Service Learning (ApS) and Linking/Extension models: a comparative study from its principles.

Abstract

The idea of ??integrality in education is a notion visible in the founding authors from modern science to the Higher Education models of the 21st century. However, its conception encompasses different categorizations that this article proposes to understand through the articulation of three mutually dependent epistemological variables: the knowing subject, the institutional function and the premises of social development. This article compares the Service Learning (SAP) models (characteristic of modern private universities) and the notion of Extension/Linkage (originated within the Latin American autonomist debate of the 20th century). This comparison is illustrated with a quantitative investigation, with a positivist paradigm, on the perception of ApS among 219 students from the San Juan Bautista Private University of Lima. It concludes about the important epistemological and political difference between both models, as well as the need to create efficient descriptors that measure the impacts of the models based on qualitative protocols based on internationally agreed ideas, such as sustainable development and human rights.