We do not wish, however, to overstate our claim. Service-learning has in recent years, demonstrated that it is hardly indifferent to theoretical concerns. To note but one example, the burgeoning literature of service learning has, among other things, reprised earlier debates about founda tions in literary and composition studies? as evidenced by a lively jac 23.3 (2003)

616 jac exchange about epistemology that emerged in the pages of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (see, in order, Liu, Richman, and Tucker). Predictably, and appropriately, those who argue about founda tions in the context of service-learning tend to draw extensively upon the traditions of pragmatism. We observe, for example, that service-learning practitioners in English studies have relied heavily on American pragma tist thinkers as sources for helping us understand the larger meanings of what we do. To be sure, there is a discernible range in our appropriations. That is, we have found value in American pragmatists as early as George Herbert Mead (see, for example, Rhoads) and as recent as Cornel West (see, most notably, Flower). But it is John Dewey who remains at the forefront of our theoretical discussions about service-learning. And for good reason. Dewey's example of how to think instrumen tally about schools, publics, democracy, and knowledge; his emphasis on reflection as characteristic of all learning; his naming of the local community as the ultimate source for his Great Community; his belief in an experimentalist method applicable to social problems? in all such respects, Dewey has proven himself invaluable to our attempts to theorize service-learning (for a very small sampling, see Deans, Giles, Giles and Eyler, Julier, Ehrlich). Certainly, without Dewey, the sometimes (over) heard criticism of service-learning as a theoretically weak enter prise might have more credibility and substance. Yet, for those who wish to think imaginatively about the theoretical implications of service-learning, as we intend to do here, such a thorough going allegiance to American pragmatism (in general), and Deweyan experimentalism (in particular), has its dangers. Robert Tucker has recently observed, for example, that those who enlist pragmatism on behalf of service-learning frequently do so with the intention of locating a stand-in or substitute for foundational epistemology. What results is the paradoxical situation wherein pragmatism, as eager understudy, grabs the spotlight to perform the role of a" rival epistemology to replace foundationalism" rather than, as Tucker would have it," a perspective that encourages us to avoid epistemology as a subject of discussion"(5). It should go without saying that attempts to ground service-learning prac tices in pragmatist thought might not be warmly received by Dewey who, in this revised scheme of things, comes across, ironically, as something of an epistemological father figure for service-learning. Nonetheless, if as Tucker claims, pragmatism" is not epistemic [but] heuristic," then we are obliged to ask what exactly is it that we discover through our embrace of pragmatism (11). The pragmatist answer to this