IARSLCE Asia-Pacific Community of Practice

The IARSLCE Asia-Pacific Community of Practice is a community established to promote the development and dissemination of research on service-learning and community engagement and build strong partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region. This community of practice (CoP), part of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE), is an international non-profit organization for scholars, practitioners, and community partners to engage in high quality trans-disciplinary research across a wide range of approaches and forms of service-learning and community engagement.

At the IARSLCE Virtual Conference held in November 2021, a gathering was organised for the Asia-Pacific Region. Participants expressed interest in continued dialogue and cooperation. Subsequently, a series of email exchanges among individual parties led to the formation of the APCoP under IARSLCE. Membership for the APCoP is open. Interested parties please contact the provisional secretariat.

In recent years, the Asia-Pacific region has become more and more active in adopting service-learning as an impactful teaching pedagogy. The region is tremendously rich in diversity in many dimensions: ethnicity, culture, history, language, political system, economic progress, etc. Such diversity offers great challenges as well as opportunities for innovative applications in service-learning; hence there is a greater need for scholarly research in a wide range of relevant aspects.

The community realizes that we have a lot to learn from and collaborate with each other. We recognize that many related communities have already existed, such as conferences, national organizations, etc., each with its own history, objectives, and membership. The APCoP encourages collaboration in scholarly research and applications. Our membership is open and inclusive. Most founding and current members are also members of multiple existing organisations.