ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests some broader observations about the logistical practice and pedagogical theory of service-learning, particularly as they pertain to the teaching of history. It includes concerns common to most service-learning courses. The chapter considers some challenges and approaches that seem to be a unique aspect of using service-learning in teaching history. Class time devoted to service-learning reflections will effectively bump class discussions that would otherwise have been included, or at least reshape them. Service provides many opportunities for the unreflective student to learn things that just aren’t true. A complementary approach would be for students to shift the analytic lens, so that an individual’s relationship with society moves into focus. A central concern in the study of poverty and welfare is to understand how the problem of poverty has been explained at any historic moment. The sites where students do their service, and the places they visit, are themselves an important source for metaphorical analysis.
