By Nooraslinda Abdul Aris
Introduction
Service-learning (SL) is not new in the education realm. The idea has been debated in the early 1960s in the way it should be defined and the theory underpinning its operationalization. In a non-specialist, SL captures tri-parties' relations between students, education institutions, and the community. As learning is an ongoing process, real-life activities will allow all actors to appreciate, understand and learn better. These so-called experimental learning approaches address education purposes with community service to advice on progressive learning by supplementing real-life ideas in the community. This paper intends to highlight the fundamentals of SL (definition and components) and how it could be integrated and implemented in the accounting related courses in the university. Adopting the SL idea means engaging the industry and community and empowering the students towards the nation 2030 vision of shared prosperity.
Service-Learning Concept
The term ‘service-learning’ (SL) has been used to characterize many experiential education endeavors, from volunteer and community service projects to field studies and internship programs. SL is not simply another active learning strategy, but it fundamentally enhances the experience of teaching and learning for both students and faculty members. The service and learning elements should complement each other and should not be favored at the expense of the other. There are four types of SL – direct, indirect, research-based, and advisory services and can be dealt with either in the business, social or personal group. As such, SL courses should be rigorous than non-service-learning courses.
Sigmon (1979) defined SL as an experiential education approach that is premised on ‘reciprocal learning’ suggesting that learning flows from both side of the provider and receiver. Bringle and Hatcher (1995) state SL as a course-based, credit-bearing educational experience that allows students to (a) participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and (b) reflect on the service activity to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. Thus, SL is an educational approach that combines learning objectives with community service that results in a progressive learning experience for the students and faculty members. SL has been commonly linked to community service, volunteerism, community-based learning, civic engagement, and service-learning internship. Figure 1 illustrates the peculiarity of SL as described by Furco (1996).
SL fits into several learning theories, including Lewin's iterative model of action learning and constructivist learning theory, which explains that the learning process starts with prior knowledge and is reconstructed through reflective pieces that impact future actions (Kolb & Kolb, 2009). SL is also an experiential learning strategy that applies Kolb's experiential learning cycle, created by the recursive flux of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation (Salleh Hudin et al., 2018). SL has unveiled a rich, innovative, pedagogical approach for valuable teaching and learning in which students participate in activities that address human and community needs and structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development, as depicted in Figure 2. SL profoundly enhances the experience of teaching and learning for both students and faculty. Community service and engagement can be demonstrated in many forms as it is parts of campus experience and commitment.
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| Figure 1: The distinction of SL (Furco, 1996) | Figure 2: Contextualize SL in education (Heffernan, 2001) |
Designing SL in Accounting Education
Malaysian Ministry of Education (MOE) has made SL compulsory via its Education Blueprint 2015 - 2025 (Higher Education) to develop 21st-century skills (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2013). MOE aims to develop value-driven graduates who are holistic, entrepreneurial, and balanced, contributing towards harmonizing the wellbeing of the local and global communities (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2019). Thus, the MOE education framework, particularly the direction and way forward focus on local community needs and issues in driving the social changes. In 2019, MOE launched Service-Learning Malaysia - University for Society in short ‘SULAM’ to frame pedagogical models and research agendas concerning SL at the national and international levels (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2019). SULAM is an experiential education that focuses on five elements, as illustrated in Figure 3 below.
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Figure 3: SULAM experiential education elements |
SL in accounting curriculums is seen as a tool for enhancing the learning experience and student performance. Learning by doing it yourself assists in T&L of accounting education to move beyond ‘number crunching’ to critical analysis and problem-solving. It is vital to guide and expose the students to face the real accounting world rather than just reading and knowing the theory. This need for SL in accounting education is fueled partly by the public accounting professional associations' intensified awareness of the need for greater self-monitoring and the expectation of ethical behaviour by practitioners.
