A Qualitative Approach to the Assessment of International Service-Learning

Abstract

International service-learning combines aspects of conventional study abroad with aspects of conventional service-learning,1 offering an exceptional degree of integration into a target culture and an intensive experience of community service. The present study describes an effort to establish, through qualitative assessment, the degree to which such integration and experience actually take place, and their effects on the students involved. The target group is a single organization (the only such organization) with a twenty-year history of providing a range of intensive service-learning programs for American students outside the United States.