Assessing Service-Learning in Teacher Education.

The article presents information on the assessment of service learning in teacher education. In pre-service teacher education programs throughout the country, service learning is proliferating. Although interest and engagement in pre-service teacher service-learning continues to grow, some faculty remains skeptical of service-learning theory and practice, demanding stronger evidence for the value of engaging in this curricular activity. Many researchers acknowledge that the relationship between academic achievement through pre-service teacher service-learning activities and assessment, evaluation and reporting has been problematic. Service learning is a complex approach to teaching and learning. It needs and deserves approaches to assessment, evaluation, and reporting that are capable of capturing that complexity. To obtain consistent and reliable results concerning the impact of service learning on the various stakeholders, it is important to produce high quality service-learning activities and projects.