Marilynne Boyle-Baise, Indiana University

In this essay, I focus on the service in service learning. I consider what might happen if the term "service learning" was invertedto learning service. I wonder if such an inversion can help instructors, students, and community partners critically evaluate the service they do. I describe "reading service as text" as a tool for learning service. To read service as text, learners question the goals, values, forms, and assumptions embedded in distinctive forms of service. The guiding questions for this essay are: (1) What does it mean to learn service, (2) how can service be read as text, and (3) how can best practices be reconsidered as standards for service?