Learning by serving, teaching by transforming: the impact of service learning in the Marist Chile network

Abstract

This article examines how the core team of the Marist Network in Chile conceptualizes the use and impact of a Service-Learning (SL) Guiding Framework in school settings, within the broader expansion of SL as a transformative pedagogical model in vulnerable educational contexts. Although SL has been consolidated globally as a student-centered practice, teachers’ voices and their role in co-constructing the methodology remain largely unexplored. Grounded in a qualitative approach informed by constructivist grounded theory and social phenomenology, the study draws on a focus group involving six experienced school-level SL practitioners. Through iterative coding cycles using NVivo 15, four core categories emerged: the guiding framework, social impact, community partnerships, and teachers’ emotions. The narratives reveal that SL is not merely an applicable methodology, but an ethical, situated, and relational practice that challenges and redefines institutional culture, fostering collective transformation rooted in educators’ lived experiences.