Community service learning: an ethical proposal for teacher education

It’s 50 years since service learning has entered the scientific literature (Stanton, Giles & Cruz, 1999; see the systematic review in Ubbiali, 2017), as a pedagogical model able to educate at different levels (knowledge, ethical, civic, democratic…) students at school or at university. This model, very common in the USA, is not well known and adopted in Europe. In Verona University (Mortari, 2017), we proposed the SL model to preservice-teachers, whose academic education requests long period of training within the school. In order to avoid a training model where students simply “apply” academic learning within the class, and schools are considered as only passive location without any earning, we offer students the possibility to spend their training time as service teacher collaborators and educational researchers.