exploring the impact of service-learning on moral development.pdfVIP

Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning Spring 2008, pp.5-15 Exploring the Impact of Service-Learning on Moral Development and Moral Orientation Matthew L. Bernacki and Elizabeth Jaeger Saint Joseph’s University Research on Service-learning’s (SL) impact on students’ moral development has been “mixed.” In this study, 46 students in SL and non-SL sections of comparable courses offered at a northeastern Catholic university completed the Defining Issues Test, the Moral Justification Scale, and the SL Outcome Scale at the beginning and end of a semester. Although scores on moral development and orientation did not change significantly, SL students reported becoming more compassionate and more sensitive, having a greater understanding of and ability to solve social problems, and possessing a greater efficacy to make the world better. While a single-semester exposure to SL may be too limited to affect moral development, participants’ self-reported changes may be precursors to such developmental changes. Unfortunately, existing measures of moral orientation may preclude a thorough examination of change associated with SL. Future research would benefit from using tools that measure moral thinking and action, and under- standing of hypothetical moral principles. When John Dewey discussed the linkage of edu- as a means of promoting moral development, espe- cation and experience in a book by the same name cially at the college level. (1938), he simultaneously established experiential Despite the belief that SL implicitly teaches moral learning as pedagogy and embedded in it the central reasoning, re