There has been significant pressure for increased transparency in all aspects of accounting including reporting, auditing, and taxation process (Calvert et al., 2011). The financial crisis and accounting scandals are the pushing factors that reform the accounting programs. There is a need to upscale accounting graduate professionalism with the skills and ethical standards to avoid the accounting practices that led to financial fiascos such as Enron (Diamond, 2005). Accounting educations should focus on competencies that drive sound ethical business practices.
Several studies report on SL for accounting students, which primarily focused on specific subjects like taxation (Cheuk et al., 2020), business (Garcia-Feijoo et al., 2020) and faculty roles (Calvert et al., 2011). In Malaysia, recent studies on SL has concentrated on the promotion, development, practice and implementation aspect (Ayob et al., 2021; Mahadir et al., 2019; Mamat et al., 2019; Salleh Hudin et al., 2018; Sulaiman et al., 2020). Despite the issues and challenges in implementing SL in higher learning institutions, it is notable that the benefit of SL include enhancement in academic performance, personal growth among all participants, especially the students, and embrace civic learning (Cheuk et al., 2020; Ibrahim et al., 2020; Yusof et al., 2020).
The designing of SL requires careful consideration as it affects many parties. Promoting SL in all subjects may not be possible as it involves many subjects from accounting, auditing, taxation, finance, ethics, etc. The option may be to choose several subjects for SL or offer students from a specific semester to join SL, or it could be an open volunteer concept to all students. Referring to Figure 3, the first step in SL is to find and establish relationship with the community partner. The relationship must be clearly articulated and mutually agreed upon. A one-time collaboration may be preferred, but longer-term collaborations often yield more significant community impact and a more profound student learning experience. The best practice is to involve the community partner as a close educational partner in the course design process from the beginning. Only then the community’s need can be addressed and clearly defined. For instance, SL adoption in tax courses in Malaysia is motivated by the existing 'Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA)' program in the USA, aiming to assist the lower income group (Cheuk et al., 2020). The students would involve in preparing the tax return and interviewing the taxpayers. The VITA program blends well with SL as it is a well-structured program, and the client pools are ready to engage for the service offered. The assignments from the SL project experiences must directly contribute to the student's course grade. At least one-course learning outcome is achieved through the SL experience. The service that the students engage in must clearly benefit the public. As the SL project is a new journey, students must be guided along the way to ensure it is meaningful and could translate their experience to broader personal, course, or disciplinary contexts. A critical reflection must be carried out at the end of the project, inclusive of the students, faculty members, and community partners. This reflective approach allows a better understanding of the SL concept and its future development for another project (Yusof et al., 2020).
Conclusion
SL is increasingly becoming the way forward in engaging with the community. Majority of higher learning institutions in the western countries have adopted SL to broaden their mission, boost student performance and persistence, and involve students in their communities as part of their academic curriculum. SL has been widely applied in art, landscape architecture, engineering design, psychology, public health, pharmacy services, business, etc.
Many public universities in Malaysia have implemented SL via both ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches to maximize experiential learning (Mamat et al., 2019). Such effort is indirectly parallel with the aim of the universities to contribute and route knowledge, skills, and expertise, the outcome of the study, and others to the society and country. Exploring some successful practices of SL could provide an idea of how SL could be adopted in the accounting-related program. Performing community service will assist students in understanding and appreciating real-life issues. Embedding SL in the accounting course would offer advantages to the parties involved.
From students’ perspective SL may increase their understanding on the real issues in the community, gain hands-on experience with the possibility leading to an internship or job, offer opportunities to contribute to the community while building resumes and work experiences, develop technical and soft skills, and improve ability to handle ambiguity and be open to change thus become more flexible. The faculty members may see SL as a process in promoting students' active learning, engaging students with different learning styles, developing students' civic and leadership skills, providing networking opportunities which lead to new avenues for research and publication. The community partners may gain additional human resource with SL project, which offer new idea, energy, enthusiasm, and perspectives and grow the volunteer pool sharing community.
