Reflection and service learning

Abstract

Recognition, understood as the process of attributing value and communicating it to the person undergoing training, is a key element in education. Gaining recognition is an essential part in an individual’s process of building an identity and developing competencies for life. People receiving training in any educational situation can be given recognition, but there are certain activities, like service learning, which by their very nature facilitate it and lend themselves to the programming of actions explicitly intended to communicate it. A number of experiences are examined in the article and the principal characteristics of acts of recognition established, revealing their highly varied nature. Subsequently, an analysis is made of the sources of this variability: the ways recognition is integrated into the processes of reflection and assessment; the members of the community who take part in the acts –educators, representatives of the organisations, recipients of the service, administrations and so on; and finally the very tasks carried out in acts of recognition– identifying, evaluating, symbolising, thanking and celebrating – and how these tasks are materialised. It is hoped that the information presented will help in the development of better acts of recognition.