Abstract:

The task of schools, universities and educational institutions should be to support people in their growth by helping them to develop their potential and providing them with a wide range of skills for a successful integration in the society. This objective must be constantly adapted to the new challenges created by the ever-changing social and cultural scenario. Today, more than ever, we live in a complex society where everything evolves promptly, making previously indispensable knowledge and skills rapidly obsolete. The system of education must be transformed profoundly in order to pursue a vision of education that goes beyond the predominant utilitarian and economic one, to integrate the multiple dimensions of human existence and to promote the harmonious development of the person in relationship to the world. The Recommendations of the Council of the European Union of May 22, 2018 on key competences for lifelong learning make it clear that, in order to ensure resilience and the ability to adjust to change, the skills that are now required are entrepreneurial, social and civic skills.

It should be noted that the competences mentioned by the Council of the European Union are meta-competences and personal skills. How can the educational system create the conditions for the development of the human being, his resilience and skills? Are there already educational approaches that can foster an integral growth? A pedagogical approach that places the development of the human being in all his dimensions at the center of its structure, valuing the empowerment of the subject who actively contributes to the construction of himself and the community in which he lives, can be identified in Service-Learning. In practical terms, it is a learning/teaching approach that combines Service (solidarity service to the community, citizenship) with Learning (the acquisition of professional, methodological, social and didactic skills) in order to help students develop knowledge and skills through a solidarity service offered to the community. Service-Learning, which has been developing around the world since the end of the 1960s, has its roots in the civic concern of the North American pedagogist John Dewey and in the South American educator and philosopher Paulo Freire’s concept of transforming the world through reflection and action. Both are today the two main points of reference for the most pragmatic and critical currents of this pedagogical proposal, although they have never explicitly theorized it. The two scholars understood the “educational process as a bearer of action and reflection”, insisting on the fact that theory and practice must complement each other as they both “build their philosophies around concepts related to experience, growth, communication, mediation and problem solving. Today, the Service-Learning approach has become a worldwide pedagogical movement, taking on its own characteristics in different cultural contexts.

Keywords:

Service-Learning, teaching-learning processes, Soft skills, Key competences, Social responsibility, Community involvement.