Higher Education and Democracy: Essays on Service-learning and Civic Engagement

"[This] book is a significant addition to the field of service-learning and civic engagement in higher education and should become a standard resource. The authors are arguably the two most significant thought leaders in service-learning and civic engagement today, and the breadth and depth of their assembled essays---on issues of definition and rationale, models, on-the-ground implementation, institutional change, future directions---are remarkable. Higher Education and Democracy does an admirable job of illustrating the evolution and complexity of the authors' thinking regarding the most significant issues facing the field." ---Patti H. Clayton, Consultant (PHC Ventures) and Senior Scholar with the Center for Service and Learning at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Higher Education and Democracy is a collection of essays on how civic engagement in higher education works to achieve what authors John Saltmarsh and Edward Zlotkowski consider the academic and civic purposes of higher education. These purposes include creating new modes of teaching and learning, fostering participation in American democracy, developing and respecting community and civic institutions, and encouraging the constant renewal of all these dimensions of American life.

Organized thematically, the twenty-two essays in this volume provide signposts designed to advance higher education's journey toward fulfilling these civic purposes. For the authors, service-learning is positioned as centrally important to the primary academic systems and structures of higher education: departments, disciplines, curricula, and programs that are central to the faculty domain. Progressing from more general and contextual themes to specific practices embodied in ever larger academic units, the authors conclude with observations on the future of the civic engagement movement.