canadian Alliance for Community Service-Learning has chosen to define CSL as a way of mobilizing universities and colleges to address community issues that is at the same time consistent with the core academic mission and purpose of these institutions. [...] For example: • Critical thinking and the ability to communicate and work effectively with others fall into all three categories • Personal efficacy and appreciation of diversity are both societal/civic and personal • Problem-solving and interdisciplinarity are both academic and societal/civic And many of these outcomes might be best understood as emerging from the interplay of these categories. [...] Bringing Knowledge to the Institution from the Community – There is increasing awareness of the limits of institutional knowledge and the consequent value of creating opportunities for the co-generation of new knowledge and understanding from the community. [...] FIGURE 1. SOFAR provides a structural model for examining dyadic interactions between persons, and it explicitly broadens and refines the set of potential partners in service- learning and civic engagement beyond “community” and “campus.” This allows a more detailed analysis of the nature of the wide range of interactions and relationships that are involved in service-learning and civic engagement