By Aurora Santiago-Ortiz, J. D., University of Massachusetts
Diverging from the traditional approach to service-learning, critical service-learning focuses on the root causes of inequality by addressing power and oppression. By incorporating critical pedagogy in the classroom, and action and reflection outside of it, critical service-learning looks to find solutions to social issues through university—community partnerships. In this article, I review relevant literature that centers social justice–based approaches to critical service-learning and argue that while these approaches are vital to student understanding of oppression, an anticolonial framework is needed to broaden notions of critical service-learning that challenge settler colonial logics. This article engages with the question “Can we decolonize critical service-learning?” and concludes by offering practices, such as solidarity to counter coloniality in higher education, that are responsible to the communities involved in the service-learning partnership. (Accessed 8/15/2022)
