ABSTRACT
Academic learning is widely understood to be one of at least three interrelated categories of learning that define service learning—the others being civic learning and personal growth. Service learning students should recognize and perhaps use academic concepts and theories in their service; in other words, the pedagogy invites them to think at the level of application. Academic learning in service learning encompasses various types and levels of learning outcomes. This chapter presents a conceptual framework for articulating academic learning outcomes, distilled from a set of related theoretical perspectives that speak to the nature of experiential learning and of cognitive processes more generally. Research on academic learning in service learning can advance understanding of these relationships between teaching and learning strategies, on the one hand, and students’ evolving identities and habits as learners, on the other.
