Trends in Higher Education Service-Learning Courses for Pre-Service Teachers: A Systematic Review

As a malleable, potent curricular tool with numerous positive outcomes in students' personal, academic and social lives, Service-Learning (S-L) has lately gained an increased interest from the scientific community. The most important challenge in introducing S-L instructional strategies in academic practice is designing effective, pragmatic S-L programs directed towards both reforming education by enhancing pre-service teachers' experiences and addressing community needs. Following the systematic review algorithm, this paper focuses on summarizing novel trends and procedures in higher education S-L courses for pre-service teachers and on outlining a best practices profile. The systematic review is based on key research questions that reveal the following aspects of the S-L programs: the major scope of the programs, the most common types of programs, the hosting environment chosen by project managers, the types of activities included in such programs, the architecture of the mandatory reflection component of S-L programs, as well as the duration and evaluation techniques of the programs. The findings may serve as a reference point in designing more efficient S-L programs. (C) 2016 Published by Future Academy