Recently, advocates and practitioners of service-learning have proposed that we explore ways of describing and promoting it so as to broaden its appeal to the higher education community. Edward Zlotkowski (1995) and others (e.g., Lenk, 1997) suggest that one way to do this is to make clear how the pedagogical value of service-learning lies not only in its capacity for reinforcing moral and civic values, but also in its potential for enriching more traditional, discipline-based learning. Our general failure to make clear how and why service-learning can serve the pedagogical needs of our discipline-based courses might help to explain why "so many faculty members have adopted a posture of general approval but personal indifference" (Zlotkowski, 1995:16) toward service-learning in the academy. I aim to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about how and why to incorporate service-learning into discipline-based courses by demonstrating how some important pedagogical goals of my basic and advanced undergraduate courses in social science research methods are achieved by means of one kind of service-learning--community-based research (CBR). First I will briefly explain what CBR is and describe how I incorporate it into my teaching. Then I will explain how the acquisition of practical research skills, as well as an understanding of epistemological issues surrounding knowledge production in the social sciences, are greatly enhanced by students' experience of doing research with and for the community.
