El aprendizaje-servicio y la educación universitaria. Hacer personas competentes

Abstract

In the face of the undeniable uncertainty experienced in enclaves of liquid modernity, the work of the Academy is indisputable, as it faces complex challenges from and for the training of students, in a social substratum characterized by transformations of a global nature that have little or nothing to do with that of its more recent past.
Its mission, in a spirit of social responsibility and knowledge transfer, is subsumed in the magnanimous declarations of renowned organizations, such as the United Nations (UN) in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda or the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the latest report of the Commission for the Futures of Education, which support the need to link the transformation and renewal of peoples and communities with the assurance of quality education.
The immediate task is to insistently seek the development of societies that are a source and catalyst of opportunities, more sustainable, committed and democratic and, all of this, with the added mission of strengthening a capable and competent citizenry with the decision-making that weaves its near future(s).
Undoubtedly, the work co-edited by the professors of the ESCULCA Research Group of the University of Santiago de Compostela is a good example of the need to continue striving for this distinguished task, postulating with solvency the potential of service-learning (ApS) in higher education in order to achieve a timely personal and professional development of citizens with an attitude towards inequalities and socio-community demands.
Needless to say that the publication is made under the protection of a broad and consolidated line of research of the group focused on the impact of this methodology in the university environment, sponsored by two research projects of competitive concurrence, one focused on its possibilities in academic performance and the other, thinking about better levels of employability in university youth.

Not otherwise, the premise that guides the path of such a good work, in tune with the aforementioned aspirations of governmental entities, is the management of quality learning with sufficient openness to formative scenarios in which university and community seek adequate attention to social needs, accompanying the achievement of an integral formation in the academic environment.
In this direction, service-learning should be articulated in the university mission with a double purpose: the first, to promote optimal personal and professional development in the culmination of making competent people; the second, to recognize the emancipating power of managing learning, from dimensions of reciprocity, from community prisms.
In its globality, the work offers a development with high doses of articulation and sequencing, around service-learning and its praiseworthy task in higher education institutions. As a starting point, in the first of its chapters, in a pristine manner, a journey through the learning processes in the university of the 21st century is presented. In this way, the orientation support is provided by the extensive change of pedagogical approach with the emergence of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in which the roles of students and teachers have changed substantially, through the adoption of a model based on the development of competencies. Its basis is the need for effective action as citizens with social commitment and the achievement of better levels of employability in a scenario of high risk of unemployment and social exclusion of the university population.
The second chapter delves into the potential of service-learning as an active learning methodology through epistemological cuts and broad scientific rigor. Thus, experience, action and reflection are approached as epistemic axes of its performance, while the institutional and legislative precepts and references are distinguished in its propagation and solid settlement in the university community.
On the other hand, the third chapter, from a more practical point of view, brings the reader closer to the phases that have to conform service-learning projects with quality guarantees, in which reflection and evaluation are established as nuclei in the construction and validation of the learning obtained. At the same time, through a corpus of evidences of diverse nature, the possibilities of this methodology for the development of competences of university students in dimensions that treasure its impact on civic-social components, in academic learning and in the socio-labor field that is linked to a complex and arduous professional reality are deployed.

In the last of the chapters, the imperative of institutionalizing service-learning in the academy is outlined if what is sought is a sustainable development in the teaching task and in stable community ties. From there, dimensions and instruments are exhibited in order to approach its evaluation, setting the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela as an example of good practices in the institutionalization of this methodology. Finally, the results of a research on the potential of this learning strategy in university students who have been involved in projects of this nature are shown.
In short, the book is a magnificent contribution to the path of recognizing service-learning as an ideal methodology to strengthen the personal and professional development of university students and, even more, to strengthen ties with the community. The gaze must be opened towards the principle of reciprocity in which institutions of higher education, hand in hand with community agents, must work towards mutual benefit through a firm commitment to the tides of complexity that constitutes the contemporary social scenario.